[HiFlight]

It has been my good fortune to happen across a Mouse from a Head-Fi F.S. ad when I was looking for an amp to suitably power my AKG K-1000s.

I purchased the Mouse from its previous owner, and have been very pleased with all aspects of the construction and performance.

I pairs very nicely with my K1Ks, driving them effortlessly, even considering the high impedance of the phones. Background is dead-silent, great speed and detail. What else could I ask, considering the very reasonable price of these amps.

For more information from the builder, please refer to the following website:

Winsome Labs

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Winsome Labs, other than being a very satisfied used of their product.

 

[joewatch]

How does it compare to your iQube? Both are class D designs.

 

[HiFlight]

Quote:

Originally Posted by joewatch /img/forum/go_quote.gif How does it compare to your iQube? Both are class D designs.

Both are quite neutral and have great detail, but beyond that it is rather hard to make any comparisons, as the iQube will not drive the K1Ks, and the Mouse does not have a headphone jack, only speaker terminals.

 

[Olev]

Your K-1000 is balanced? Winsome Mouse is a Class-D (Class-T pat pending

) and the grounds of the amplifier may not be connected together - used as non balanced setup. It uses Tripath chips as amplifier and speaker ground of one speaker has different potential than the other. Btw have you calculated the filter frequencies of the output filter? Class-D output is filtered and the filter is usually optimized for 4 or 8 Ohm load. Mouse uses one TP2050 per channel so look up the equation in the specsheet - and that chip was not designed for headphone use, rather it is an energy efficient 50W output amplifier chip.

 

[qwertgfdsa]

I use Mouse for K1000, too. Mouse is a nice amp, very compact and powerful. I like the way it looks, just like an equipment in a laboratory.
I also adding a 6.2 ohm resistor in parallel, like this http://www.head-fi.org/forums/2783814-post69.html.

 

[dpump]

I also tried the Mouse with my K1000 and it sounded great. The K1000 is a balanced headphone by design-the L and R channels are totally separate. The plug used has 4 pins, 2 for each channel, so the grounds are not tied together as in a conventional phone. The Mouse builder, Jay Hennigan, recommended I try a 6-8 ohm resistor connected in parallel as mentioned above. I did, but I thought the bass was actually a little stronger without the resistor and nothing else seemed to change. Jay didn't say there would be any problems running the K1000 straight off the Mouse and I had none.

With my normal K1000 amp, I run a subwoofer off the speaker connections to add some bass to the sound. The K1000 is a little bass shy by itself, but running a subwoofer adds the missing weight. Note-you absolutely cannot run a subwoofer off the speaker connections on the Mouse or any other Class D amp as you would be connecting the grounds together which would short the amp! If in doubt with any amp, ask the manufacturer or someone in the know before connecting the speaker grounds together. I saw this tip of using a subwoofer with the K1000 on Head-Fi years ago and I don't know who thought of it first but it really works.

 

[HiFlight]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Olev /img/forum/go_quote.gif Your K-1000 is balanced? Winsome Mouse is a Class-D (Class-T pat pending ) and the grounds of the amplifier may not be connected together - used as non balanced setup. It uses Tripath chips as amplifier and speaker ground of one speaker has different potential than the other. Btw have you calculated the filter frequencies of the output filter? Class-D output is filtered and the filter is usually optimized for 4 or 8 Ohm load. Mouse uses one TP2050 per channel so look up the equation in the specsheet - and that chip was not designed for headphone use, rather it is an energy efficient 50W output amplifier chip.

The K1K is really more like 2 separate speakers, requiring an input of 21v to drive to max rating. The grounds are not common, as each earspeaker is independent of one another.

Hence, the Mouse is effectively driving speakers, not "headphones". Although I don't own any of the megabucks tube amps, the Mouse does as nice a job as anything else I have tried.

Yes, the Mouse is optimized for 4-8 ohm loads so I will likely try the shunt resistors and see if I can detect any audible differences.