Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

Let's just say that before building my own tube creations I restored probably 300-400 pieces of vintage tube gear, including about 75-80 citation II amps, over 40 citation I preamps, and many Scotts, Fishers, Sherwoods, Macs, Marantz 8b, etc... I saw what were clearly high quality build practices, and cheap ones too.  I always appreciated the gear that was easy to work on, and hated designs that were difficult to rebuild.   So everything we build is designed so that it is easy to work on should anything ever go wrong.  It is designed so that things are never run anywhere "near the ragged edge".   Tubes are in class A, but still conservatively run and should have long lives.  I want the customer to enjoy the gear for years, and should there ever be a problem, I want the tech to easily be able to swap out a part and have it running again. 

I remember working on Marshall guitar amps for musician friends.   They have a dozen little pcbs, tied together with jumpers cables that all have the same terminals, so that you have to mark each board and cable so you know how to put it together again.  The problem would always be on the bottom board!   So we avoid construction like that.  This gear is a bit complex, but very modular, the layout is neat and clean, and it is designed to be trouble-free.  For example, all AC is on one side of an internal shielding bracket, and all signal path on the other in both preamp and amps.  Star grounding, with strong attention paid to current loops.  No hum!

Wonderful! Have my eye on the preamp! 

Part of the reason for the sonics (aside from the circuit) is the physical simplicity of the preamp. No circuit board is needed because there really isn’t that much to the audio signal path. Input selector -> balanced switched-resistor volume control -> balanced 6SN7 vacuum tube -> output transformer. That’s it.

There are no coupling caps, no multi-transistor current sources with Zener-diode references, no muting relays with time-delay logic, and no DC-balance servo circuits ... so there’s no need for circuit boards to contain all these secondary functions. Just very short point-to-point wiring.

The same is true of the Blackbird power amp, as well as the Raven. The audio path is surprisingly simple.

Indeed the signal path on both the preamp and amp is very simple.  That said, the power supplies supporting it are rather complex and they are kept well away from it.  Also, the preamp output transformer and amplifier interstage transformers took over a year of prototyping to get right.  So the circuits are "deceptively" simple, but there is a lot supporting them, and as Lynn stated, these circuits are kept well away from the signal path, both electrically and physically.

Also, if you spend time reading this thread and the very long 300b lovers thread, you will see that the "deceptively simple" circuits are also cleverly designed to eliminate distortion at its source as well.

I have word from Spatial that the next batch of 5 Ravens is in production, so those folks awaiting builds should have them pretty soon.  Then some of you can post your impressions here!  It will be good to know how people like the preamps in a variety of systems.