Nick's Audio Page
Why have I bothered to do a page about my system at all ??? The answer is actually a little thing called a "Gainclone", but if you want to find out what this is and why, read on (there are some pics, honest, it's not all blurb)................ (if you want to jump direct to 2007av click here)
Going back into the dark ages, I used to build valve amps in the early 1960s while a student, and then built many transistor amps in the 1960s and 1970s. However, much of the intervening time has been a relative void until......
............ a few years ago, when, at the age of well over half a Century, I had the opportunity to listen to a top quality audiophile system for the first time. The system in question was my friend George's mighty Audio Note Ankoru valve amplifiers, with Audio Note (AN) speakers, deck, pre-amp and silver cabling. He played me a record of Louis Armstrong singing St James Infirmary. I closed my eyes, and try as I could, I could NOT imagine or see the loudspeakers. There was NO WAY that Satchmo was not there, right infront of me, and at the end I got up and went and shook the hand of this legend, because it had to be real. Well, that is how wonderful a beautiful system can sound, and it made me realise some rather disconcerting things:
* That myself , a "Streetwise" man of the World, could easily have NEVER been aware that it was possible to get such a perfect sound from ANY Hi-Fi system at ANY price, and I only found this out more or less by chance.
* That the majority of persons in this world, INCLUDING many who work in 'Hi-Fi' shops, may have never experienced the "illusion of reality".
George also played me some SACD tracks, on his Sony SCD1 player, through his Ankorus via a Audio Note DAC3, and that was equally spine-chilling.
It was only after hearing George's exotic system that I realised the following:
1. That valve amplifiers were still the best amplifiers in the world
2. That vinyl (records) were still better than ordinary CD (16 bit 44KHz)
3. That, if one wanted to get vinyl-like quality off a digital medium, then one would have to go to one of the new formats like SACD or DVDA
This set me on the trail. I dug out my valve stereo amp - a Maplin Millenium kit which I built around 1994, comprising EL34 pentodes in push-pull, and my old Thorens TD-160 deck with Shure V15 II cartridge (nothing special in that), and to my surprise, found that the sound I got, while a million miles away from the dizzy heights of the AN kit, nevertheless, easily beat both my Arcam surround sound system (not a cheap system btw, and with 100W per channel capable of awesome surround sound). The downer for me was that I had B&W loudspeakers, with Kevlar cones, with externally mounted tweeters capable of piercing an eardrum at high volume levels. These speakers, in conjunction with the Arcam amps and Arcam DVD player, are great for Home Theatre usage. However, they are not at all suitable if one wants to create the 'illusion of reality' and so I changed them - see later.
Perhaps it is time for a pic, so here is a general view of my current system:
My room is just under 30ft long, approx 1/3 to left and right in the picture above, with the centre third as shown, and 15ft across, with quite high ceiling at 8ft 6". There are no valve amps in sight, and some observers will note that the loudspeakers are Audio Note AN SP-Es, which I got from Mario, the Sales Manager of Audio Note UK, and I am delighted with them, as they have a high efficiency (around 93.5dBa) and have a beautiful linear response with no noticeable peaks, troughs or resonances.
In my quest to get a top quality system, I summarise the changes made over recent years:
* changed the B&W speakers for Audio Note AN SP-Es. Suddenly the music, especially vinyl, started sounding real-ish rather than metallic and even shrill at times.
* changed the Thorens deck/arm for a Michell Gyrodec SE with AN arm 3 (modified RB-300) with AN silver wiring and AN IQ III magnetic cartridge (based on one of the best goldring magnetic cartridges). You can see the deck at lower right in the picture.
* built a World Audio Design (WAD) valve phone stage (kit) and a WAD pre-amplifier. The phono stage is hidden behind the right speaker, and the pre-amp is the square box, right centre in the rack, with volume and input selector controls
* purchased some second-hand Audion Silver Night monoblocks, with push-pull 300B triodes (not shown in the above, but see below)
* Audio Note silver interconnects.
Here are the glorious Silver Night 300B amps. Until recently they sat on top of the equipment cabinet. The sound they produce is way better than the old pentode amps, but I decided to compromise between the purity of single-ended triodes and the slam of push-pull pentodes, by getting push-pull triodes !!!! It is a very good compromise, giving a lot of 'oomph' on rock music, and very beautiful purity, though not quite in the exotic SET class.
As I was convinced that "vinyl rules - OK ?" I have concentrated on this for the past few years, and I purchased a proper record cleaner (basically a motor driven disk rotator, to apply isopropyl-based cleaning fluid to the disk, and a powerful built-in vacuum cleaner to suck the debris up !). The cleaner works so effectively that I have to say that the majority of records that I buy at "car boot sales" (yard sales) clean up pretty perfectly, so as long as they are not worn or scratched, sound like new. I have built up a collection of over 1000 albums in a very short time.
In the above picture you will notice the small item placed between the amps. This is the LM3886 chip, which is what I have used in my Gainclone amps -see later. Just remember the "David vs Goliath" association when looking at this picture.
A bit about CD, so here is the first pic again:
The small silver rectangular block to the left of the WAD pre-amp in the rack is what a call the "Magic Brick"....... during a visit to a Hi-Fi show held at one of the hotels near Heathrow Airport a couple of years back, I was enthralled by the sound from some large LAMM valve amplifiers, driving Wilson-Benesch loudspeakers, but there was no vinyl in sight, so I assumed that the source was DVD-A or SACD. When I asked the exhibitor about this I was amazed when he told me that he was using STANDARD CDs. He pointed to a silver oblong object, about the size and shape of a housebrick and said "that's the key - it's a Chord DAC 64 digital to analog converter". I was so intrigued by this that at the earliest opportunity after the show I arranged to test one of these DACs, which Audio-T at Basingstoke duly obliged by loaning me one. I was equally astonished to find that my CDs went from 'post-box' presentation, to AWESOME, and very similar to vinyl, though subtly different in timbre. Of course I had no hesitation in purchasing the 'magic brick' and every time I demonstrate the transformation it makes to anyone who has never heard this before, they are equally amazed. I have to say that my gut-feel is that most CD transports wander all over the place. Remember that early cassette decks could suffer from terrible wow and flutter, which could be easily heard. Ultimately the main manufacturers developed excellent servo drives which made the tapes run at constant speed, and the problem was cured. In the case of CD, there are some very expensive transports, often with high precision clock control, which give far superior results to mass market decks. I wonder if the 'magic brick' is simply compensating for the inadequacies of the CD drive used (in my case in the Arcam DV88 which is a combined CD/DVD player), and that it has a greater affect the lower the quality of the transport ???
Still not entirely happy with my system, I was put into reverse gear whcn my great friend Richard Breakell announced in late 2003 that he had purchased an AWESOME Italian made amplifier called the Viva Solista - a massive valve (tube) amplifier with large 845 power tubes, and of course single-ended triode (SET) configuration. Moreover, the amps had a remote volume control, overcoming the biggest objection of most valve amps (that you have to get up from your seat to alter the volume). My jealousy genes went into overload and ever since then I have been researching 845 and 211 based SET amps, costing anywhere from $3500 to in excess of $ 10,000. I did say 'researching' because even the cheapies are getting out of my price bracket. On the way, and almost at the point where I considered that no further searching was necessary, there was a 'by the way' link on a page, saying in effect "if you want to consider something competely different, take a look at this....". It was a link to the website of 47 Labs, where Mr Junji Kimura had (apparently) made some INCREDIBLE amps out of no more than power op-amp chips. When I started researching this a bit more I found a plethora of imitations of the gaincard, called GAINCLONES, and not only that, but forums all over the place, and several websites where enthusiasts had built two or three iterations of GC. The main thing for me, however, was the report by experts that these tiny single chip amps seemed to deliver the sort of performance that only the world's top tube amps could provide, such as the Audio Note Ongaku, and at many tens of thousands of dollars. I also found a few websites where it was suggested that it was just some sort of cheap publicity stunt, as no item costing a few bucks could possibly compete with the most superlative audiophile amps on the planet.
I decided to go ahead, of course, and here is the result:
The chip I used was the National Semiconductors LM3886, which was one of the more powerful ones. I decided to use a large 320VA toroidal transformer, and that is housed in the central silver cylinder shown above. I had some 6" diameter tube, so this was perfect for the job. The only other bits in the silver housing are the mains power inlet (IEC), on/off switch, fuse and eight rectifier diodes (4 per channel), plus outlet sockets for the + 0 - connections. The small boxes are Hammond extruded cases, with large(ish) heatsinks inside (1.65°/W). I used volume controls (actually only used to set the initial volume and to balance the channels, as the main volume control is on the pre-amp). I set the gain at around 10x.
Rear view of the GCs and psu. There are ventilation holes on the rear of the boxes and also underneath, but even after hours of high volume playing, the boxes remain pretty cool, no more than luke warm at the most.
Listening tests.
After my original experience hearing Satchmo's St James Infirmary, I had to get a copy of this, and Mario duly obtained a 12" of this for me. From the very first note, it was spine-chilling. I then put on War of the Worlds, this time on CD, via the DAC64 (of course), and the clarity and sheer perfection of every note seemed unbelievable. What thrilled me most was, well in fact EVERYTHING I played, whether CD or vinyl, was FAR FAR superior to my beloved Silver Nights. Take a look again at the picture showing how small the chip is. I mentioned David and Goliath, but I was wrong, it is like a Jumbo Jet taking on a F16 fighter, there is not even the slightest chance of comparison. Remember though, that the Silver Nights were already much better than anything I had owned before, but I can see how these GCs can be compared to the ultimate exotic amps such as the Ongaku by professional reviewers, even though I have not had the pleasure of hearing Ongakus (the Ankorus are not so far behind). From an engineer's point of I have listed the points that are significant in the 'technical section' below
Q & A
Q. How does your system compare NOW to George's sytem with Ankorus - if you reckon that the GCs compare to Ongakus, then you must be up there with them - right !!??
A. Actually no, not quite there yet, but way ahead of anything I have had before. Like the speed of the convoy being determined by the speed of the slowest ship, all links in the chain have to be of the highest order to get the ultimate performance, and my system is not there for either vinyl or digital media. Here is a small summary of current items and possible improvements that I can make:
Vinyl system
Michell Gyrodec SE - possibly is OK for the future, but I have never done an audition to bring out differences in decks at the highest level. If differences are so small that they are not IMMEDIATELY obvious, and have to be pointed out one or more times by the expert, then to my mind, one's enjoyment of the music would be the SAME in either case, if one did not know what the difference was to start with
AN arm 3 - I think this is up to the job. There is some subjectivity about arms, maybe I would go for a SME if I felt the system was still not there after all other changes had been made
AN IQ III cartridge - this is still a magnetic cartridge, so perhaps needs to be upgraded. George has lent me a Audio-Technica AT-OC7 mc cartridge + transformer, so I will try this out in due course
AN silver wiring from cartridge to phono stage. I will definitely keep this !!!
World Audio Design phono stage - this kit is not at all bad, and maybe will suffice for the future
WAD pre-amp - this kit performs well and has six inputs and master volume. Also it acts as a buffer to the GCs, so I don't have to bother about any special front ends for the GCs. There are two negative points about the WAD pre-amp: 1. The tape output is not buffered, so the capacitance of the output lead is added in parallel to that of the selected input. This means that the beautiful silver phono leads coming in are put in parallel with some crummy rubbish that one uses as a tape monitor, and even if one puts high quality leads for the monitor, one is still doubling the total capacitance (despite this, as the signal does not pass through the low quality cable on its way to the amp then only the capacitance has to be worried about. I cannot detect any change in the audio when I plug and unplug the cables, but eventually I will get a buffered tape output (and also a buffered common output for a sub-woofer !) 2. The output is buffered by transformers, which is great and highly desirable, BUT it seems to me that the ones used in the low cost kits are extremely basic, and look like filament transformers from ancient designs. However, because there are no capacitive or other inductive elements either side, they may be adequate, but somehow I feel that the ultimate system will require something better
CD system
The fact that it is CD and not SACD or DVD-A. Well, I will leave it for now, and try to make an assessment after 'final !!??' improvements have been made to the common part of the system
Common Components
AN Silver phono cables - these link the pre-amp to the GCs and are high quality so will not need upgrading
Chord Odyssey speaker cable - actually I have bi-wired both speakers (see the double leads on the rear view picture), but there is no silver in the cables, so I may get some improvement by changing (not sure about this). Of course the REAL solution would be for someone like Peter Qvortrup to put GC-type amps in the bases of his Audio Note speakers, (perhaps even two - one for the bass/mid and one for the tweeter !!!), with associated power supply. Thus only phono connections from the pre-amp would be required, and maybe one could put remote volume and/or mute on such systems.
AN SP-E loudspeakers - well these are GREAT, but at some point in the future I would love to change the drivers to those with Alnico magnets and SILVER speech-coils - MEGABUCKS of course, but there is no doubt that such a change would make a magic uplift to the system.
Q. You make no mention of computer audio, and the picture shows your TV and centre speaker of a surround sound system. Surely the way ahead is via computer technology ?
A. Actually I will put another page up in the near future to do with VINYL archiving. I have done initial tests putting my vinyl tracks onto a PC, and on playback the sound is virtually IDENTICAL to the original vinyl sound. I am NOT using MP3 or any other version of MP... I am using uncompressed PCM, which are in WAV format, and the idea is to put this onto CD and/or DVD media as well as perhaps having a PC type server.
Q. What about digital radio ?
A1. I have little interest in DAB radio or the radio channels via the Sky Digibox. I purchased a high quality DAB tuner which can be seen in the equipment rack below the pre-amp and DAC 64 boxes. I purchased an antenna rotator and high quality DAB antenna. Despite all attempts I could never get rid of some tiny distortion on large transients. Putting the signal through the DAC64 certainly brought out amazing spacial detail, but 2D rather than 3D, with not too much depth of sound-stage, and a very hard artificial sound. It was not too dissimilar off Sky, so I wonder why I purchased the DAB tuner in the first place :-(
A2. I have rescued my VHF FM tuner, a top quality Sony with digital synthesised frequency control (actually the whole thing is a tuner-amp, model STRV45L, but I only need the tuner bit). In my system picture above you can see it at bottom right, in the base of the stand for the Gyrodec SE. I am aware from tests done (Hi-Fi World and others) that FM is BETTER than digital radio, and indeed, despite the fact that FM is supposed to be phased out in 2008, several of the small digital radio operators ALSO have (or have applied for) FM broadcast licences. Whether this has anything to do with mobile (car) radio or not, I am not sure about. I have now put my 4 element VHF antenna in place of the DAB antenna, on the aerial rotator, and am listening to VHF FM again, which brings great pleasure, and which has the natural analog sound.
Useful Links.
http://www.sakurasystems.com/products/47amp.html
This is the site of "47 Labs", who are the original inspiration for the Gaincard, and who have caused a revolution which will result in a transformation (IMO) in the audio industry over the next few years
http://www.tnt-audio.com/ampli/47gaincard_e.html
Here is an excellent review of the Gaincard
http://www.audionote.co.uk/reviews/stereotimes_an-e_sec_silver_loudspeaker.htm
This review, actually some time ago (24 February 2003), which is a test of one of the most beautiful sounding loudspeakers that money can buy (at $19,500 a pair they should be !!!!!!!!!!!!!!) was the final catalyst to make me run out and buy some components to buid some GainClone amps. My speakers are IDENTICAL - OK, only kidding, they are indeed AN-E, but not the exotic top spec model. Mine have silver internal wiring, but NOT the silver-wired speech coils, OR the massive ALNICO magnets. However, the boxes are the same, and mine, having been personally owned by Mario from Audio Note UK, have the best possible pedigree ! When I win the lottery I would like to put the silver spec driver units with Alnico magnets, in my own boxes (come to think of it, we talk about GainClones costing a few bucks, and comparing them to amps costing tens of thousands - so think of the savings there ..........hmmmm)
There are many enthusiasts with far more knowledge than I, who have built GCs, and here are some links to some of their websites, and some of the forums associated with GC building:
http://www.platenspeler.com/diy/amps/uk_cyclone_1.html
Wow, the Dutch seem to have been some of the first to build some fantastic products based on the Gaincard, and maybe it was them who thought up the word "GainClone" (not sure about this, but it's a great name for sure.
This site has some especially superb GCs, which are called "Cyclone".
http://users.verat.net/~pedjarogic/audio/gainclone/gainclone.htm
Another great page from Pedja Rojic, and this one also covers some super stabilized power supplies.
http://home.swipnet.se/~w-50719/hifi/gainclone/schema_gainclone.html
Per Anders, from Sweden, has done some very sophisticated amplifiers and maybe he is way ahead of most of the field in this respect.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~joeras/
Joe Rasmussen is an Australian who has put together some wonderful hybrid amps, with tube (valve) front-ends. If I didn't already have a tube pre-amp to feed my GCs, then I would have had to have built some sort of tube front end to buffer the input to the op-amp chip. Joe's hybrid design is a great all-in-one solution
http://www.mhennessy.f9.co.uk/gainclone/
A very useful UK GC builder, and I think that it was on his site that I noticed a mention of putting the rectifier diodes in the power supply block, and the smoothing capacitors near the amplifier chips. So I followed that bit of advice - if you think about it, you are REMOVING the electric field from near to the amplifier chip, so you only have the MAGNETIC field to worry about, and by parallel/bifilar wiring and putting smoothing caps back-back, this can be minimised. The op-amp chips are very tolerant of voltage changes on the power rails, and that is why GC designs only have simple smoothing circuits in most cases. If I get within about 2 feet of my loudspeakers I can just detect a very faint hum. I used 2000MFD caps for smoothing, and with a 320VA toroid driving my GCs I can give myself a real fright - if the volume was set high from last usage (and it usually is set high !!!!) then when I switch on the power supply, the INSTANT the switch makes contact (ie before the rocker switch is more than about halfway down) the music appears AT FULL VOLUME. This shows what an awesome slew-rate the op-amp chips have.
There are countless other websites, so apologies to those which I have not put up here (this is not meant to be a reference links page) especially those who are considered to be the 'Gurus' in this area. However, even the few links above will show those of you who have never come across GainClones before, that these devices are something VERY SPECIAL, otherwise why should all this effort and attention be heaped upon these tiny op-amp chips !!!???
2(technical) 3(computer audio) 4(pleasure of listening)
e-mail Nick if you have any comments (sorry but I am not a member of any forums)