lynn_olson
Responses from lynn_olson
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp I should go into regulators and their sonics a little. Yes, regulators have "a sound". Regulators are amplifiers that feed amplifiers, with the difference the "amplifier" amplifies incoming audio, while a regulator amplifies a DC reference voltage... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp I’ve been using damper diodes (from old TVs) since 1997. I’m frankly surprised why people are still using the audiophile favorites. Damper diodes have (much) quieter switching, have substantially higher peak current, and sound noticeably better. T... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven 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 c... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp As Don mentioned, avoid the thick and crazy-expensive audiophile cables. You have to remember most audiophiles have noticeably colored transistor gear, and use aftermarket products like power conditioners and $5000+ cables to minimize glare, grain... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp Yeah, stay away from the garden hoses and faux snakes, no matter what the reviewer says, or in what magazine. Simple is good, less capacitance per foot is better. The studios don’t use garden hoses or faux snakes, why should you? Many of the revi... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp I heard the powered ATC monitors at the last Rocky Mountain Audio Festival, and they were some of the best speakers at the show. The ATC midrange driver, in particular, is a legend in the speaker industry, and ATC did a really good job with the ac... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp The Raven design is stabilized and they are in production at Spatial Audio Labs in Salt Lake City. Don Sachs lives in British Columbia in Canada, I live on the outskirts of Denver in Colorado, and we both communicate with Spatial on a regular basis. | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp There is a whole subculture of modding the classic Klipsch products ... Cornwall (probably the easiest to tame), La Scala, Belle Klipsch, and of course the Klipschorn. Look up "Klipsch Forums" and off you go. Classic Klipsch are famed for dynamics... | |
| Vacuum Tube preamp with my KRELL KAV 250a, a no no......WHY? The big thing to confirm is the preamp under consideration has an auto-mute circuit, which triggers both for turn-on and turn-off, as well as brief power drop-outs. Not every preamp has a power management circuit that protects against all sources ... | |
| Vacuum Tube preamp with my KRELL KAV 250a, a no no......WHY? Conventional vacuum tube preamps often use a "cathode follower" to assure low output impedance and compatibility with a wide range of power amps ... vacuum tube, transistor, Class D, GANFet, etc. The plate circuit of the cathode follower is typic... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp Hope you enjoy it! Don Sachs, Spatial Audio, and I are right at the beginning of the production curve, with the preamps a little ahead of the Blackbird power amps. The designs are finalized, stable, and several steps more advanced than what was s... | |
| 300b lovers By the way, the traditional definition of "efficiency" is: (Max RMS output power at stated distortion level) / (Total power going into the plate circuit). Power consumed by heaters, filaments, input and driver tubes, or regulators is not usually c... | |
| 300b lovers Some fixed-bias amps have a separate servo circuit that monitors the bias of each tube, so user does not need to adjust the amplifier. This servo circuit needs to be very reliable, though, since a failure would destroy the output tubes, and possib... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp I expect to be there for the Oregon Triode Society demo as well. Maybe I’ll meet some old friends ... I joined the OTS way back in 1990 or so, at the second meeting. Way too far to drive all the way from the Denver metro area, so I’ll fly again, ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp That's why I was pleased to collaborate with Don Sachs, starting a couple of years ago. I already owned his preamp, and I was quite impressed he had decades of experience on the insanely complex Citation I and Citation II preamp and power amps. Th... |