[SENOR4Q]

Can or has anyone even tried to make one of these. My guess is if it is a dual mono, quadriple powersupply, maxed out version it would be nearly unbeatable pound for pound, or should I say dollar for dollar.

 

[grinch]

not to discredit anybody's designs or anything, but my thoughts are that this might be kind of a waste. the meta42 is a great amp, especially for portables, but spending too much money seems to be a bit of a blackhole and diminishing returns kicks in rather quickly.

if i wanted a balanced amp, i'd probably try and get a gilmore from headamp.com.

 

[SENOR4Q]

The thing is, when the balanced gilmore comes out it will surely cost over $1000, possibly well over that. Factoring parts and labor, a balanced META could probably be had for about the cost of a cosmic +/-.

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by SENOR4Q The thing is, when the balanced gilmore comes out it will surely cost over $1000, possibly well over that. Factoring parts and labor, a balanced META could probably be had for about the cost of a cosmic +/-.

this may be true, but i'm saying there's a good possibility that for that much money, even a single-ended gilmore design would sound a lot better. just my theory though.

 

[fiddler]

I'm with Grinch on this one. Since the META42 was designed to be portable, sacrifices have been made, even though it can beat any other home amp in its class. To go overboard on the META42 would kinda be like modding a boostaroo. Point of diminishing returns begins probably at around when you add a second layer of buffers to the outputs.

 

[aos]

If I remember well, even the "basic" Gilmore amp is balanced by design - it has completely symmetrical input. All you might need to do is add XLR jack and wire it... though you will have to disconnect the volume control. I don't believe a two-channel pot like Alps Blue is enough to control volume of a balanced amp. Without volume control though it's not very usable. Well... maybe it's not so trivial as I said but I think it can be done thanks to the symmetry.

The $1000 one is likely a balanced bridge design.

Meta is single-ended amp and I don't see how it can be made into balanced amp.

 

[yejun]

just use 2 meta42. each board serves one channel.
the volumn control needs to be reworked.

 

[tangent]

Quote:

just use 2 meta42. each board serves one channel.

I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Sure, it would technically work, but would it be an improvement? The META42 board doesn't have the best channel separation in the world. It seems to me that that would defeat the purpose of using a balanced signal.

You have to ask yourself why you want to do this. If you just want to use balanced cabling to get the benefits of lower noise pickup and such, then I'd say to just add a balanced receiver in front of the amp and run it single-ended from that point forward. Cabling isn't an issue beyond the amp anyway, so this is a perfectly sane thing to do. Now, if this were a mixing console....but I digress.

If you wanted to improve the sound of the amp itself, a redesign of the board is called for no matter how you look at it. At the same time, you can plop down the additional channels and work out the channel separation issues.

 

[yejun]

I believe the noise will be reduced.

 

[AIM9x]

the chiara runs 4 loops, if i recall correctly..... you can probably turn that into a quality balanced amp