The Wire Headphone Amplifier

"The Wire" uses a balanced input and single ended output.

I've built one and Avro_Arrow is correct, it uses a balanced input and outputs single-ended.  Sound-wise, all I can say is that it has permanently replaced my Gilmore Lite as my desktop amp.

The Gilmore Lite was  $300 used, and the kit for "The Wire" was $95 but didn't include a volume control, input/output jacks, chassis, and some of the non-SMD parts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by psgarcha92 

 

...the pictures show XLR ports, thats makes me curious, is that a totally balanced amp?

am also confused because it uses a stereo input jack...

 

 

The documentation is published so all you have to do is to look at the schematic.
 

Besides that I think it's a good design, well done.

Quote:

Originally Posted by L-Train 

The Gilmore Lite was  $300 used, and the kit for "The Wire" was $95 but didn't include a volume control, input/output jacks, chassis, and some of the non-SMD parts.

 

Where did you get the kit? thanks

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamess71 

Where did you get the kit? thanks

I took part in the original group buy at diyAudio.  As far as I know there are no more kits left.

brilliant amp, best sounding SE output headphone amp i have heard. nimble yet brutal. it just goes to show that good design and proper grounding can be almost inseparable from fully balanced operation. i havent heard it with se input though, so i guess its not your normal case. a great thing about it is its so small that given a reasonably covpact power supply its really no problem to drop it into a balanced system for the se output as i'm doing; mounted right next to the output jack. doesnt sound like a chipamp at all, i have no problem with chips, in fact i like them, but in general i'm a discrete fan, but this doesnt sound like a chipamp, because it doesnt really sound at all.

its basically an instrumentation amp with buffered output, using the best performance chips of today. no caps in the signal path, dc coupled input and output. psrr up the wazoo. ticks all the boxes really

using it with an unbalanced source? you would be better off finding another amp tbh. and no, absolutely not a good idea wiring this up on perfboard, for starters the bom is 99% high quality surface mount parts, with all the chips not being available in any other form and the amp leverages the use of a ground plane and very compact layout/short traces for a good part of its performance. its such a wideband design that it would be oscillation city and to make it stable you would have to add compensation destroying one of the best things about it ie no caps anywhere in the signal.

in short, you have just wiped out every single one of its best attributes. i actually dont have any unbalanced sources apart from some old portable gear, probably not the best test and i use the sabre's digital volume control, so i dont have a pot to control volume with other sources, i really dont think its a good idea unless it was just a temporary thing until you got a balanced source sorted. even as it is its so wideband, you have to be careful all signal connections need to be very neat and use with a source not having any dc 

Quote:

Originally Posted by psgarcha92 

Using it with an unbalanced source, would that be attainable?

Just grounding one of the inputs.

like i said, just build another amp if tyhats the choice you have, the performance would be severely effected by running with the input grounded. kinda like star grounding a pair of monoblocks together