Hey gents, time for me to answer some of the questions.
First, all of my larger amps have offset detectors and delay circuits. These circuits are my own design and do a great job of protecting headphones from DC. Since most of the amps are DC coupled, any DC at the input goes right to the output only amplifier. But there is no room for these circuits in the Carbon so it doesn't have one.
One good side, however, is that the startup and shutdown transients are fairly low. I measured them on the pre-production board (which is not the proto board that has been in the amps at shows).
Start up transient less less than +500mV on the upswing and basically zero on the negative swing. This is both on and off.
Also, you can hot switch the gain (like in the larger amps). The blip when you go from 1x to 3x is no more than 400mV and from 3x to 1x it's about 200mV. For most conditions, you won't hear this much. Although sensitive IEMs are indeed a different game.
I wanted to talk about power output too. I've been holding back on you guys on the power output of the amp. Only a little though.
I've spec'd the amp a 1.5W continuous into 50R. In fact, it will do about 2.8W continuous into 50R.
Now, keep in mind that 1.5W and especially 2,8W is a lot of power. I don't know any headphones where this won't ring your bell and in most headphones it would be damaging.
However, what you really need the power for is, as you all know, the transients. Most of the time you're listening at fairly low power levels, but when the music creates a strong transient you need the amp to be able to respond.
The Carbon can respond with much more power than 1.5W. Also, we measured about .04% THD with 1kHz in driving 47.5R at 2.8W.
Now, you may be wondering can you use all of that 2.8W. And the answer is, if we were talking about sine waves, no. This is because the Carbon is so small that is has limited power dissipation capacity. This is really why I originally said 1.5W. Because this safe.
However, if the 2.8W only comes into play when you need it, the PD capacity is good enough.
So, you're getting a bigger amp than you thought.
2.8 watts. It's post #1500 from http://www.head-fi.org/t/761088/cavalli-audios-liquid-carbon-a-599-cavalli-amp
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