[Jackangel]

Sounds impressive, thank you for the review.

I am interested in hearing more about the bass characteristics of this amp, and how it compares to other amps at $500 or lower. You said that the Reality had lots of bass authority, and someone else said that it wasn't all that tight or detailed. How would you compare the bass of these two amps (and the rest of the FR, if anything comes to mind?). I haven't yet received my portable meta42, but am already considering options for a (relatively) inexpensive headphone amp to go into a decent mid-fi setup, and perhaps this KG amp is a good option for some who loves bass like me. Would you say that this amp has enough impact, or upfrontness, to make it good for rock or hiphop? How does it do for vocals?

Thanks

 

[tangent]

Quote:

I do believe the META42 is now passe'..

That's a little harsh, Eric. Perhaps you mean the "META42 as high-end uber-amp" is passe'? It was never designed to be such a thing. You can always tweak any design, but at some point you've got to stop tweaking and redesign.

The META42 was designed to be used portably, and for that purpose it's still a clear win over the KGCA. As far as I can tell from reading Kevin Gilmore's article at Headwize, total draw for his design is in the 300 mA neighborhood, and because it's a 100% class A design it should stay near its maximum current draw all the time. You just can't drive such a load from batteries. Not if you want to try for portability, anyway, since you'd literally need about 4 pounds of batteries to pull that trick off.

Bottom line: it's an apples-and-oranges comparison between these two amps, even if you can disguise the META42 as an orange, metaphorically speaking.

I'm not trying to detract from the KGCA/antness amp at all here. Nor am I trying to say that it's stupid to make a high-end wall-powered META42. I'm just saying that trying to make one work too much like the other results in silliness. These two amp designs are vastly different beasts.

Quote:

This would lead one to believe that the better the starting point, the more effective additional processing will be on the sound.

It'd be easy enough to try: stick a modified Linkwitz filter in front of the KGCA amp. If it sounds better there than it would in a META42, you've got your answer, and Kelly has a solution.

I don't recommend this circuit solely because I make a board for it. The real reason is that the other popular DIY designs won't work at all: the Meier natural and enhanced bass crossfeeds. The Meier circuits require buffering, and buffering the KGCA correctly would basically mean making a duplicate amplification stage just to make the crossfeed circuit happy. I guess it's possible, but not terribly practical. It's much the same thing as Headroom does in their Headroom Static -- they had to basically make an amplifier without gain to separate the crossfeed from the amp proper, driving the cost up to $600. You'd have to do the same thing with the KGCA, if you used the Meier crossfeed circuits.

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jackangel I am interested in hearing more about the bass characteristics of this amp, and how it compares to other amps at $500 or lower.

Here lies the problem with reviewing DIY or DBSE amps compared to commercial designs.
Money wise the comparisons are not fair.
Yes, the KGCA/antness amp can be had for $500, but if it was available commercially (with warranty etc) it would be closer to $2000.
Now would it be fair to compare a $500 amp to a $2000 one if your question was which $500 or lower amp is a good buy?

 

[kelly]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jackangel perhaps this KG amp is a good option for some who loves bass like me. Would you say that this amp has enough impact, or upfrontness, to make it good for rock or hiphop? How does it do for vocals?

Jack
I'm not sure what is meant by upfrontness? The amp is extremely quick but with a nice solid weight. I was very pleased with the bass performance and I tend to be quite picky about such things. If I had not said so in my review, I had intended to say that vocals were very realistic -- breathy and liquid at the same time. Another Head-Fi'er once told me that part of the emotion for him was being able to hear the nuance of a female vocalist's saliva breaking in the back of her mouth as she began to sing. With the right source and phone, this amp is very capable of delivering just that without sounding artificial.

All Else:
Thanks for the kind words. Someone had asked about the Sugden and Max. I didn't have either of them present and feel uncomfortable saying too much from my memory alone. I did comment on my impressions of the Sugden in the review here a little (use Find in your browser).

 

[flashbak]

I've offered to do an indepth review of the Antness/Gilmore amp vs the Sugden Headmaster, but am still awaiting a reply from Antness.

 

[flashbak]

Kelly,
I think what Jack is asking is if this amp possesses that 'in-your-face' sound. Typically meaning the musicians seem to be closer in proximity to the listener, thus providing an overall increase in impact and definition.

 

[eric343]

Quote:

Originally posted by tangent That's a little harsh, Eric. Perhaps you mean the "META42 as high-end uber-amp" is passe'? It was never designed to be such a thing. You can always tweak any design, but at some point you've got to stop tweaking and redesign. The META42 was designed to be used portably, and for that purpose it's still a clear win over the KGCA. As far as I can tell from reading Kevin Gilmore's article at Headwize, total draw for his design is in the 300 mA neighborhood, and because it's a 100% class A design it should stay near its maximum current draw all the time. You just can't drive such a load from batteries. Not if you want to try for portability, anyway, since you'd literally need about 4 pounds of batteries to pull that trick off. Bottom line: it's an apples-and-oranges comparison between these two amps, even if you can disguise the META42 as an orange, metaphorically speaking. I'm not trying to detract from the KGCA/antness amp at all here. Nor am I trying to say that it's stupid to make a high-end wall-powered META42. I'm just saying that trying to make one work too much like the other results in silliness. These two amp designs are vastly different beasts.

You're right, as usual, of course... It's just that I'd never really thought of the META42 as a "portable amp" - in my mind, the META42 is/was a compact, massively tweakable home amp. The fact that nearly every one I've built (except for the one I took around France last summer) fit this may have something to do with my view of things... Besides, compared to the other portables, a good insane-META42 sounds too good to be lumped in that category

I also was referring to the fact that for quite some time now, the META42 has been "the amp to own" or "the amp to build"; it was really the best-sounding DIY amp for which there's a large (make that HUGE, thanks to you, Tangent) body of documentation AND PCBs availible. I think for many people building a Gilmore (dynamic or electrostic!) on protoboard is a very daunting task.

I won't even mention ppl's discrete home amp. Yikes.

Is the META42 still a great project that bridges the 'beginner' level of complexity (Cmoy! Cmoy!) and 'advanced' (Gil-more! Gil-more!)? HELL YEAH! I don't think anyone's going to challenge it in this position any time soon...

And, of course, it'd be a heck of a challenge to pack the Gilmore into a Cosmic-form-factor case [though it looks like it could be done, using an external power supply. And using 8000mAh D-Cells in a Traveler bag {assuming you can pack 6 into each of the two battery pockets} would give you about 2V of headroom {no pun intended} for a linear regulator, though it's probably not necessary given the flat discharge curve of NiMH batteries, and about 26 hours of battery life. Not bad...] - and you'd need custom PCBs (and some surface-mount components, maybe...) to stick it into a Serpac or PacTec HML

 

[00940]

hum, a jump from 250$ to 500$ isn't an option for me. I am probably not the only one.

So I think the meta42 has still a market.

 

[kelly]

I really tried to discourage comparisons between the META42 and Gilmore. They're very different.

 

[Audio-Me]

kelly - with all honesty, this review is the most useful one that I've ever read. I'm particularly impressed with the following two simple yet extremely informative paragraphs:

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly I can't tell you how hard it is to find an amp that can get the drums, cymbals AND the piano right. The lower registers of a piano simply sound "wrong" to me on most equipment. I guess it's a matter of not having the bass extension needed to believably pull off the secondary harmonics or some other gibberish I wouldn't understand, but the fact remains that a piano is simply very hard to be convincing. And then you have cymbals -- they have to be sharp and sweet at the same time, fast on the attack but smooth on the decay. Drums you want to be tight with a hard bottom, enough impact and raw bass strength but with a real fleshy sounding skin. The Gilmore pulls it all off... provided you have a good source and a headphone you like, of course. One of the more elusive instruments is the xylophone. I found myself listening to the Gilmore one afternoon when I realized for the first time, "Hey, that's an xylophone!" You have to understand, I'd heard this CD a thousand times and always thought it was a keyboard. I can't tell you exactly what it is that makes one distinguishable from the other, but whatever it is, the Gilmore has it and few other amps do.

Oh and I love the part how you describe vocals on it as "breathy and liquid" or something like that.

I have every intention to hear the Gilmore amp, and predict I'll order a custom "high class" one from antness if he's willing.

 

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

Now I want one! Hehe..

Biggie.

 

[tangent]

I don't want to derail this thread, because it isn't about the META42, so I'll just say this: it's great that the META42 was able to be pushed so much farther than its initial design spec, but at the end of the day, the KGCA is the better home-only design. We intentionally made several compromises in the META42's design that limit its upward reach. There's only so much tweaking you can do to the board to stretch those limits.

You're to be commended anyway, Eric, because you probably stretched them the farthest.

 

[andrzejpw]

Personally, for me, there's no real comparison between the meta and the gilmore. The gilmore is $500, twice as much as a meta from a DIYFSEr.

Even in parts, the two don't compare. I'm sticking to my meta for now.

 

[Possum]

It's all about the discrete designs.

When you take an analog IC design class, you get to appreciate how good it is to NOT have op amps and buffer chips in your audio signal path.

I have yet to build one of these (power supply was done last year), but I think kelly's awesome review just pushed it from project #3 to project #2. I'm looking forward to hearing what kind of a difference to expect between my current DIY Szekeres and the Gilmore, and experimenting with crossfeed with the Gilmore.

 

[kaiwei]

1. Avel-Lindberg toroidal transformers
2. stepped attenuator
3. Black Gate Caps
4. Cardas Locking Jack[/list=1]
   
   we can all dream can't we? The crossfeed circuit seems to be too much trouble to add not to mention it's gonna lengthen the signal path by quite a lot.
   
   I feel like petitioning Antness or HeadRoom to make this all modded out amp. Why is it Antness has not respond to this review, I'm eager to hear his comments, unless after the ad fisco he's not reading Head-Fi anymore.
   
   
   Anyone else wants to add to the list?