OK so I've now got two pairs of headphones and I would like to get an amp. It's probably overkill for the Beats by Dre, as I find them enough for drum and bass (currently blowing out my drums with Two Bad mice)... Any way, I would prefer valve/tube and have seen a few kits on Ebay. I'd also like to make it myself if I can.. So what's good these days? I don't mind ordering from Hong Kong/China, as I wouldn't mind saving the 30-50% mark up added here in the UK and don't mind waiting a few weeks.. How are the Fiio or whatever they're called? I only really want it for my classical music and old stuff (my avatar is Cole Porter, I'm a huge fan of his and love his musicals as well as his sung songs.. The man was a bloody genius..)
I have an Aune T1, you don't get to put it together yourself, and it cost £115, but I'm pretty happy with it.
So is this portable on the move amp i take it? there is a number of good FiiO headphones amp. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=FiiO amp personally really like the FiiO E12, but its not small. FiiO E06 is small cheap and capable. Or go JDS, top quality stuff and open source. and if you dont want to buy pre-built you can build your own from them like you said you'd prefer: http://www.jdslabs.com/store/ Maybe worth a look here: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1393599/enable-usb-audio-on-any-android-4-0-smartphone-tablet/60
I've got an E07K that I've only owned for maybe 2-3 months and I love it. It is a bit big for "portable" use, and a bit too big to use when running, but I can easily use it with my laptop on the go, and for longer commutes I don't mind having the "brick" in my pocket. A lot of people on headfi said Fio's are a great intro into amps and dacs, and their products are reliable and a sort of "jack of all trades".
I have a couple of old Blackberrys sitting here so hopefully they'll be louder than my phone.. My Android phone was only £59 for a dual sim 3G 4.2.2 so I guess something had to give.. I'm currently charging a 8900 Curve which IIRC had a really loud output, so hopefully no I won't need it for on the move. I certainly don't want it for the Dre, as they are obnoxiously loud and bassy as it is, I was more hoping it would make things sound nice and warm.. So, it's not for portable no, hence the valve/tube wish As I said I've seen a few Chinese ones that are the same as the ones here only 30-50% cheaper. One of them even came with a spare valve.. IE - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LITTLE-BE..._HomeAudioHiFi_Amplifiers&hash=item461ca8841c Note - non bumrape UK price.
Tube amps are pretty expensive because of the technology; you'd be lucky to find a Tube Amp/DAC for under £100. But Fiio's E06 is a great starter DAC, though.
The one I posted above is a tube amp mate. They're extortionately expensive in Britain yet in Hong Kong they're much cheaper. I just wondered if any one had any experience with them. Well I got out my old Blackberry Curve and charged it. I refurbished it (at a total cost of about £5) and it has an Otterbox.. Plugged in the phones and got a warning that the device is loud and could cause hearing damage. They aren't kidding ! audio wise it batters the absolute crap out of my 5" Android phone. It also sounds much better from a quality perspective. So that's the mobile situation sorted. It looks nice too, given it's got a gold case on it with the Otterbox Threw in a 2gb memory card too. So, I want a non portable valve/tube amp now. I may just order the one from China. Might run the valve part numbers through Google to get an idea of how they sound (the listing explains that he does different valves and they sound different..)
This thread got me quite interested. So I googled around for fun little amps that I could make, there are some kits on ebay for valve amps (not headphone, but integrated amps) - after I looked up a bunch of those, I then googled about trying to find some people who had made them - and of all the people who made them, they had to replace most of the parts with decent parts before the sound was nice. So if you get one of the china ones, maybe consider at least changing the capacitors as I think they ones that come in the kits are not very good. I think I am going to get one of the little bear pre amps and/or headphone amps - just for messing about and they are not massively expensive. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Little-Be..._HomeAudioHiFi_Amplifiers&hash=item461c6f25c3 - this headphone amp http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Little-be..._HomeAudioHiFi_Amplifiers&hash=item461bd7b309 - this pre-amp. Will probably order them at the end of the month. Thanks for getting me inspired to do some fun things
No worries man ! yeah I would rather make it myself if I'm honest. Just been playing with my Blackberry and it's now detected and enabled Audioboost. Tell you what, it's very impressive. Equally as potent as the driven output on my XFI Fatal1ty FPS. I've got another Blackberry sitting around too hehe. But yeah, deffo think I'll order me that £35 amp. Will probably make a new shell for it too, still got a chunk of 3mm acrylic left over
I do have a full valve integrated amp at home - I think it has 14 valves, but the whole thing needs a overhaul, mostly needs rewiring, so I am leaving that one on the shelf still for a while as I don't want to give it a go until my skills match those required to do said overhaul! It's from the 60's and in it's original state still, it does work, I just think it could work better if redone.
Many years ago I used to have one of these... I worked for Rogers between '94 and '96. They were based in Surrey.. I left for health reasons, but soon after the company was closed and sent off to Japan (a Japanese company bought us out, slowly ran us into the ground and then moved it overseas.. Crafty gets..) Any way, when it closed they hired a clearance company to clear the place out. I knew the place inside out, and, knew what was kept where. So what we did (me and a mate of mine who hadn't worked there) was hang around as they were clearing it out and bung them £50 here and there to pass the stuff to us rather than putting it in the skip. IIRC at one point I had about £50k worth of audio equipment. It wasn't just amps and speakers either, I had about ten sets of Crystal link RCA cables worth over £200 a set lol. Good times. Thing is, once you own an amplifier of that prestige and quality you'll forever chase your tail trying to replace it. I had to sell it as I was shipping out to live in the USA. Gutted. Hindsight eh? what a bitch. Had I known things wouldn't work out I'd have just packed the bloody lot into storage. hehe just found some pics. Here is two sets of Crystal links I used in my Tiburon (car) Hmm, Phoenix gold.. My old sub. Bye Kicker, hello second PG (a legend, 1/2 ohm nearly a kw out of a 20w amp pmsl.. Heavily modified though !) My old system (the E40a in action..) I gotta say, looking back I feel really sorry for my neighbours. That sub actually shook my nextdoor neighbour's best crystal glasses out of the shelf and broke them all. Still, revenge for the time she forced her push bike past my Vespa and destroyed the paint on the side engine panel ! Sorry for the spam. Photobucket eh? holds many old photos hehe.
was that little cerwin vega a scoop? looks to be a little scoop sub. I used to live with a couple of speaker builders - they built reggae/dub sound systems though. 15" and 18" scoops basically haha, and occasionally something to play some sort of mid's and highs. I bought some CV 15" mid tops (if you can call them that) about 2 years ago - i think I paid about 500 quid for them, took me ages to muster up the courage to actually put the order in, and I did, the money went out of my account, I was pumped - then they emailed me to tell me that there was a stock issue and the website was lying as they had none in stock. The money got refunded back into my bank and i've never been in the position again where I've had a spare 500 quid to buy some speakers. Gutted I was. In hindsight I'm quite glad, as I've got a pair of NAD monoblocks now, which I am in hunt of a pair of Ditton 25's or 44's to mate with - and then I think my sound system will be perfect. I really want a set of 25's.
It's a trapezoidal folded horn. Basically there is a small sealed enclosure, then it projects the sound through the horn and out the front. It looks small, but it was over 1m high and over 1m deep. It was built using the plans for the T-36 Intense.. Pic. I put an 18" mobile Stroker sub in it (over a grand..) that was wired to 2 ohms. Powering it was a Soundmaster 2000VZ running at 2 ohms 2000 w. If you look on the bottom shelf you will see an amp with a perspex top. Look toward the back and you will see two blue caps, they were the size of a baked bean can Here is how the horn works... That was the folded horn I built for my car. I love how they sound, similar to a band pass because they filter out everything but the lows
Different words for the same thing That's what I was meaning. I love scoops, they play so low. I like living with the speaker builders, as I got a matched pair of 15" Fane drivers, which I put in a HH customs cabinet and made myself a tremendous sounding 15" cab for my bass stack, with a spare driver to boot Actually, scoops might be a bit different, with a front facing driver mounted in the top bit, with a folded horn behind it.
Scoops have the front of the speaker direct radiating & the rear through the horn, folded horns have the driver enclosed and project a lot further
Horns tend to use a tiny enclosure in a large surrounding shell. If you look at the T36 you can see how the sealed part angles in. It keeps doing that to literally surround the woofer shape. The sealed part was tiny, and all the way through the build (it took three days and 2.5 8x4 ft sheets of 3/4 MDF) I was questioning how the heck it could ever drop bass, being that the sealed part was so tiny. But man that bugger threw sound like you would not believe. I used to sit in the opposing diagonal corner of the room and even at low volumes the bugger would literally shake the brains in your head lmao. I used to know several of the top bods at Cerwin Vega. Even had a phone call with the man himself (Gene Czerwinski). That's how I used to get my blueprints hehe. They were the most amazing company and the most amazing bunch of guys. I explained my situation to them (IE I don't have grands) and how I used to blast my music all day.... So what did they do? lol they used to send me recones and parts for nothing. I had several Tshirts, banners.. At one point I got done for noise pollution and the council took my stuff.. So they just sent me more two day fed ex hahaha. Happy days ! though I'm glad PCs are my autistic obsession now as it's less risky
my old housemate had his rig seized after I lived with him. It was funny, as, they used to live 5 minute walk from my house, and whenever I walked past the end of his street, I could hear his house which was in the middle of the street - one day it stopped, and I later found out it was because his rig was seized. It was MASSIVE though, and pretty antisocial using 10k odd sound system in your house to listen to tunes!
Yeah pretty much sums it up. At the time I had a enclosure that was nearly 5ft high with two CV XL 18s in it. You could hear it about half a mile away. Loud music is funny really. When it's you and you are sitting in it you don't realise just how far it travels. When I first built the Stroker into a box I put it in a near on 26,000 cubic inch box. Now that's big.. To give you an idea.. IIRC the front of the box was around 24" x 24". It was then about 4.5ft deep. There was a friend of mine that lived across the street from me about five doors down and I managed to crack one of his windows. It was a 60's crittle window so the glass was literally mounted into a metal frame but still, mental. The box it was in was built using plans drawn up by a guy called John Fairchild who was the top bod @ CV. Digging through my Facebook I've found the alternate plans, drawn and written out by the man himself. The box is pretty much identical to mine, only this is the one better suited for clubs rather than all out warfare lol. The port layout was the same on mine. That was hard to build I'll say that much. Edit.. 21500 cubic inches lmfao.
