My first source was a heavily modified Marantz CD63. this seems like aeons ago. Then the foray to DACs began, first with TDA1543, then TDA1545. you could say that the seed of Monica was being sown around this time.

I later changed the transport to Philip’s CD-Pro2. Wow! Huge jump in sonics. Puts down so many other transports. However, for some reasons which I couldn’t comprehend, my CD-Pro2 module died on me. 2 pieces of CD-Pro2 later, I decided I had enough.

Then the switch to PC audio and hence started playing with a Squeezebox media player. Sonics wise the CD-Pro2 still makes a better transport but the convenience of playing off pc more than makes up for loss in sonics. And yeah, I heavily modified my Squeezebox unit too.

Well everything’s good for now but then… the revelation of the QLS Hifi’s QA550 SD card player! Wow! Immediately you hear the gulf in the sonic quality between the Squeezebox and the QA550. Fed with a Kwak Clock, the sonic improvement is even greater.

So if things are so good now, why fret? Unfortunately the user interface of the QA550 is akin that of a turntable, which is almost zilch. After being spoiled by the user interface on the Squeezebox (including the touch screen Squeezebox Touch), the QA550 is a step back in time…

So the journey for a better source starts again. Damn it.

I have heard lots of good things about the m2tech Hiface but I’m not interested in SPDIF as the I2S interface proves superior (to think that so much time/money/effort has been wasted!).

So John Kenny‘s modified I2S Hiface seems like the perfect ticket! (Unfortunately John isn’t selling the pcb module anymore).

Many many weeks later, finally got it built.

Boy, that one sentence didn’t show you how much work I did.

This is what I did:
As I2S consists of 5 lines of signal, you have to decide on a proper interface. there is no standard interface here so i settled for the RF45 network port which is used by many companies (m2tech, North Star and Zenden etc) too for I2S duties.

So got to build an I2S Monica that accepts I2S input via RJ45 interface.

While doing so, I might as well try this excellent looking “Weipu” connectors for analog signal duties. So this I2S Monica accepts I2S via RJ45 then outputs analog signal via Weipu connectors.

A Beyonce was later built using Weipu connectors. And to have more fun, instead of the Microchip controller I used before, I now put in an Arduino controller. The 8 digit LED display is really cool too.

Hey, since we are already at this stage, I built a new Charlize but using Weipu connectors.

Lastly i had to haul up my old Mac Mini to audio duties and transfer all the music files to a new hard disk.

So is it any wonder I’m so short of time?

Do notice I “standardized” my chassis. These are actually key holders made from recycled rubber wood. [trying to be green … ]

Oh well, finally got everything built and… the sound makes it all worthwhile!

Wait! I’m not done yet.

I also installed the very cool Pure Music Player. Oh my! What a nice software! It could upsample (which I can’t be bothered with) or play native sample rate of your audio files up to 384kHz sampling rate. And the hiface supports all this. If you have to ask, well, higher sampled material sounds better!

Higher sampled music does the highs so much better. At first I wasn’t sure of all the highs but then as you listened, damn in, I’ve been missing so much all this while! Scoped waveforms back this up. [Of course vinyl folks will tell you nothing beats infinite sampling rate. gotta give this to you guy!]

So after all this work, I’ll say everything is worthwhile!

The highs… could give you a high! Have never heard so much highs coming out of the system. This took a while to get used to but now with the silky highs, boy, everything sounds so much better now.

So am I done here? Again, not yet!

My I2S hiface is a Mk2. Apparently John Kenny has just released Mk3, so there’s more mods to be done. And more sonic blasts to be had!

One thing for sure, this won’t be the last time I rebuild my system. That’s the fun of DIY!

The post Rebuilding my system appeared first on diyparadise.

Okay, here’s just a few things I have done over the past few weeks (or is it months) to improve the sonics of my system.

First thing first. Monica!
Even though I specified 220uF in the Mojo power supply for TDA1545, I had only 100uF when I tried her out. Thus with Black Gates Super E, total capacitance is 200uF. But the PCB was designed for 220uF Super E, so that’s 440uF capacitance in total.

So after finally ordering these caps, put them in and.. Wow! Lower noise floor! By my dummy ears, I’ll say around 2.7896dB quieter. Okay! I made that up! But it’s at least 2dB quieter as I have to crank an additional 3dB setting to hear hiss coming out of the speakers. Err, mind you, these are ~100dB speakers…

The above pic shows Mojo integrated with Monica3. You may notice there are a few additional modules there… Blame the 2 Pauls (Needs and Hynes!)

Paul Needs told me about these modules he got from Paul Hynes. According to him, major improvement to Monica’s sonics! Well, you know me, if anything could milk more honey out of my lady (err I mean ma dac), I’ll go for it!

So after I got the 5V and 0.83V regs from Paul Hynes, incorporated them into Monica + mojo. The 5V reg is actually a “super shunt” so it still needs a constant current source, and what better CCS than Paul Hynes’ CCS2? The 0.83V reg is fed off the 5V reg. So what we have is this :

With these mods, Monica + mojo improved a whole new level! If before, you have been stunned by this combo, now you’ll be peeing in your pants! Well, assuming you haven’t done so. Hee hee…

Both the 5V and 0.83V regs should be in stock couple weeks later.

Err, just realized the CCS2 has been obscured by the 0.83V reg in above pic…

Next comes Charlize!
First thing I did was change the power supply. Have been so happy using this Hitachi battery which out of all the batteries I tested, gave me the widest grin. I actually got a Paul Hynes PR3 earlier and did the power supply for Gabriel, but I never got to listen to it in my system as Gabriel liked it so much he wouldn’t let me take it back!

Couple months ago, bought this Stillpoints ERS fabric. The sales copy is very interesting. An average of 50dB attenuation from 10MHz to 17GHz! Wow!

Of course, I can’t test this figure but I could use my crummy ears and see if I could hear any difference. After all, whatever spec means moot if I can’t hear any sonic improvement.

Tried inserting strips in the center of the air core inductors, but couldn’t hear any difference. Wrapped around the inductors… Yes! Not surprising as the inductors are coiled such that the fields radiate outwards. Improvement isn’t as huge as all the previous tweaks on this page, but worth your time and effort! Certain instruments like cymbals gain “body” and “definition”, if it was a mash of splishy-splashy noise earlier.

And the tweak is so easy to apply! Definitely reversible. Just be careful not to come into contact with any solder joints or component leads as the ERS paper could be conductive.

But we are not done yet! Last but not least, installed 2 pieces of this wood diffusor behind my horns.

Few months ago, visited an audiophile friend about 300km away and had quite an epiphany listening to his system. You see, I kind of regard many of the audio “tweaks/accessories” as snake oil – at least those that I can’t understand. Usually will just attribute any sonic improvement as psychological rather than real improvement. So imagine our surprise to come across this audiophile who has almost ALL the tweaks one could think of.

And listening was a revelation! The host was kind enough to let us listen with and without some of the tweaks. After just few seconds of listening, I was shocked. Gabriel was shocked.

From now onwards, we only regard the hyper inflated price as snake oil, but not the sonic improvement!

For starters, I’ll start with something I could understand and believe. Yes, no snake oil here. Just a simple diffusor. Will progress and experiment with other stuffs later.

All in all, it has been a fun journey but you know with audio, this journey never ends!

The post What I’ve done over the past few months to improve my system… appeared first on diyparadise.

Gabrielle is a 70W per channel, 4 channel T-amp. Yup! How’s that for power? Need more power? If your speakers could be bi-amped, then you could use 2 channels of Gabrielle per speaker thus having 140W of power per channel. Enough to kick your speakers’s ass (and yours) now?   Featuring also our special hand wound air core inductors. I don’t have to tell you one of the reasons Charlize sound better than our competitors’ similar TA2020 offering is this little air core inductors. Yes, it costs more. Yes, it takes time and effort to wind (and rewind if not up to task) but the end result sings loudest!   Power her from 10-26VDC. The power supply should be able to supply at least 80W of power.

There you go! So Charlize doesn’t kick your ass? Gabrielle will!

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Yeah, this is the Kuala Lumpur International AV Show 2008. Our debut at an audio show.

Note that source is from the Mac Mini on the far right.

St Cloud and the Hedlund Horn. The St Cloud is more suitable for this small room but can’t play that loud due to its 3″ driver. Most of the time we play the Coral Beta 6 in the Hedlund Horn. Most folks when they see both speakers, ask for bass!

Closer look.

2 digital source is used alternately. The modified Squeezebox and the CDPRO2-based transport.

The top rack shelf is for signal path only. Bottom shelf for power supply. Each power supply has its own balanced isolation transformers.

The all-in-one. Perhaps should call it “All or Nothing At All”.

Requires a digital input and output goes to speakers!

The best interconnects are NO interconnects.

Enough about the system! My thoughts are blogged here.

KL International AV Show 2008 – First day

KL International AV Show 2008 – 2nd & 3rd days

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…Ode to Charlize… Charlize oh CharlizeThis lass called Charlize Awesome beauty and style All grace and poise Your beauty Calms my spirit and mind Bowls me over Again and again and again…

And you haven’t even heard her sing yet. Yeah folks, in collaboration with Calv Acoustic Labs, we present you… Charlize. Charlize is a Tripath Class-T amp based on the excellent Tripath TA2020. After mucking about with various Tripath chips (TA2021, TA2022, TA2024), the 2020 won us over by a large margin (like Charlize!).   Initially we decided to put out a kit but then we were torn between offering an “easy-to-build-but-compromising-sonics” kit versus a “hard-to-build-but-offers-superior-sonics” kit. So between the two, we went for the latter. Hey, you wouldn’t compromise with Charlize, would you? If you are wondering, usage of surface mount components is indeed a necessity for switching designs. This is because switching at 800kHz, copious amount of noise is released and if you don’t channel this energy away, it’ll get into your music. Let’s restate this. It’s a neccccccessssssssiiiitttttttyyyyyyyy! I have had the priviledge of playing with another TA2020 kit that uses entirely through hole components and… lo and behold! We are happy to be justified in this regard. SMT indeed sounds BETTER. So we’ll be offering you fully soldered/assembled/tested Charlize. Yes! We do all the hard work for you! As PCB size is slightly smaller than a credit card and TA2020 doesn’t even require a heatsink (it runs cool like us), it’ll be really nifty to mount into your enclosure of choice.

Fedex shipping to most parts of Europe – USD25.

Oh yeah, at this price, we are daft enough to offer you Elna Cerafine input caps and Rubycon “Super Low ESR” power supply caps. You can tell we are bowled over by Charlize!

Charlize Vital Statistics

Power ratings are always over-hyped. Some will call this 20W, while some says 10W. But ask them, at what THD? See for yourself here.

You can use a 12V battery or those wall mount adaptors that puts out 12VDC. Just verify with a multimeter it’s really putting out 12VDC and not higher. Above 14VDC, say goodbye to Charlize! You can wire the input to a volume pot of 50kohm to make it an integrated amp or just plain RCA sockets. Please note as TA2020 output stage is bridged, DO NOT tie them to GND.

Please note that 12VDC is wired to square via of J1 and GND is wired to round via of J1.

In other words, when you receive Charlize, the white wire goes to 12VDC and black wire goes to GND.

Mistake here is catastrophic! Charlize will leave you forever!

Now you’ll love Charlize even more!

Yup! Charlize with air core inductors. Smoother, better clarity, improvement all around! At the loss of slight dynamics though, but if your speakers are sensitive enough, get this! We tried many inductors before stumbling on the perfect combo of inductance and damping factor. But there’s more to it! It had to be wound by virgins on a full moon’s night! Any other way, you’ll regret! (I tried winding some myself. It sounded fat at the bottom and thin at the top, just like me.) Since they are hard to come by these days (virgins), again we’ll do all the hard work for you. We have this ultra-cool vendor who can even wind inductors/trans in his sleep do all this.

USD90 (RM315) 

More wiring info for you.

Can’t find such a 3-way selector switch? Wire up a power switch, minus pin 1 of above selector. During OFF, Charlize will see less than 8VDC. She’ll be sleeping like a baby. When you toggle the switch, she gets 12VDC and she’s ready to sing!

Coming soon! Monica and Charlize invites YOU to a threesome!

www.diyparadise.com

The post charlize appeared first on diyparadise.

Improving Your diyparadise Products

Yeah! Improve your already awesome gear!

What?! Improve these already kick arse products!

Yeah baby, we are talking about serious kick arse here!

Let’s face it. No design is perfect, every design can be improved upon. If someone says his design is “blameless” or “perfect”, you know that person has been boozing too much. Or maybe he’s some salesman.

So on this page, I’ll try to list down improvements you can make to your diyparadise products.

Up the value quotient!

Improve sonics!

Get your friends jealous!

blah blah blah… Okay, let’s start.

USB Convertor

The easiest and best improvement will be to modify the SPDIF output stage. Right now this circuit consists of a simple TTL-SPDIF convertor. Just solder the primary of your digital pulse trans across the vias labeled SPDIF OUT, and solder the secondaries to your output RCA wiring. You could use the Newava Technology S22083 1:1 pulse trans, available from Digikey. Or the Scientific Conversion SC982-04.

The more observant among you will notice that the Newave is a 1:1 trans while the SC is a 4:1. By right, the latter is more appropriate as SPDIF output is only 0.5V so stepping down the signal voltage is correct but I never noticed anything wrong using the former. So rest easy and just do it.

I don’t recommend you getting a toroid and winding some wires and passing it off as a digital pulse trans. Just because you use silver doesn’t mean anything at all. These trans are engineered/optimized for digital communication, not some hack job.

Charlize and Charlize2

Believe it or not, we have done so much work to Charlize2 that if you have the first version, just go grab the follow up version! I’m sorry but you can’t mod your 1 to our 2. [hey, you can’t mod your wife to look like Charlize okay?]

Guess the best upgrade you could do is to try various power supplies and see which works best. In our opinion here, nothing beats a high quality rechargeable sealed lead acid battery. Have tried various makes and all sound different. Read Graham and Denise’s report here.

Rudolf Broertjes’ Solid State I/V Gain Stage

If you have been following the diyers forum, you may notice that Ronald Verlaan and later Ole Schüsseler suggested LEDs instead of diodes for D2/D4 and D10/D14.

Another useful tweak is SUPER E the output Black Gates capacitors. I know these caps are facing extinction so please grab them now while they are still available [please don’t ask from me. Oh well, if you have to, they are 1000 EUROS a pop!] You know folks like to say Less is More but in this instance, More is the way to go!

This gain stage runs off at 12V but at higher voltages, she sounds better! Please be careful here as the power supply capacitor C22 is rated 25VDC only. So make sure you don’t go higher. [I use 24VDC myself and she’s been singing for months.]

The I/V resistor could be swapped to your personal preference. Use whichever audiophile approved boutique part as you (or your wallet) sees fit. My personal preference here is the excellent Riken Gold but as these parts are no longer in production, I’m sorry I can’t give/sell you any. [that’s not true. i’ll gladly trade for gold bars.]

Oh yeah, measure voltage across the I/V resistor and adjust the trim pot for half of your power supply. If this voltage is too high/low, some roughness or distortion may be present. Not good!

Monica2

If you have installed the RB SS I/V kit, the above applies but also, utilizing lessons from the USB Convertor’s digital pulse trans tweak, put the trans at the INPUT. Yeah,

RCA Socket —> 1:1 digital pulse trans —> Monica2 PCB’s digital input

Use the recommended Newava trans above.

Again on the forum, another forum member esidarapyid, recommended polystyrene capacitors across VDD/GND and VREF/GND on the TDA1545A chip. This is another awesome tweak! As these are bypass capacitors, the values aren’t critical. I had good results from 100pF to 1200pF. Silver micas are great too!

Then Paul Needs contributed another awesome tweak here. Instead of referencing Vref to 1/2VDD, Paul suggested referencing to one diode drop, thus the last diode. To perform this tweak, remove the 22kohm resistor (labeled “223”) and solder as shown.

Don’t be a klutz and short other pins. As always, solder/desolder ONLY on an electro-static safe sheet/mat, like the anti-static wrapper that houses your diyparadise product.

Paul also suggested giving a bit more current to the constant current source. Currently it’s set at 50mA but Paul suggested going for 70mA. To do this, you need to have about 18ohms at R10 in above pic. If you are lazy to desolder R10 and solder in a 18ohm resistor, you could just parallel a 100ohm on top of the 22ohm of R10.

Use Whitesnake!

I have been using various DIY 75ohm coaxial cables and have been pretty satisified with them until one day Gabriel suggested this white-colour-unassuming-but-thick-as-garden-hose cable. It’s so thick that I wondered how smart can it be?

Sorry for lame joke. Anyway, I tried it out and… Wow! Totally smoked whatever digital cables I had before. It was so good that one customer even ditched his purchase of a USD200 cable.

USB Monica

Right now we have the Enhanced USB Monica, but if you have the previous version, you could apply the tweaks to the RB SS I/V stage and also TDA1545 circuitry. Actually the Enhanced version already has these tweaks done. See how luck you folks are?

Note that the polystyrene Paul Needs tweak is not done on your PCB version. Only in finished products. [please don’t ask me for polystyrene caps either. if you wish, i’ll exchange for 2 gold bars!]

Aha! Since she’s software controlled, you bet your software has an effect on her sonics too! I like Macs here, as well as Linux. I stay away from Windoze as much as possible…

My sincere thanks to these gentlemen mentioned above for their ideas, suggestions and generosity.

Please note that the finished products (or “Plug and Play”) incorporate all the above mentioned tweaks.

Hey! Aren’t we on a roll here? Let’s continue…

Use wood!

Wood chassis really sounds beter. Looks better too!

Hifi products tend to look industrial, coming in cold soulless steel or aluminium, with little touches of wood for a “touch of class”.

Pure bollocks. Try housing in wood chassis and listen for yourself.

Not to be discounted, nor under-estimated.

Having a good brew in hand.

Silence in the listening area. Give your wife your credit card and ask her to shop for hours! [be smart. call the credit card company to cap a limit first!]

Great music. Please, not those audiophile crazy, sound effect mumbo jumbo junk passing off as music. I mean MUSIC! REAL MUSIC! You should be able to make an emotional connection with the music. Listen, appreciate, emphatize, celebrate… And stop all that analyzing shit. See, there’s “anal” in “analyze”.

Lastly, as with all diy projects, please exercise caution, especially with electro-static discharge, when performing these tweaks. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. The soldering iron is mightier than the pen/sword. But this doesn’t mean you could wield it like crazy. BE CAREFUL.

Good luck!

Improving Your diyparadise Products – Part 2

a. k. a.

How I Made My Friends Shit in Their Pants!

Oh yeah! If you did all the mods above PLUS these mods :

Bad Naughty Connector

Have never been a believer of cables and connectors but done right, with technical backing, I certainly ate the humble pie!

Powering Your Monica

Clean power, like clean water, is still the best.

I bet your friends will shit in their pants when they come over to listen to your system!!!

The post Improving your diyparadise products appeared first on diyparadise.

Experiments with powering Charlize (and then Charlize2) showed what a big sonic improvement different power supplies could bring.

Thus, I was trying the same with Monica3. Tried various switching power supplies, built a linear supply, built/evaluated/listened-till-ears-bled up to 3 types of regulators but I’m still unhappy.

Sure, Monica3 never fails to bring a smile to my face but I want More! More! And More!

Just when I thought I should build more regulators and listen and evaluate some more (and in the process lose my sanity as well), a DIY friend showed me this link. MT Audio Design’s MF-2001".

Now from time to time, I’m always exposed to some really interesting ideas, thanks to the wonderful World Wide Web, but never had the luxury of time to build/execute/listen to these wonderful ideas. But since I’m working on Monica3’s power supply, I thought why not give it a try. After all, the idea is so simple yet makes so much sense!

Thus I got the trans wound. Note that this is a double bobbin design. More on this later.

And built a linear 24VDC supply for Monica3. I’m aware that the caps on Monica3 is only rated for 25VDC but my own Monica3 I have let her run at 25VDC for more than 6 months now and she’s still singing happily. The LM317 chip deserves a bigger heatsink though.

Now, this time, did I jive? More than that!

I was totally taken aback by how good this thing is! Flabbergasted! Smoking Catfish, this thing smokes!

Not only it expectedly cleaned up noise in the background, now I could play much louder than before and the system does not struggle with complex music any more. For example, when listening to choirs, with many voices singing simultaneously, it used to be hard to follow every individual voice, but not now! I even dared demo Carmina Burana’s "O Fortuna"!

This is so powerful I could even "see" into the details. When listening to one choir, I found myself saying,
"Hey you, kid in third row, fifth from left. I could hear you skipping two syllables. And when you sing, stand still! Quit swaying around!"

Ok, ok. This is what I built. Note that I didn’t even install any EMI/RFI filter at the input. There’s no regulation for 24VDC so I’m relying on the onboard regulators to work its magic. Both trans are specified as 30VA.

The key here is the first transfomer, the isolation transformer with a center-tapped secondary. I asked for 3 magic spells from the trans winder genie and this is what she gave me.

First, the trans took up any DC current prevalent in the mains supply, thus shielding it from the second trans.

Then with its lousy bandwidth (EI cores using "normal" grade iron), it is a noise filter. The fact that it is a double bobbin helps out even more. You see, usually the secondary windings are wound on top of the primary winding in a trans, usually separated by paper, but you can’t discount the possibility of mains stray noise coupling to the secondary.

With a double bobbin design, the primary is wound on one section of the bobbin, while the secondary is wound on another. Noise coupling between the two is greatly minimized. See how good an idea this is? I went the whole nine yards and had both trans wound double bobbin.

Thirdly, and this is the most important feature here. Common mode noise is filtered away due to the center tapped secondary. Now noise is, to some extent, easily filtered via capacitors and inductors etc but common mode noise is tough to beat as it’s "common", meaning it’s "everywhere". It’s prevalent at both legs of the transformer secondaries you see. Thus with the center tapped there, they both see a low impedance path to IEC Earth and thus "filters away".

Have I lost you yet? I hope not!

Anyway, this idea isn’t new. A search on Google shows many variations of this scheme with fancy names like "Balanced Power Supply" etc. As you can see, it’s nothing more fancy than just an isolation trans with a center tapped secondary. Well, add some EMI/RFI filters if you like.

What? Can’t find such trans? Well, the below version uses off-the-shelf transformers wired back-to-back. You could use 9-0-9 or even 12-0-12 as long as both trans’ are the SAME. The principle is just as sound but may work better due to even more levels of filtering. The optional capacitor provides an even lower impedance path for noise. Read this somewhere ago.

There you have it! Some simple and yet so effective. If you are macho, you should build one each for every gear in your system. One for CDP, one for DAC, one for preamp… Need to size the VA accordingly.

Feel free to build one yourself but if you can’t, let us build for you!

We even thought of a good name for this product. In line with our penchant for naming minor products after rock bands, you can’t go wrong with AC/DC!

The post Build a Cleaner Power Supply appeared first on diyparadise.

Return of the King! (or Queen)…

Way back in 2005, TNT Audio did a comparison between Charlize and other T-amps. And Charlize won the little virtual bout. Hey, we weren’t suprised. We tried a few Tripath chips before settling on the one that sounds best. Between then and almost 2 years later today, we have tried other offerings too, for more power but sad to say, though the power is there, the gracefulness isn’t. Okay, here are the major changes in this new Charlize: – No input coupling capacitor Save your precious moolah! Some time after we sent Charlize to TNT Audio, we then upgraded the input capacitor from Elna Cerafines to Non-Polarized Black Gates. But now, eliminating this cap improves the sound even further! Less component in your signal path leaves you closer to your music. [*sob*sob* yeo is going to lose out on mundorf cap sales. but hey, see what lengths we go for your sonics?] No turn-on ‘pop’ noise Yup, without the input cap, there’s no charging of cap during power up. Thus, no more “power up pop”. Just a soft ‘tick’ sound. Yeah, our girl purrrrrrsssss… Various tweaks Added some nice tweaks here and there to the new design that reduces electrical switching noise. Definitely not obvious to you but if we say there is so, then there is!

So why go through all the hoolah? The fuss? The work? The whole rigmarole?

For a more beautiful Charlize, you dummy!

How about better highs? More details? Hey, who wouldn’t welcome a more revealing Charlize into their homes?

Downside
After relaying the layout to go “cap-less”, there are 2 caveats with the new Charlize.

• No feeding her DC voltage okay? Previously there’s a cap there for this purpose but there’s none now, so don’t be daft and feed her some strange DC voltage okay? If you insist, and you get strange noise… brother, what are you thinking? Actually all properly designed gears shouldn’t give out any DC voltage at the output but we just said that didn’t we, “properly designed gears”.
• Charlize’s power supply has to be STANDALONE. Yup, don’t share her power supply with another girl, sorry, component, or ANYTHING at all. Even Monica. Yeah, Charlize is a bit fussy here. She must have her own power supply. I tell you, she’ll scream at you if don’t heed this advice.

There you go! Just 2 little caveats. If you pay attention to this, Charlize will reward you in spades! [Otherwise I’ll come to your house and clobber you with a spade!]

This is the part I do my sales pitch
Okay, back then when the TNT review came about, the only T-amps to use the TA2020 chip are Charlize, AMP6 from 41hz and Autocostruire 2020. But today, there are so many! You said “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”? Well Charlize is flattered!

If you look at Charlize’s competitors, they are mostly built using thru hole components rather than surface mounted components. What’s the big deal you may ask? It’s not a big deal if you love a higher noise floor. You see, we build using the more difficult-to-handle surface mounted components for sonic reasons and not for ease of manufacturing.

We still insist on using air core inductors, not ferrites. Hey, it’s a lot more work but it’s for your sonics okay?

Lastly, we heard that even after extensive mods on the competition’s offerings, Charlize still reigns supreme. And now the bar is raised with the NEW Charlize.

So why waste your time going for the pretenders when there is one and only one King around.

With apologies to Mr Tolkien, all hail the Return of the King! (or Queen…)

www.diyparadise.com

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When I first started out my site, I think it was pretty easy to navigate. Even newbies have no problems. Hoowever, as we grow bigger, with more stuffs on the site, I get many questions asking how do all these things link up together? There’s a Monica, there’s a Maggie and there’s Charlize? How do they hook up?

I’m partly at fault here. Though we assume the readers have some knowledge about audio, it is still, nevertheless, an assumption. There are definitely first time visitors, overwhelmed by all the stuffs.

So what should we do? Go back to basics!

At the very least, a hifi system for music consists of a Source, an Amplifier and your pair of Loudspeakers. Comprehende?

This is the most basic setup which almost everyone starts off with, but then slowly and surely, as we grow, we get nuts and begin acquiring more gears, segregating each components down to more components of very specific functions.

Source
As you could see above, your source could be a Turntable, CD player, Radio or a Personal Computer. Nowadays, it could even be a DVD player, Cable TV Tuner, MP3 player or your Ipod.

However, as you could see, it doesn’t just end like this. Not all Turntables come with phono stages, so you’ll need to get a Phono Preamp. Likewise with CD players, it could be separated into a CD transport and a Digital-Analog-Convertor. Monica is a DAC.

Amplifier
When we speak of just "an amplifier", we usually refer to an Integrated Amplifier. This could be separated into Preamplifiers and Power Amplifiers. Maggie is an autoformer volume control so we could wire her up as a Passive Preamplifier. Passive as there are no active components (requiring electricity to function) inside.

Charlize is an amplifier module which you could wire her up as an Integrated Amplifier, or just a Power Amplifier. In this case, the difference between the Integrated and Power is just a volume control. If you wish to use Charlize with Maggie, then you could wire her up as a Power Amplifier.

Is the above clearer now? Now the digital source could be a CD/DVD player, a Discman, our USB Convertor, Cable TV Tuner… anything that has a SPDIF digital output signal. Cool moi?

I hope all the above is clear to you now. This is how a hifi system is built, from various gears, each with its specific functions. From a 3 component system, trust our audiophile brethrens to break things down to even more components. Hey, no wonder these are toys for big boys!

As we break up the components further down, the above is said to be the "ultimate". Not only the functions of each components are broken down and segregated, the signal is also broken down to its specific frequency range. Now we have high, midrange and bass frequencies. More power amplifiers, more speakers!

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