[sunneebear]

Yes but with a grain of salt.  Three amps of the same design circuitry, the differences has to be minute.  Also take into considerate the reviewers' tastes and headphone used.  The biggest "win" I see here is the price of the clones.

 

[Heidegger]

 
Quote:

Interesting findings...the most expensive amp places last!

Actually, I read that thread months ago and remember it differently. That was the thread that convinced me to buy the real BCL rather than the clone. There was talk of counterfeit and subgrade parts in the clone, which had to be exchanged for better parts. It was only after many mods that one person claimed the LC had exceeded the BCL. I went back and checked and couldn't find a single person on that thread who had actually listened to the BCL with any regularity. A couple of people had heard the BCL in passing. For instance, Aspenx wrote, "The last time I heard the original BCL was thru a Marantz SACD player hooked up probably with some hi-end cables and power filtering etc while lying back on the leather recliner in dynaaudio5555 in Akihabara. I don't have any of that at home and as unreliable as acoustic memory goes, listening to the same CD (but FLAC-ripped and played through my computer setup instead) the Lovely Cube stock sounded a bit more congested."
 
There are basically two contrasting opinions, one represented by purrin here on this thread and the other by flukeII on the Lovely Cube thread. Purrin claims that the physical components in the BCL and in the Matrix are the same in quality to slightly better in the Matrix. However, from his posts it seems purrin never heard or actually saw a BCL. He was just going by the picture found at the Lehmannaudio website which was posted here some pages back. By contrast, fluke over at the Lovely Cube thread claims that the parts in the clone versions (from China) are of vastly inferior quality. His position seems to be that only through a lot of replacement of parts and modifications can the clone be improved to the level of the BCL. Now, unlike purrin, fluke claims not only to have heard the BCL but to have looked inside it, so I give his opinion more weight. Both purrin and fluke seem to have a good grasp of the technical side of amps, but fluke is the one with actual experience with the BCL. I own the BCL and am not really skeptical about the claim that the modded clone can sound just as good or better than the authentic BCL (which really does sound fantastic). But I am way skeptical about the claim that the components themselves are of equal or even better quality in the clone than in the BCL. That highly questionable claim seems to have originated with purrin, but, by his own admission, s/he had never seen let alone studied the interior of an actual BCL, had never even heard one.  
 

 

[ETAHL]

The Lehmann BLC is not exactly using exotic parts.
As an audio DIYer, I would say the Matrix has some parts not as good, some the same or equivalent, and some better. Either way, I can't see the OEM electronic parts of both amps to worth more than $50.
 

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

The Lehmann BLC is not exactly using exotic parts.
As an audio DIYer, I would say the Matrix has some parts not as good, some the same or equivalent, and some better. Either way, I can't see the OEM electronic parts of both amps to worth more than $50.
 
 
 

Right, but as a DIYer you can also see that there is more to building an amp than assembling a parts stash and installing it into an enclosure ?

 

[Heidegger]

Which parts of the Matrix are better? The volume pot, rca inputs, headphone jacks, wires, insulation, power supply, power cord, toroidal transformer, capacitors, chassis? Somebody claimed the second version of the Matrix had an EI transformer, but, regardless of the fact that it's debatable whether EI is more desirable than toroid, I think it turned out it was an encapsulated toroid not EI. The casing supposedly cuts down on the magnetic field and on noise. Yet the BCL is dead quiet while I remember reading several reports that the Matrix had some slight noise when you maxed the pot. 

The Lehmann BLC is not exactly using exotic parts.
As an audio DIYer, I would say the Matrix has some parts not as good, some the same or equivalent, and some better.

 

[ETAHL]

 
Quote:

Right, but as a DIYer you can also see that there is more to building an amp than assembling a parts stash and installing it into an enclosure ?

Absolutely!
Also it is not too hard to improved on something when you have a reference to compare with, and you are able to throw a bit more money into it. The worst you can do is duplicate the results with the same components. Then again sound preferences are to some extend subjective.

 

 

[ETAHL]

Quote:

Which parts of the Matrix are better? The volume pot, rca inputs, headphone jacks, wires, insulation, power supply, power cable, toroidal transformer, capacitors, chassis? Somebody claimed the second version of the Matrix had an EI transformer, but, regardless of the fact that it's debatable whether EI is more desirable than toroid, I think it turned out it was an encapsulated toroid not EI. The casing supposedly cuts down on the magnetic field and on noise. Yet the BCL is dead quiet while I remember reading several reports that the Matrix had some slight noise when you maxed the pot. 

Some of the improvements I see with the Matrix:
- One piece PCB construction
- Input delay relays.
- Power supply voltage fine adjustment pots.
- Better quality power supply filter capacitors.
- Better orientation of heatsinks
- DIP socket for easy Opamp rolling.
- Dual input with selector switch.
 
The BCL has a larger transformer; gold plated headphone jacks, two of them; higher quality RCA jacks.
They are a draw with the chassis, the BCL looks to have a better finish face plate. The Matrix has a heavier construction. Both uses Alps blue velvet pots. The resistors, capacitor, transistors and mounting hardwares look similar in quality.
 
I think the switch to an encapsulated transformer and an one pieces PCB cure the hum. The new version of the Matrix is absolutely silent even with the pot at max.
 
 
 

 

[purrin]

Too much worrying about parts...
 
BCL, LC, Matrix: none of them use premium boutique parts. Even if you loaded any of these amps up with the best low ESR caps, boutique film AC coupling caps, audio resistors, etc. the differences would be slight (though you could very well end up changing the tonality of the amp to something worse).
 
A change of op-amp or a slight change of topology (class A, shunting coupling caps, etc.) would yield more results for the money spent.
 
If you want something truly better that is a significant improvement (not a incremental improvement which is absorbed over time), move up to a higher class.

 

[Mad Max]

Best low ESR caps?  Panasonic FMs?  Their mids suck.   Boutique caps or Chemicons are a better choice. 

 
Don't sweat the small stuff like components as he's saying.

 

[purrin]

Yup. 
 
Let's face it, all of these amps are an op-amp (the mediocre OPA2132) input / voltage gain stage followed by a simple diamond buffer. This topology has a certain sound with certain strengths and limitations. All this speculation over which unit sounds better is just ridiculous e-peening (it's like saying my DIY Millet Minimax, CMOY, or EHHA is better than yours because mine uses all German capacitors whereas yours uses a combination of Japanese and American parts).
 
Improving system synergy (with DACs and headphones) is more important - and this should be the purpose of any mods or tweaks. Discussion of parts is pointless unless you know (or are willing to experiment to see) what the parts will actually do to the sound, e.g. removing input caps and direct coupling the input will increase transparency at the expense of less warmth. If you don't like the lost warmth, maybe you can, depending upon the stock caps, swap the ~400uF caps with Elna Silmics, or use a warmer op-amp, Ad inf.
 
It's very likely that Mr. Lehmann put in a lot of time testing individual parts to voice his amp a certain way, but we don't know if his voicing will work with our own setups. In any case, it's not exactly rocket science to play with the parts, especially if a cloner has already taken the effort to copy the design. Evidently the M-Staged is voiced to be a little bit warmer than BCL?
 
If there's any reason to favor BCL, do it because it's the original and not a blatant rip-off or very slight modification of Lehmann's IP - particularly the PCB layout and cap arrangements.

 

[Heidegger]

Quote:

Some of the improvements I see with the Matrix:
- One piece PCB construction
- Input delay relays.
- Power supply voltage fine adjustment pots.
- Better quality power supply filter capacitors.
- Better orientation of heatsinks
- DIP socket for easy Opamp rolling.
- Dual input with selector switch.
 
The BCL has a larger transformer; gold plated headphone jacks, two of them; higher quality RCA jacks.
They are a draw with the chassis, the BCL looks to have a better finish face plate. The Matrix has a heavier construction. Both uses Alps blue velvet pots. The resistors, capacitor, transistors and mounting hardwares look similar in quality.
 
I think the switch to an encapsulated transformer and an one pieces PCB cure the hum. The new version of the Matrix is absolutely silent even with the pot at max.
 
 
 

I rather have the better headphone and RCA jacks than the one piece board or most of what you mentioned. How can you tell by the photos that the Matrix has better power supply filter capacitors? As for the heatsinks, I can tell you that my BCL barely gets warm even after hours of use, whereas I think I recall people being freaked out about their Matrix or Lovely Cube getting "really hot" -- even the pot. The DIP socket is great if you're a roller. (I'm not.) The dual imput is nice, but personally I much rather have the dual headphone jacks so that two people can listen at the same time. I also have the USB model with the onboard DAC. Sure, it's not the best DAC in the world, but it's fine, and it makes the BCL super portable, much more so than my headroom micro amp+DAC stack, especially since the micro has the external power brick, which was a royal pain.
 
 

 

[Heidegger]

 
Quote:

Yup. 
 
Let's face it, all of these amps are an op-amp (the mediocre OPA2132) input / voltage gain stage followed by a simple diamond buffer. This topology has a certain sound with certain strengths and limitations. All this speculation over which unit sounds better is just ridiculous e-peening (it's like saying my DIY Millet Minimax, CMOY, or EHHA is better than yours because mine uses all German capacitors whereas yours uses a combination of Japanese and American parts).
 
It's very likely that Mr. Lehmann put in a lot of time testing individual parts to voice his amp a certain way, but we don't know if his voicing will work with our own setups. In any case, it's not exactly rocket science to play with the parts, especially if a cloner has already taken the effort to copy the design. Evidently the M-Staged is voiced to be a little bit warmer than BCL?
 
If there's any reason to favor BCL, do it because it's the original and not a blatant rip-off or very slight modification of Lehmann's IP - particularly the PCB layout and cap arrangements.

~ Yeah, only I didn't say that my Lehmann sounded better. I even granted that the modded clones could sound better. I was taking issue with assertions about overall build quality. (Did you mean "e-preening"?) On the other hand, there are assertions both on this thread and in the LC thread that the clones sound better than the BCL. Yet when I looked at the threads more closely I found that virtually nobody had actually listened to the BCL, and of the one or two that had (Aspenx and FlukeII) the verdict was actually in favor -- even if slightly -- of the BCL. Yet even just a few posts back when I asked which amp sounded better the stock answer I got was that the consensus in order of rank was 1. LC, 2. Matrix, 3. BCL. My answer to which is: Not according to the two people who actually heard the BCL. I tend to agree with you that there is probably little difference between them soundwise and once you mod them the clones may even sound better, but I want to see an actual comparison, not unfounded assertions. Did you ever actually listen to a BCL or have one in your possession?
 
~ What I can tell you is that the BCL is not a warm, tubey sounding amp.
 
Quote:

Too much worrying about parts...
 
BCL, LC, Matrix: none of them use premium boutique parts. Even if you loaded any of these amps up with the best low ESR caps, boutique film AC coupling caps, audio resistors, etc. the differences would be slight (though you could very well end up changing the tonality of the amp to something worse).
 
A change of op-amp or a slight change of topology (class A, shunting coupling caps, etc.) would yield more results for the money spent.
 
If you want something truly better that is a significant improvement (not a incremental improvement which is absorbed over time), move up to a higher class.

I was looking for something to brighten my dark sounding HD650s. The BCL cleared them right up. The BCL drives them way better than the headroom micro, which I used for years on the assumption that amps don't make a big difference (boy was I wrong). There is way more texture to the music now, more presence overall. If anything, I would upgrade to the 800 and then upgrade from my Oppo BDP-83 to the BDP-95 before I replaced my Lehmann, with which I am very happy.
 
 

 

[Heidegger]

 

[Heidegger]

 

[Heidegger]