[DanG]

Awesome review, Kelly!

 

[Calanctus]

Nice review. Like Jude, I would be interested in this amp once crossfeed becomes available. To me the soundstage improvements are worth the small possible attentuation in transparency.

 

[carlo]

Whatever it is gilmore does, I'm glad he's on our side.

thanks for another great review kelly. re: the attack and decay thing: word. once an amp can capture the first hit of an instrument, then allow that note to fade away, the in-between comes on its own - the land of the xylophones if you will

you've got me thinking about another diy project and i'm loving a pair of headphones you said i needed to try. person.

 

[halcyon]

Thanks for the review Kelly. I'm still breaking in my HD600 and my prehead so no comments from me on the Corda.

However, I'm intrigued... can you comment on the noise levels with your excellent sources?

If you play a digital 'zero track' on your source and use the both amps, how soon do they start producing noise? That is prehead compared to Gilmore.

regards,
Halcy

 

[HD-5000]

Excellent review kelly. I'm thinking of DIY' myself one.

 

[andrzejpw]

Wow kelly, great review. Hmm, switch a few words around, copy a bit from here, over there. . . there we go! There's my forthcoming meta review!

just kidding of course!

Anyway, very nice review!

 

[bootman]

Nice review.

Quote:

I do have one other complaint. I've gotten rather accustomed to the option of having crossfeed and from what I gather, implementing a good crossfeed filter that would not be detrimental to the sound of the amp is quite a challenge. I look forward to seeing someone overcome this but I know in truth it goes a little against the designer's wishes. Gilmore is a purist at heart and this design was never meant to have crossfeed. He'd argue that anything that potential degrades sound shouldn't be included and I'd probably agree with him. I'd take the better sounding amp over the one with the most features, and that's exactly where this amplifier finds itself.

I do agree with Gilmore when it comes to adding crossfeed.
The example that comes to mind is the Blockhead.
It is a marvel of engineering and takes the idea of LR separation right down to the power cords
yet in the end, all of that engineering effort gets "crossfed".
An audio zealot would call this blasphemy.

Now, I'm not against using x-feed and I do see the benefit of it,
but I'm one of those who doesn't seem to be bothered by the blob effect and can actually find crossfeed annoying at times.
X-feed could be an option but in the form of a high quality external unit like the Headroom static.
That way it can be truly removed from the signal path if desired.

 

[AndreYew]

bootman,

Quote:

The example that comes to mind is the Blockhead. It is a marvel of engineering and takes the idea of LR separation right down to the power cords yet in the end, all of that engineering effort gets "crossfed".

One could look at it another way, too: the Blockhead very precisely controls the amount of crossfeed it uses, and has no parasitic crossfeed you'd find with less heroic designs.

I'd appreciate a high-quality external crossfeed circuit as well for use with amps and headphone/amp combos (eg. Stax, Sennheiser) that don't have one. Crossfeed is one of those things that you get used to, and after using it for a while, it becomes audibly important, to me at least.

Kelly,

Congrats! And welcome to Head-Fi

.

--Andre

 

[HD-5000]

With a DIY amp such as the Gilmore, It shouldn't be too hard to include a crossfeed circuit into the enclosure.

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally posted by AndreYew One could look at it another way, too: the Blockhead very precisely controls the amount of crossfeed it uses, and has no parasitic crossfeed you'd find with less heroic designs. --Andre

This is what Tyll told me at the NY show.
I can look at it this way also but it still bugs me a little.

 

[kelly]

Quote:

Originally posted by bootman This is what Tyll told me at the NY show. I can look at it this way also but it still bugs me a little.

bootman
This is how I look at it as well.

I find the BlockHead's crossfeed more convincing than the Little's and the Corda Prehead's more convincing than the HA-1's.

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly bootman This is how I look at it as well. I find the BlockHead's crossfeed more convincing than the Little's and the Corda Prehead's more convincing than the HA-1's.

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

 

[eric343]

Great review!

I do believe the META42 is now passe'...

The cool thing is that the power supply connection is fairly standard - it's compatible with the Elpac(s) that I've used, and the power supplies that I haven't shipped out yet. Which means Gilmore owners can plug in their META42s, or try out the Gilmore with their META42 power supply (though it won't work as well, since the Gilmore p/s puts out +/- 4V more).

DON'T use the Gilmore supply if your META42 uses an AD8610, though - it can't take the extra voltage and will fry!

 

[BenG]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly I find the BlockHead's crossfeed more convincing than the Little's and the Corda Prehead's more convincing than the HA-1's.

Did you get a special racoon edition Pre-Head?

I thought the x-feed was the same in the HA-I, i suppose you will get to this in your other review.

 

[kelly]

Quote:

Originally posted by BenG Did you get a special racoon edition Pre-Head? I thought the x-feed was the same in the HA-I, i suppose you will get to this in your other review.

AFAIK, it's the same circuit. I meant that it's more believable, likely due to the sharper seperation and focus of the amplifier.