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In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: Valve Preamplifier for Macondo/DSET
Post Subject: Me too...Posted by anthony on: 8/9/2020
 rowuk wrote:
I am always a bit hesitant to buy into "listening descriptions". I am a musician and am confronted every day with Sound bias - attraction to what we are accustomed to, expectations being confirmed. We are creatures of habit and modifying old habits is a very big deal.


Me too.  I have attempted to "reset" my expectations in regards to this preamp several times now.  Truth is that I was not expecting it to be so successful so early.

Today has been a day away from audio on the farm.  Two hours drive each way and a whole day chasing cattle has been invaluable time to think about the situation.  I have been trying to think of ways in which the sound was deficient yesterday with the 10y in play.  You see I had some friends visit yesterday afternoon, and my family were away last night so we spent a lot of time listening to music and talking about it and catching up with a few beers and single malts.  It was a wonderful night and the sound was magnificent.  

The breadboarded amp is not perfectly laid out, some of the wire loops near the tube are too large, power transformers could be a little too close together, nothing is shielded, the B+ power supply is not my ideal choice being regulated but was selected because it was very easy to adjust the output voltage and has very low noise and output impedance, I've not experimented with any capacitors, haven't even matched the 10y pair in use.  There are probably a number of other things wrong with the setup.  You see, this was the first step...sounding to see if something good could come of the venture...but it has already achieved more than I expected.  

One of the things that I wonder is whether I would be so enthused about it in a different system than DSET\Macondo?  Kind of a moot point really, because that is the sole purpose of this preamp with special considerations to make it especially suitable, but really, would it work so well elsewhere?   At one stage we wanted some music from Tidal and streamed it on another lesser dac, it was quite disappointing, so I think the situation may be less the 10y adding some kind of special sauce but simply the 10y competently driving the DSET and allowing my best dac to shine.       


 Romy the Cat wrote:
  The 10Y preamp is not another league but juts a proper architectural solution for your system configuration.


^^^ this.  After yesterday and last night I am more likely to concur.  The 10y might add a little special sauce, but in this situation it may not prove to be much at all, and if it does then it is working for me at the moment.

My understanding of the Bartola hybrid mu-follower boards is that the DHT does the amplification, a SS mu-follower provides an almost ideal anode load, and that the output is pseudo push-pull from the mu-out of the SS mu-follower with output impedance set by the chip in the said follower.  The mu-follower has quite a high PSRR and I am currently using what sounds like quite a competent B+ regulated supply with a lower output impedance than is likely to be possible with tube rectifiers or non-regulated supplies.  The system sounds like it has boundless energy when required and good resolution all the way from the lowest bass notes up past the midrange.

At the moment it all sounds so 'right'...no obvious deficiencies or inadequacies...and that may be because I am still in the honeymoon period and have been caught a little by surprise at how much more enjoyable the music has suddenly become.  Time is required to properly understand what I am hearing and apart from trying a few more simple things as discussed earlier in the thread, am considering boxing up the preamp and perhaps returning to it once Macondo is complete and tuned into the room, and once I am able to digest where and how I would like things to improve.

 Romy the Cat wrote:

About the YO186 in the 10Y preamp. Most likely you will have better and softer bass, in my language “softer bass” is a positive thing. I do not think that YO186 will be able to beat 10Y. It would be very interesting battle but do not forget that 10Y and YO186 have own character of how they react to operation points, power supplies, type of bias and zillion other things. Good lack to spend next year of your life to investigate all of it, I mean nothing negative, I just mean that it all takes time to discover methodologically honestly.
 


Bass is deliciously soft at the moment with the 10Y, particularly at night when the power is better.  Still though, the YO186 will be an interesting test.

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