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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…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

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Tripath – Class T Amp

The sad thing about audio is that, over the last 50 years, we have not seen much innovation. Amp circuitry is still variations of the same circuitry used years ago. The unsuspecting public may think that paying loads of moolah for a high end marque is justified as “these firms spend a lot of resources for R&D” but what R&D do you see? Maybe I’m blind but all I see is cosmetic audio jewellery like stainless steel chassis, boutique binding posts, blue LEDs… Better material have been used for passive components but the heart of the sound — the circuit — hasn’t seen much change. Why heck, my hairline and waistline has seen more changes in the last 5 years!

However, one of the very very few innovation(s) in amp designs that I could think of is switching amps. Initially, it didn’t enjoy a bright start and was widely panned by the audio mainstream. But look at it today!

How I got hooked…
A few months ago, I was sent an amp kit from this super-nice guy, Jan Fredriksson. Now, in addition to running “The Thiele-Small Loudspeaker Database”, Jan also runs www.41hz.com and it is through the later that he sells this Tripath magic to us DIYers! By the way, Jan also asked me to try out his kit. Of course I agreed! I’m also a nice guy, remember?

I got the kit way back … err… October ’04 I think, but never got around to building it until late November. Now Jan has made it very easy for DIYers with his very nicely done PCB but you got to have steady hand, nerves and heart to solder all those surface mount components. If you have a cold, don’t start work! Once you sneeze… you won’t stand a chance finding those dastardly tiny components! It helps too if you have IPA to clean up solder flux. I had some problems with this. More later…

Now, the kit I was sent is the AMP1 kit with components. It consists of all those teeny weeny SMT components, their bigger through-hole brothers, connectors, the beautiful PCB and of course, the Tripath TA2022 chip. Size is just slightly bigger than a credit card and it packs a muscular 60W into 8ohm and 100W into 4ohm! And I thought only Mighty Mouse packs so much power into such a small package!

Tripath TA2022
You may ask why DIY when one can buy the Sonic Impact amp for USD20? Well, the Sonic Impact amp uses a different chip (TA2024) which gives up at ~15W. The Tripath TA2022 chip not only puts out more power (2x100W), it’s THD doesn’t rise as you increase the power (the smaller chip used in the Sonic Impact amp does). Why heck, just the TA2022 chip alone is more expensive than the Sonic Impact amp! Commercial amps like the Carver ZR1600 and the Bel Canto Design EVo 200.2, which retail in the USD1-2k range, use the larger 2x300W TK2350 which is also available from Jan in his AMP2 kit.

Read a comparison between the different Tripath chipsets here.

Detour
Have you ever failed a DIY project? You know, instead of beautiful music, all you got is a loud bang and lots of smoke? Well, if you experienced this before, welcome to the club!

I soldered all the SMT components without problems but when it came to building the +/-30VDC supply… I’m a big time charlie! I feel I should be running diy-green-horn.com instead. Yeah, I heard a loud bang! I saw smoke!!!!

For some reasons, I kept on having problems building the power supply. First I managed to get +30VDC, but when I built -30VDC, bang! Then as I debugged, I got -50V! Another bang!

After a while, I gave up [*shame! shame!*] and did the next best thing I could: seek help. And who else but our famous DAC Man! And our hero completed in just 2 days! And even drilled my chassis for me! So if you ever feel bad about not completing a DIY project, don’t worry, look at that idiot yeo guy!

Moving on…
Liew’s craftsmanship is evident here. Don’t think I can ever build an amp so neat like this. From R-L: 200VA trans, +30VDC and -30VDC supplies and the AMP1. Chassis is a tissue box made from Malaysian rubber wood. My pathetic attempt to be patriotic…

Here’s a picture of Liew’s test speakers feeling the full force of 60W.

Here’s a picture of my Coral Flat 6s, first time driven by more than 0.6W…

Other than building +/-30VDC supplies for me, Liew also helped me debug the amp. It was pulsing initially but Liew later discovered some solder flux seeped into neighbouring traces and caused problems. After desoldering those components, cleaning up the board with IPA, here comes music!

Okay, the sound?
To be honest, I’m suprised by how good it is. I’m sure most folks have read those reviews on 6moons.com and tnt.audio but nothing beats experiencing it yourself.

I’m suprised to find that it is very very quiet and has a dark dark background. Smooth, easy going and light on the foot, it also has a thickkkkkk midrange which should appeal to those that love “thick, warm” vocals. Tonally I can’t find anything obtrusive or irritating YET. But all this findings is preliminary as it has seen only 5 hours of play time! I believe this is enough to show how much potential this amp has! As it clocks more hours, I’ll let you know how it sounds.

Thanks to Jan for making this kit available to us DIYers and thanks for the excellent technical support!
Thanks to Liew for saving my arse!

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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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