Carl
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2005
- Posts
- 5,368
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- 21
I'm really not from an electronics background, and haven't clocked up a huge number of hours on the soldering iron, but having been into the science/art of good sound for a sufficiently long period, I think the time is ripe for me to start thinking about building my own amp. As an emotional journey, not just as a prosaic desire to save a few pennies. Of course, with my "interesting" personality, I sure ain't going to be making things easy on myself, so having people to act as a sounding board would be a great help.
My eclectic tastes, and strange requirments make buying an off the shelf amp pretty much impossible anyway.
The amp is for driving an array of electrostatic headphones, but rather than going the conventional route and building a direct-drive amp, I want to build a set of standard monoblocks and a transformer and bias voltage box to run them through (the latter being similar in vein to the Stax transformers, but without being a mess of cheap electrolytics, and having a completely sepperate power supply for the bias volatge, rather than extracting it from the input signal). The reason for this is that I have a particular set of tubes I want to use, and it doesn't seem like they'd work in a direct-drive situation. It also allows me to use them for dynamic headphones and high efficiancy speakers (by skipping the transformer box) should the urge take me.
The basic topology I'm looking at is 45->interstage transformer->10Y->output transformer, operating in series push-pull. I know of no other amp like it.
I'm suspecting the interstage transformer part will be a right nightmare and I may even need to get a custom transformer wound to get these two tubes to talk nicely to each other, but nevertheless, I think that way would serve my tastes better than any other option. I find the designs of Japanese DHT amps elegant, and like their stylistic sound, so I'm quite happy to go this route despite it not being very popular in the US audio community.
The transformer stage at the end to convert the signal into one compatible with electrostatics will also be an interesting one. I'm wondering if the I/V conversion could be done passively, like with a large resister, rather than a transformer, as the signal path is already going to have plenty of them.
I've also not decided yet how I'm going to connect the input signal to the 45 driver. Another transformer is probably the most elegant solution considering the rest of the signal path, but I'm not sure if it'll sound the best. I may also have to add another amplification stage (prehaps a type 26 or another 45 or 10Y?), I'm not sure if I'll have enough gain or not. Being intended for headphone use, maybe I'll get lucky and have enough juice.
This isn't going to be a rush project (I'm too busy for that anyway), so I have plenty of time to let the project evolve into a complete whole. If you've got any ideas, suggestions, help, or just want to chew the fat feel free to post it or PM me. The more ideas and information, the better I think it will be. I'm still very new to this, so oppologies in advance for any misunderstandings or blank spots in my knowledge.
Thanks everyone.
My eclectic tastes, and strange requirments make buying an off the shelf amp pretty much impossible anyway.
The amp is for driving an array of electrostatic headphones, but rather than going the conventional route and building a direct-drive amp, I want to build a set of standard monoblocks and a transformer and bias voltage box to run them through (the latter being similar in vein to the Stax transformers, but without being a mess of cheap electrolytics, and having a completely sepperate power supply for the bias volatge, rather than extracting it from the input signal). The reason for this is that I have a particular set of tubes I want to use, and it doesn't seem like they'd work in a direct-drive situation. It also allows me to use them for dynamic headphones and high efficiancy speakers (by skipping the transformer box) should the urge take me.
The basic topology I'm looking at is 45->interstage transformer->10Y->output transformer, operating in series push-pull. I know of no other amp like it.
I'm suspecting the interstage transformer part will be a right nightmare and I may even need to get a custom transformer wound to get these two tubes to talk nicely to each other, but nevertheless, I think that way would serve my tastes better than any other option. I find the designs of Japanese DHT amps elegant, and like their stylistic sound, so I'm quite happy to go this route despite it not being very popular in the US audio community.
The transformer stage at the end to convert the signal into one compatible with electrostatics will also be an interesting one. I'm wondering if the I/V conversion could be done passively, like with a large resister, rather than a transformer, as the signal path is already going to have plenty of them.
I've also not decided yet how I'm going to connect the input signal to the 45 driver. Another transformer is probably the most elegant solution considering the rest of the signal path, but I'm not sure if it'll sound the best. I may also have to add another amplification stage (prehaps a type 26 or another 45 or 10Y?), I'm not sure if I'll have enough gain or not. Being intended for headphone use, maybe I'll get lucky and have enough juice.
This isn't going to be a rush project (I'm too busy for that anyway), so I have plenty of time to let the project evolve into a complete whole. If you've got any ideas, suggestions, help, or just want to chew the fat feel free to post it or PM me. The more ideas and information, the better I think it will be. I'm still very new to this, so oppologies in advance for any misunderstandings or blank spots in my knowledge.
Thanks everyone.
