[helloh3adfi]

Are those Dekoni pads?

 

[Zaemon]

Yes and they are awesome.

 

[cobrabucket]

Hey Friends,
this is how i solved the temperature problem. 69° after 40min in 100mA Mode was just not acceptable. Room Temp 19°. Now stable at 61°. Fan is underneath the amp. Its a 120mm, 900 RPM, 12V Noctua PC Fan. Vibrations arnt a problem cause i glued it in with silicone. The fan isnt visible from the front or sides. I think ill add some small feet for some extra height to the S17 later to get even better temps. Maybe like 10mm or so.

Needed a rack anyway ..

Cheers
Z

How are you powering the fan? USB? Computer?

 

[MiguelP]

Hey Friends,
this is how i solved the temperature problem. 69° after 40min in 100mA Mode was just not acceptable. Room Temp 19°. Now stable at 61°. Fan is underneath the amp. Its a 120mm, 900 RPM, 12V Noctua PC Fan. Vibrations arnt a problem cause i glued it in with silicone. The fan isnt visible from the front or sides. I think ill add some small feet for some extra height to the S17 later to get even better temps. Maybe like 10mm or so.

Needed a rack anyway ..

Cheers
Z

Elegant solution.

 

[sendler2112]

Hey Friends,
this is how i solved the temperature problem. 69° after 40min in 100mA Mode was just not acceptable. Room Temp 19°. Now stable at 61°. Fan is underneath the amp. Its a 120mm, 900 RPM, 12V Noctua PC Fan. Vibrations arnt a problem cause i glued it in with silicone. The fan isnt visible from the front or sides. I think ill add some small feet for some extra height to the S17 later to get even better temps. Maybe like 10mm or so.

Needed a rack anyway

Try this Sparkos Pro op amp with one dip riser in your Aune X8 DAC. It is completely night and day compared to even the latest, greatest OPA1656 IC op amp. Much better even than the Burson Vivid op amp.

https://sparkoslabs.com/pro-discrete-op-amp/

 

[Erick Muller]

Hey Friends,
this is how i solved the temperature problem. 69° after 40min in 100mA Mode was just not acceptable. Room Temp 19°. Now stable at 61°. Fan is underneath the amp. Its a 120mm, 900 RPM, 12V Noctua PC Fan. Vibrations arnt a problem cause i glued it in with silicone. The fan isnt visible from the front or sides. I think ill add some small feet for some extra height to the S17 later to get even better temps. Maybe like 10mm or so.

Needed a rack anyway ..

Cheers
Z

great setup, I'm liking your wooden rack, where did you get it from if I may inquire?

 

[Erick Muller]

Regarding the temp stability of my S17, when I came back from work, the amp was at 44 degrees, left it at low gain, 50ma mode, left the window open to my bedroom. I closed the window because it was getting kind of chilly and after and hour or so, the temps climb about two degrees, will report back in a couple of more hours to see if the temps climb even more so again, but my guess it will climb to 49 degrees.

 

[labeelen]

Try this Sparkos Pro op amp with one dip riser in your Aune X8 DAC. It is completely night and day compared to even the latest, greatest OPA1656 IC op amp. Much better even than the Burson Vivid op amp.

https://sparkoslabs.com/pro-discrete-op-amp/

Looking at Zaemon’s pictures I assume he cares about both sound quality and aesthetics.
I agree that an ss2590 could bring a significant boost in sound quality but to be honest on the X8 it is a practical and cosmetic challenge compared to his current nice and clean setup.
Luckily they do fit nicely (see attached) in my Bobby balanced headphone amplifier
If you have the space to accommodate them it is indeed a great upgrade (but a little off-topic in this thread).

 

[drspeter]

Has anyone compared this amp and Schiit MJ3? I am curious about the performance gap between them if there's any, as the price wise, MJ3 is almost double the cost.

 

[Erick Muller]

Okay, I'm back, after a few hours the temp of my amp stabilized at 47 degrees, and that was with the heat on, so even less than I was expecting.

Now I'm running the amp in 100ma mode at low gain, gonna see how much time it takes for it to reach equilibrium, I'm gonna watch some chinese cartoons and this amp will be providing sound to a pair of klipsch powered speakers through it's RCA output, so not really a work out for the amp, but it will be something.

 

[Zaemon]

Try this Sparkos Pro op amp with one dip riser in your Aune X8 DAC. It is completely night and day compared to even the latest, greatest OPA1656 IC op amp. Much better even than the Burson Vivid op amp.

https://sparkoslabs.com/pro-discrete-op-amp/

Im interessted but cant afford it right now. They cost 160€ and i have to order from france. Also i wonder how much it adds to the height in mm. Currently installed is the OPA2604AP wich i like the most out of all i tryed.

great setup, I'm liking your wooden rack, where did you get it from if I may inquire?

Its a diy rack. Cost me 20€ and 2 hours to built. If i want i can make it higher by just cutting four new aluminum sidebars.

How are you powering the fan? USB? Computer?

Its powered with a 12V wallwart switchmode powersupply with an inline switch.

 

[Zaemon]

Alright. Cause i know me, today i cut four new sidebars to increase the height 30mm. This should be enough to accommodate for future sparkos upgrades. Maybe ill get the XP2 PS too, but i first want to research it some more / see some pictures wich show the pcb and parts used. I also put some small 10mm aluminum feet under the S17 Pro. If the temperature remains the same w / wo the feet ill remove them, because now the fan is more visible.

Btw does someone here have pictures from opened units. S17 electronics would be cool to see too. The pictures on their website dont satisfy me. I want to see close ups of the heatsink and a servicemanual would be nice too. With instructions to dial in the bias current and where to measure. There are four trimmerpots so i assume these are for the bias current adjustment.

 

[easylive]

Thats interesting, I have no problems with overheating..., my HP are Arya Organic and the dac is R26 (balanced). My unit is with the old volume curve.. After 2 hours of listening in low gain 100ma and volume about 20, the temperature on amp is about 60 and is stabilised... ( room temp is 23 ) There must be some QC problem by produktion of this amp..

 

[Zaemon]

Thats interesting, I have no problems with overheating..., my HP are Arya Organic and the dac is R26 (balanced). My unit is with the old volume curve.. After 2 hours of listening in low gain 100ma and volume about 20, the temperature on amp is about 60 and is stabilised... ( room temp is 23 ) There must be some QC problem by produktion of this amp..

There definetly are some QC differences. Aune support told me its cause of my Hifiman He1000 stealth. Its "demanding". Funny thing is, the amp even gets to 69° after ~45, without load or signal. Go figure... Thats why i assume that the current isnt adjusted correctly or theres some gap between heatsink/output transistors. Thats of course an assumption and must be checked for. But i dont know how to do that. Also i viod the warranty if i open the unit. German laws are stupid. Its ok to open units in the US and dont void warranty. The aune websites also lack an english owners manual and service manual.

 

[sendler2112]

I am lucky to have myself and Sparkos in the USA so I buy the Pro opamps for $120US each for the duals assembled on the dip adapter boards. It really is completely night and day compared to the even the newest IC amp that many designers are now using, the OPA1656 which are several generations newer replacement for the OPA 2134. But those are only made in a surface mount SOIC package or else you could just order one of those to try for $2.50.

I was using some big rubber walking cane replacement feet under my X8 but then decided to just stick some small rubber dots on the top of the unit and let it sit on the table upside down. The Sparkos Pro dual sticks up about 25mm.

I have since moved on from the X8 and S17 (early version with the wonky volume control so I sent it back as defective) to the Burson Conductor 3XP and Conductor 3 Reference SE.

I wanted the Reference for its twin headphone jacks on the front and since the 3XP does not have a line in for testing against other sources. I had 4 Sparkos duals in the 3XP also but couldn't get them to fit under the lid with the dip adapter boards which add a couple mms to the size so am in the process of soldering up some bare bare opamps which should just fit.
Audio is a rabbit hole for me since I used to build my own cables, amps and loudspeakers and now have caught the bug again with the advent of the HiFiMan Ananda Nano and computer playback with EQ. And HiRez downloads.

PS to everyone else: I tried to PM this to them But there is a 420 character limit???