[Andrea]

Beautiful! AD823's are possibly -the- opamps, for this amplifier. I'd partly attribute all this musicality to the high capacitive load drive capability of these particular opamps, which is supposedly very helpful when driving headphones without buffers in between. What this wouldn't lead to expect is a low end performance this good! Much more punchy than before, and tight & effortless. I could be happy with this amp alone.

 

[Andrea]

Ouch! Did I say AD823 ?

I meant OPA2134.

 

[skysaxon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrea Ouch! Did I say AD823 ? I meant OPA2134.

What?? When did the OPA2134's enter the picture? You've been raving about the AD 823 post after post.

I don't get it.

 

[Andrea]

What can I say, I thought that the goodness of opamp-sound was all there with the AD823 ... although something about the music I felt was still missing with respect to my previous setup, with an integrated amp in place of the Zero.

And magically, that 'quid' was brought back by the OPA2134 ... the 'life' of the music restored.

 

[Andrea]

double post

 

[Andrea]

To sum it up

These are, in chronological order, the combinations I tried...

OPA2227 (gain) + OPA2227 (buffer) -- the standard configuration and 2nd best

AD823 + AD8056 -- I was impressed at first, less so later. Felt slightly 'dry'

AD823 + AD823 -- soul-less, compared to the ones including OPA's

OPA2134 + OPA2134 -- pretty good, only lacking the last bit of 'punch'


And the winner (and the latest) is...

OPA2227 + AD8056 -- best compromise of refinement (thanks to the OPA) and power (thanks to the AD which is almost like a true buffer). Punch, depth and subtlety, and rich timbre. AD8056 works a lot better driven by the OPA2227 than by the AD823 in the Zero.

 

[Cranky]

Has any one seen any schematics for this amp? Would anyone be interested in sketching one up for me? I want to build a 2battery version of this with the linkwitz crossfeed. please help me out as i know very little about electronics but i believe with a schematic i could probably get it together.thnx.

 

[Cranky]

Did I say something wrong? This is my first time in a forum, I'm not sure what to expect.

 

[Andrea]

No worries, there's no-one around who would be offended by the word "schematic" I hope. I didn't answer just because I'm unable to provide it to you. And after all, you'd be better off just buying one, wouldn't you? It's only $59 + shipping.

 

[ryangs]

At $59 plus shipping, this amp is probably cheaper than the cost of parts plus labor, especially if you 'know very little about electronics.' Trust me, I am a novice at electronics, and building even the simplest amp cost me lots of blood, sweat, and tears.

 

[Cranky]

Thanx, but it is no fun buy when you can build. I guess I gave the impression that I may have trouble building it but what I realy ment was that I'm not a ITT grad but I can read a schematic and generaly can get things to work(most the time). The main reason I don't want to buy it is because it is only part of what I want. Thanx Anyways, Cranky