Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

wsrrsw and terrapin77,

Thank you. 

That's assuring. That is one Raven for me.

@phono2024 Upon retiring and finally being able to put together a room/system (and after many years of research and trials) I knew I wanted 300B Mono blocks. The Blackbirds and Ravin are world class. If your speakers are efficient enough, then the Blackbird mono's have terrific synergy w/ the pre.

wsrrsw,

I have been following this thread for a while and the reviews of the Raven and Blackbirds are very good or excellent. It will pair with Clayton's Caladan.

@phono2024 

sure, I am biased because I designed them, but in my system with 95 dB speakers,

the Raven and Blackbird combo is dead silent idling away.  I can put my ear to any of the drivers on the speaker and barely tell the system is on.  Hiss will not be an issue unless a tube is failing.

Kind of expected because:

1) the specialized damper diode rectifiers have very soft switching compared to solid-state diodes, thus much less 50/60 Hz switching noise radiated into the rest of the circuit and out the AC power cord

2) the regulated high voltage B+ power supplies have an astounding 130 dB of noise rejection from AC line noise

3) there is an another layer of VR-tube shunt regulation for the B+ power of each channel, good for about 20 to 30 dB of added isolation

4) All heaters are fed with 6.3 volts of regulated DC

5) last but not least, balanced operation of the 6SN7 circuit provides an additional 30 to 35 dB of noise and distortion rejection, without requiring feedback.

That’s why the Raven (and Blackbird) cost a bit more than other preamps and power amps. Each Blackbird power amp does all this rigamarole three times, with KT88 and 300B power tubes, which is why it’s priced where it is.