Headamp Blue Hawaii Special Edition - Page 173

Never stay at 0.000 is what I mean by all over the place.  0.156 left channel, 0.085 right and difficulty getting back to 0.000 after 2 hours use.  Is that standard or consistent with these tubes with early use?  Surprised to hear from you, Justin. ???  To get any response from you is significant.  I just want to know what to expect - educate me, I am capable of understanding.  

 

As I stated, the more I use these tubes the better it gets.

Obviously, that is what I am asking.  Glad to know that is nothing.  I do not know as I stated at the beginning.

Thank you for yet another of your characteristic responses.  Justin, you are a jerk.

 

FOR ALL READERS:  the Justin Wilson built BHSE is a FINE stat amplifier, the best I have ever heard. 

am I missing something?  

just a point of view.

it is true, you have no idea.  0.000 speaks for itself.  

Nicholas, you seem a bit insecure and it is affecting your social skills I am afraid. Let me take off some of your worries and send me your bhse that keep oscillating between .004 and .0057. This is unacceptable but I will live with it.

Good morning nicholas029 (and any other BHSE owners)

 

I hope my two questions won't spoil your day.

 

1. As a multi-source BHSE user, did you try to compare the performance (sound quality) of the RCA (unbalanced) and XLR (balanced, I hope) inputs? This isn't easy, for the modulation cables between source and amp must be the same reference, with RCA or XLR plugs or course. With my Stax SRM007-tII, the XLR connection seems slightly better; one thing is certain: there is absolutely no noise with the XLR path, and a tiny one (some sort of hum, not audible in normal listening conditions) with the RCA path. Theoretically, if both the source and the destination have a balanced circuitry, the performance should be better with a XLR connection, but...

 

2. Can you send me the link to the Justin's how-to-bias-tubes video you mention ?

 

Best regards to high-end headphones users.

Before Justin did the video on how to bias the tubes on the BHSE, I bought a quad of SED EL34's and was told by a very reliable source that the BHSE would work even without biasing. Because I trust the person that gave me that advice I decided to try it and he was right. I have read that not biasing the tubes leads to them not lasting as long, so when I got hold of a multimetre [ IanG was kind enough to lend me his ] I did the biasing after I saw the video Justin did. It was very difficult to get the setting at 0.000 but before I did the biasing, when I first plugged the new SED EL34's in the setting was way out and I ran the BHSE for over four hours without a problem. If biasing tubes had worried me in anyway, I'd have not bothered getting the BHSE and bought a SS electro amp, but it doesn't, well biasing the BHSE doesn't.

Page 150 at the very top - http://www.head-fi.org/t/439657/headamp-blue-hawaii-special-edition/2235#post_8557758 or go direct - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-obcsljIBxI

Edited by Golfnutz - 10/2/12 at 5:09am

Thank you very much, Golfnutz! The video is quite clear, probably because the tube biasing operation is quite simple to carry out. What a relief!

 

Any idea regarding my first question (XLR vs RCA)?

 

Have a nice day.

 

Philippe

Sorry, I'm only using XLR all the way through. Maybe I could throw a couple of adapters to on my IC's to compare. Would have to do it later though.

Any amp with this high gain setup will sound better through XLR inputs.  The amp relies on the high gain to perform the phase splitting but this causes some small artifacts but no conversion like this is 100% accurate.  There is a much bigger difference at the source though so don't expect the two different outputs on a source to be equal as they most certainly aren't.  On many high end sources the balanced output is an afterthought or just very badly engineered so it will always sound worse than the RCA's. 

 

On the amp biasing, anything less than 5VDC worth of offset or balance is trivial in the grand scheme as the amp easily swings 100 times that.  The unofficial Stax figure for their amps is +/-20VDC so anything within that limit is just fine.  Just try to get as close to 0VDC as is possible and it's all good.  Neither of these adjustments alter the operating points of the tubes as they are set in stone so the tubes will not wear out faster if the offset or balance is off by 20V or so.  The amp will not like a massive amount of either balance or offset but that isn't normal behavior so nothing any owner is likely to experience.