What's inside these aluminum/metal cases?


I have three links below to pictures of amps with their lids removed, one is an integrated, and I am curious to the thoughts of those that have the technical knowledge of amps to discuss the inner componants and order of design.

We tweak our systems with expensive cables, yet I look at pictures such these pictures and wonder what all the signal must go through.

Let me put the disclaimer out, I do not own any of these amps nor did I single them out, I just happen have pictures of them with their "hoods" off, if I had some others, I may of included them as well.

http://brian.grar.com/images/AudioPix/Bryston4bstInside.jpg
http://brian.grar.com/images/AudioPix/ML383-Inside.jpg
http://brian.grar.com/images/AudioPix/Bryston7bstInside.jpg
brianmgrarcom
The Bryston amps remind me of a TON of other amps that i've seen. Adcom was the first one that comes to mind.

The problem with a LOT of amps built like this is that they route signal and power wires side by side and even bundle them together. They also make use of ribbon cables for signal wires, which are JUNK. Simply replacing ribbon cables with some "decent" wire in the signal path will remove MUCH of the hard upper midrange glare and "transistor sound" that plagues many SS designs.

This is accomplished by 1) getting rid of the tinned copper / tinned aluminum wire in the ribbon itself 2) getting rid of the ( at least ) 2 harness plugs on each ribbon 3) making lower resistance direct point to point connections with higher grade wiring 4) minimizing crosstalk between different sources or circuits within the unit

This is not to mention that many designs route wiring in paths that are totally ridiculous. I took apart a pair of amps and about fell over. There was NO attention paid to magnetic fields, ground plane, length of signal path, etc.... I could not believe how these things were built and laid out. As mentioned above, they suffered from the signal / power wiring "hodgepodge" all tied together, tons of excess wiring, etc. It was SO bad that i was able to seperate all of these, re-route the wires MUCH more effectively and i was able to pull out appr FOUR FEET of wire from each one. That experience alone made me re-investigate how most of the other components that i own were built and designed. As one might suspect, the manufacturers were more concerned with ease of production than they were with the ultimate in performance. As such, i've SLOWLY ( very, very slowly ) been trying to go through them one by one and "tweak" what should have been built right in the first place.

I have come to learn that if audio engineers were designing RF gear, we would all still be using tin cans and string for communications. Sean
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Kelly that Boulder is a real piece of beauty, sonically & mechanically. Doesn't Kinergetics build like this as well?
Sean the reminder that those ribbon cables in the graphic are actually routing audio paths (not logic drivers) I can only try to forget about manufacturers pulling stunts like that. I recently opened up my "best of" Dynalab tuner & couldn't believe what I saw. It's a real wonder that it sounds as good as it does, based upon what I saw under the cover.
Hey CFB

The circuit board on that Boulder is really nice.
Never seen an internal layout as clean as that one.
You own this amp?
The amps look like decent layouts to me. Large toroidal transformers coupled with some big-assed capacitors, and then a lot of discrete transistors, resistors, relays, coils, and capacitors. Depending on the quality of the discrete components these designs can be very very good. Many quality audio manufacturers use a curve tracer and select pretty closely matched transistors in their products (primarily Field Effect Transistors). A much neater approach is using integrated circuits rather than discrete components for some of the control functions (thermal sensing etc), far less clutter and solder joints. Trouble is they don't sound as good as the discrete designs do. Cooling is always an issue for these guys, unlike a 'puter you can't throw a fan in. The wire...well I suppose they feel they gotta skimp somewhere and for the most part, a DIY'er can change the internal wiring if he so chooses. FWIW my BATVK500 amp is neatly laid out and does give you the impression the behemoth was designed with quality in mind. I wonder what the Xilinx Field Programmable Gate Array is doing in the ML amp? Wonder what code they buried in there? Got my curiosity up for sure. Jeff

p.s. the Boulder product does look well laid out, but bear in mind it's MUCH easier to lay out a preamplifier than an amplifier, particularly if you use multiple chassis to isolate noise. Couple innovative/competent engineering and cost-is-no-object materials to achieve your design goals and you're bound to have a nicely built and (hopefully) great sounding product. Where are the tubes anyway?