[carlo]

Quote:

You've heard my amp silly, just not with different resistors.

I meant I hadn't tried different resistors with your amp.

Quote:

Wish me luck, I'm going crazy with this amp, I'm contemplating gilmore or welbourne psu at the moment.

Good luck, but why not go all the way and just get a Gilmore dynamic? You're spending $80 more on Tants, seems like you should just go with a discrete design. Nothing against your amp or anything, but the circuit matters more than the parts, and while I haven't heard a Gilmore thats a pretty badass circuit.

carlo.

 

[Audio-Me]

Because I love this amp, and would like to see how far it can take me.

After this, I'll be wanting a preamp, standard gilmore or mccormack TLC-1 line drive to match a dna0.5? Dunno.

 

[Wodgy]

Sorry for the confusion, I was referring to tantalum caps. I had no idea tantalum resistors were being manufactured. (Personally I still wouldn't use them, there's a lot of bad social karma associated with tantalum/coltan; AudioNote just dropped several notches in my eyes.)

 

[Videoshielded]

Vishay/Dale RN series (metal film) are about as stable and clean as I know of in the under-fifty-cents-a-pop category. Available in a huge range of sizes, too. In fact, they're so stable, I tend to use them throughout most of the circuit (unless I need wirewound for filtering or carbon comp for certain tube grid apps, etc.).

Mouser sells them on line with great service.

 

[PhopsonNY]

Just took out the tantalums(non magnetic) that I bought from Angela's Instruments to replace my Vishay VTA55s.

I had them as the feed backs for my I/V opamps and in the circuit path of my SACD player.

I must say that they brought very nice things to the highs and the midrange registers. However I was not totally enamoured as they the music also lost its cohesive quality. Worst of all is that the bass, although still present, lost its definition.

Next I am going to try the Vishay S102s in the I/V feedback loops and a mixture of the 102s and the Caddock TF020s in the signal path.

What I would love to try are the Vishay Z201s, but they only sell them in minimum orders of 10 each for about $13.00 each.

Anyone want to do a group order?

 

[wildmonkeysects]

Dale RN-60 metal films, commonly surplus, are not bad for cheap.

But, I do second the motion as to Vishay S102 bulk foils...they can make either a subtle or significant difference in sonics, usually for the better. Wish it weren't so, but, you had to be there...

Gloat time, found a load of S102s at a local surplus shop for, snicker, $0.25 ea mixed in with the generic metal films. You coiuld get lucky too, YMMV.

I would not assume the Z201s sound better, while they have even better tempco, it may or may not be as good under dynamic conditions, ie the cancelling/compensating elements quite likely have different time constants.

 

[aos]

I got a recommendation a while ago from one engineer to use Vishay VSH bulk foil. According to him the only difference to much more expensive S102 is that it lacks epoxy case, which is not needed in a home environment anyway. Therefore it has the same perfomance. VSH is available only from Percy Audio that I know of. Still they are far from being cheap at $3.75 each.

 

[Audio-Me]

so it's the same resistor without the epoxy case?

you know, since im going so crazy upgrading this thing, might as well give it preamp functionality, and a better power source (welbourne ps-1)

as for the resistors
looks like 8 tants out of 10 resistors in the eta42
still wondering what to use for the remaining 2 which are critical (input). that less expensive vishay aos mentioned seems like a nice idea

 

[aos]

I've built a DAC with discrete line amplifier which specified the use of Vishay and Caddock resistors (i.e. had 5mm lead spacing on the PCB etc.). The guy who designed it (Lars-Erik Wedin) told me that the only difference between VSH and the (I think) S102 is epoxy coating. Which makes sense. I'm not going to keep my electronics in a fluoride atmosphere or imersed to HCl or something. It's possible that epoxy coating might give it higher stability to temperature fluctuations and stuff like that but I haven't really investigated that (since these resistors are very hard to find, in fact there are no distributors listed even in the US - I can only imagine what kind of markup Percy and Parts Connextion do).

 

[Audio-Me]

how do you like the vsh aos?

"Vishay makes a bulk foil resistor called VSH. These have a ceramic coating and sound very bad. I use the S102C/K series. They are very good.
Ric Schultz
EVS "
is this guy full of ****?

btw, how's pdac coming? 1.0 ready for the market yet?