[Greeni]

Hi Bobcow
Did you get around to trying the M-stage with the Pro 900 ?
I am looking for a tight SS amp to match the Pro 900, looks like the M-stage is a good candidate.
Tone is important for me, I found that the Pro 900 has a colorless and slightly metallic tone which is aggrevated by amps already erring in that direction.
Hopefully someone could shed some light on the tonal aspect of the M-stage.
 

 

[Jibbie]

I find the M-Stages slightly warm sound signature to be a good match with the Pro 900.  Bass extension is good as well, although not the best with the stock opamp

 

[Bobcow]

Quote:

I find the M-Stages slightly warm sound signature to be a good match with the Pro 900.  Bass extension is good as well, although not the best with the stock opamp

Yes the M-Stage is a great match for the Pro 900 if you want the best SS amp for the price. I agree that it is a slightly warmer signature compared to other SS amps.

 

[Greeni]

Thanks Jibbie and Bobcow for the reply. Anyone actually heard both the Matrix and a Ray Samuel audio amp. I have a RSA  portable amp and thought that the description people used to describe the house sound of the two are pretty similar...tight, slight warm, etc...I like the RSA signature but want more power, the matrix may be just my ticket at affordable price.

 

[Mad Max]

Would taller transistor heatsinks that can reach the top plate of the casing help improve heat dissipation?

 

[Syltburken]

I am a bit confused. Does Jeffrey Tam sell the second version of m-stage or not? It says so on ebay, but if I have got it right I don't think that the pictures are of the second version. Because the second version are silver on front and black on the rest, right? And on his own website it says nothing about second version, also the pictures there are not of the second version. Please help me out.
 
Btw, I will want to use my headset for this sometimes, is there a line in for the microphone that enables this?
And what is the diffrence between 120V and 220V versions?

 

[geetarman49]

AFAIK, cfg (jtam) sells 2nd ver.  2nd ver is avail with either silver or blk faceplate (unless that has changed).
AFAIK, 2nd ver is distinguished from 1st by internal chng ... e.g. encapsulated xfmr vs exposed toroid...parts chges.. etc.
 
can't help with your line in question....but 120v vs 220v => xfmr 
 
hth,

 

[Syltburken]

Quote:

AFAIK, cfg (jtam) sells 2nd ver.  2nd ver is avail with either silver or blk faceplate (unless that has changed).
AFAIK, 2nd ver is distinguished from 1st by internal chng ... e.g. encapsulated xfmr vs exposed toroid...parts chges.. etc.
 
can't help with your line in question....but 120v vs 220v => xfmr 
 
hth,

Okay thank you very much!
 
But what do you mean by 120v vs 220v = transformer? :S
 
 

 

[geetarman49]

what i mean is that unless they started using 'universal' xfmr, they have to configure the build with the proper voltage-enabled xfmr... so typically europe gets the 220v xfmr, while n.a. gets the 120v xfmr.

 

[project86]

I don't think I've seen anybody sell the 1st edition in a while. Except of course if you are buying a used one from the classified forum or something. But I'm pretty sure Matrix switched to the v2 long ago and nobody should have any stock of the v1 at this point. 

 

[zibra]

I dont know if anyone mentioned it before, but have you tried burson audio opamp for matrix? Is it ok for its circuit? or there are better ways for modding it?

 

[Mad Max]

Too expensive.  =p
Yes, it will work.  It will need extension leads if you have one already.
 
For those $100 bucks you can buy a soldering iron, soldering materials, 2x1 soic-to-dip opamp adapters, order free opamp samples from TI, ADI, LT, Intersil, and National, and get the hang of soldering before putting together an LME49990, AD797 or ADA4627-1B module and get even better sound, lol.  You can also later kick up your M-Stage's performance some more with most of the modifications suggested in the Lovely Cube thread.

 

[zibra]

well, \i have changed diode to orange one and changed these 2 big blue capacitors. I have also tried with many opamps like ad797 ad8599 ad 8397 lme48960 opa2228 opa2604 etc, but many of them werent stable and reach high temperature. Im just curious if there are any other changes for making matrix even better. eventually where do I have to search for even bigger improvement as for headamp alone

 

[Mad Max]

I suspect the instability of high-speed opamps to be partly caused by the surrounding circuit not being all SMD.  The opamp socket doesn't help either for some chips.

 

[purrin]

 
Quote:

well, \i have changed diode to orange one and changed these 2 big blue capacitors. I have also tried with many opamps like ad797 ad8599 ad 8397 lme48960 opa2228 opa2604 etc, but many of them werent stable and reach high temperature. Im just curious if there are any other changes for making matrix even better. eventually where do I have to search for even bigger improvement as for headamp alone

 
You can change or bypass the ~400uF power supply caps that feed the +/-15V to the output transistors and opamp. You can also change the output transistors. May make it sound different, not necessarily better though.
 
Do remove the input capacitors (the big blue boxes and the corresponding little red bypass caps) and close the circuit with a wire. I'm surprised it seems that so few people have done this because the increase in transparency is more than any op-amp change will do. The stock caps really add a lot of warmth up the sound, so you will need to adjust other parts of the circuit if you like the slight warmness of the stock M-Stage. Make sure your source has no DC offset though - otherwise your headphones go "poof".