Holy Batman! This PINT kicks freakin' butt!!! - Page 9

The PINT is not truly a miniaturization of the PIMETA design. While it does have 3-channel topology and power supply is somewhat similar to the PIMETA, it does not have the Jung multiloop/Buffers or class-A biasing circuits.

Generally speaking, yes, the SMD components are smaller versions of the same. However, SMD components have a few design inherent advantages, such as lower lead inductance that may contribute to some difference between the SMD and through hole versions of the same project.

Well that explains it . . . . I was wondering why the PINT got raves while at the same time PiMETA was made to seem mediocre, this made no sense to me until you clarified above.

I knew the choice of opamp would affect battery life but by that much? Wow. Glad I got the LM! I get about 10 1/2 hours with mine. Almost a perfect match with the ZVM. Nice sound and of course, the price is very tolerable. Great, great value. Can't wait for Tangents next creation!

Its not so much that the PIMETA is mediocre, just that for its packaging and cost, you can have something better suited to either home or portable use. The PIMETA is the quintessential jack of all trades - low cost, but not dirt cheap; can be made minimalist for portability, but the board and through hole components are large as is; can be built up for home use, but if you are going to pour enough money in a PIMETA to equal a PPA/M3/Millett/etc.. you should have just built one of those instead.

The supply current for an AD8397 opamp is rated at 15 mA where the supply current for an LM6172 is only 4.4 mA.

yeah, design-wise the pimeta should perform better than a PINT, but i've always felt that the pimeta was TOO much in the middle to be exciting. it performs really well but for a little more you can get a PPA...with the varied offerings of portable amps you can get a good performer for a much smaller size than the pimeta. the pimeta is sort of the middle-child of amps, i guess...

Shorter signal path due to SMD, elimination of buffers for a shorter/cleaner signal path.

Actually that idea came from the George Orwell's masterpiece "Animal Farm", written in 1945, Pink Floyd just took that idea and re-elaborate it a little further....


Well it seems to me that the way it was said, was a way off, specially nowing Ray personally and knowing how he is dedicated to his work. A company of one single man operation....he design, prototype, test, and later on assembly, and ship all the amps he sell...that is a ot of work for one heart, and honestly needs to be paid off in some way....that is my personal opinion of course...

Now it is true that the DIY, and the DIYFSE, is a very strong community and the products available, given that are basically based in very good proved designs, had shown us, to be sometimes a better value than commercial produtcts, that is a reality, and that applies to any price point market, just to mention one, my PPA done by Voodoochile, the good Mark, is to me an unbeatable value, that will stand in front of the most expensive amps I have heard, and even I use it as my main amp nowdays, sinergy, quality, tweaks, I don't know for sure what is, and I have others around, and have heard most fo the commercial amps in the market available nowadays...

Tyll once stated that as well, the DIY community is really a very strong competence for all of them, that is not a secret...of course the prices are lower, but OTOH the termination of the products, is not comparable neither, saving a few cases...Also a DIY item takes usually longer to be done and delivered. You have to see what is inside a Headroom or a Ray Samuels amp, to realize that they are trully commercial products, the attention to the details is simply astonishing...

Sorry Ray for having such a hard time here, and honestly you do not deserve that...

Great explanation!

I had a headsave pimeta before and my experience is that the Pimeta is a significant step above the 2003 total airhead and Xin supermini V6, about the same league as Xin supermini III and somewhere below a maxed-out PPA and the latest Xin supermacro IV. But according to the OP of this thread and other reviews of PINT, it seems to be the best portable amp beating competitors such as Hornet, AE-1 and supermacro.

So my question is: has another one carefully compared a PINT with a similarly configured Pimeta? (not taking the form factor and cost into considertation). Which one is better and just how much better the PINT is? I'm curious how much improvement could be expected from the SMD.

Like I said earlier, it is impossible to compare a PINT to a PIMETA because the topology of the PIMETA utilizes a buffered multiloop where the PINT is a direct drive with no multiloop. The only real similarity between the designs is they are both 3 channel (L,R,G). While the PINT can theoretically be built with any opamp series, it is truly designed to be built with high current (high power) bipolar input opamps (OPA552, AD8397, AD45048, LM6172) where, much like a CMOY, the opamp output is going directly to the headphone load. If anything, I would compare it more to a CMOY, though that doesn't really describe it either, as a CMOY has no active ground channel. A PIMETA, on the other hand, allows a builder to use precision FET input opamps, which usually have low output current and use a buffer (essentially a high current opamp with G=1) on the output to increase the available current without performing any changes to the signal amplitude. As a benefit, there can now be multiple feedback loops which reduce input error, increase stability, and minimize distortion (see Minimizing Input Errors by Walt Jung for in depth discussion).

If you truly wanted only a comparison from SMD to through hole, the PPAS and PPA v1 both use VERY similar topologies. If you could adapt a BUF634 pinout to the PPA V1 board you would have nearly identical circuits with the only difference being the method for class-A biasing - PPA uses a FET cascode and the PPAS uses a CRD (for space considerations).

This seems more like a fault of the AD8397; not a fault of the PINT. The quiescent draw on that chip is monstrous. This is, I imagine, one of the reasons other amps which use the 8397 at the output use a different chip as splitter.

I agree that the expression used to convey an opinion that the pint was a better value/choice for volcom was a poor one but I don't see any malice although I'm sure some(including Ray) took it that way. I'm also not seeing Ray being given "a hard time here". The guy used a poor choice of words but IMO, this whole thing is being blown way out of proportion. Ray obviously has numerous friends and fans here but I think crucifying volcom is going a bit overboard.

It's not just that he picked his words poorly. He was also implying that the moderators were going to delete this thread, ban him, and that everyone was scared to tell "the truth"...all this before so much as one moderator had weighed in. It reminded me of someone who was trying to start a street fight with random passers-by.

In response, he was corrected - in a courteous manner - by a lot of folks, including some moderators. None of the predicted nastiness was visited upon him. That hardly qualifies as a "crucifying", now does it?

SIGH!! Just when I thought we'd gone over the top for the last time.

How about we all just drop the whole issue wrt the OP's multiple errors in judgment. It's not getting us anywhere.

I do not agree in crucifying anybody, neither, his word choice is just that "his way", but I do not feel that it was appropriate to call a serious manufacturer as Ray, Mikhail, Rudi, Tyll, Jan, etc...(and I have not own a sigle product from him, not planning to do it, OK?) That he was ripping people off, just becasue the price performance was not what expected, or because he found a better product in the used market, or in the DIY community...

The DIY community always offer better deals, of course, what is its use of it otherwise???

It is like if for some reason, I manage to get a pair of R-10 for $100.00, and then call all the heapdhones a rip off, just becasue you get a better deal, or found IYO that you get a better deal, as others maybe will not agree on that, doesn make other prices a rip off, if one thing I ahve learn along this travel in headfi, is that there is a market for all prices, and for all products...

About Ray sympathy, well he is a funny guy, an honest manufacturer, and a guy that works hard for his money, that makes him to deserves at least respect from us...period!!!
Another thing to consider, and what make me respect him even more, he is one of very few manufacturers that while in a meeting, or in a public place, take time among his responsibilities, to go an hear other manufacturers gear, and new offers, and express his honest opinions, and sugestions...

Again the first time I hear about him, I did not liked him too much, too many fanboys around, same as Mikhail, but after meeting them personally, it is another completelly different experience, the are both very friendly guys and people that you cna sk about almost any theme of conversation and get an interesting answer....

Ray, I'm not really sure why you think criticizing a manufacturers product isn't wise. The reason head-fi exists to discuss this hobby and that includes both negative and postive posts about products. If you took his rip-off comments as bashing well then thats on you. It was a criticism and you should be able to deal with that.

If anything I thought he used the term "rip-off" in conjunction with the Hornet to help display how much of a bargain the PINT is.

I like how everyone including the manufacturer jumps on the original poster. Overreacting as usual. Just grow up and let the guy state his opinion. If the OP thinks the Hornet is a rip-off then fine for him and for his situation it is. If you disagree with him them thats fine as well and debate that topic all you want. Don't jump all over the guy and criticize him for being too harsh and using a poor choice of words. Getting that upset over semantics is stupid and childish at best.

I think this is the perfect time to link to the you are not your gear thread.

Who the hell is that misterious poster that has no avatar, no name, no nothing, and still has an opinion there????