Maximum DIY contents in the whole rig and never sounded this good….

[yogibear]

Today my rig has maximum DIY content starting from the DAC, F2a Tube amp driven by BEL ECC88, Book Shelf speakers, and IC cables, speakers cables and it never sounded this good. Perfect clean, smooth sound….

(Last 10 years of non stop DIY finally pays…)

 

[heliumflight]

DIY = Satisfaction

 

[yogibear]

DIY = You know inside out of your creations and what makes them sing beautiful music at a fraction of cost.

 

[bornfi]

No video this time?

 

[yogibear]

No video this time?

My phone has aged and recordings are far from actual rendition. Will borrow and try to record and share.

 

[yogibear]

Been busy building my first 300B / 6A3 amplifier. Here is a clip. Single mono block playing:

 

[yogibear]

Finally, a full DHT chain from tube rectified DHT preamp to 300B monoblocks. Music never sounded this good, relaxed, full details and dark dark background.

 

[yogibear]

A small clip:

 

[yogibear]

Next addition to my collection: F2a SE driven by 6N23P, makes 10-12 watts per channel. Glorious sound ! My first attempt ever, to extract so many watts from F2a without sacrificing frequency bandwidth and Sonics.

 

[yogibear]

Next addition to my collection: F2a SE driven by 6N23P, makes 10-12 watts per channel. Glorious sound ! My first attempt ever, to extract so many watts from F2a without sacrificing frequency bandwidth and Sonics.

View attachment 85462

View attachment 85463

Experimented with different tubes (direct replacement) at driver stage. Most interesting finds were 6N2P / 6N23P / ECC88. (7308 is way to expensive). Very interesting finds. With each tube the amp wonderfully caters to different speakers, be it warm, bright or neutral. There is hardly any noticeable change in gain or power delivery.

 

[yogibear]

300B finally tuned and playing with perfect centre image, excellent bass extension and an indefinitely wide soundstage.

Making mirror imaged monoblocks was harder job….

 

[rwnano]

What your experiments mean sir - is that DiY has the best bang for the buck! DiY speakers for sure, unless you are making something really tough to get the woodworking right of, like transmission line speakers.
DiY amplifiers - yes - provided you can get the safety mechanisms right - like "protect mode" if your wires in the amplifier accidentally touch.
DiY - especially using some good drivers - like SB Acoustics Indonesia - will give the best bang for the buck. RAAL ribbon tweeters as well.
Can experiment with serial style crossovers instead of parallel.

 

[yogibear]

What your experiments mean sir - is that DiY has the best bang for the buck! DiY speakers for sure, unless you are making something really tough to get the woodworking right of, like transmission line speakers.
DiY amplifiers - yes - provided you can get the safety mechanisms right - like "protect mode" if your wires in the amplifier accidentally touch.
DiY - especially using some good drivers - like SB Acoustics Indonesia - will give the best bang for the buck. RAAL ribbon tweeters as well.
Can experiment with serial style crossovers instead of parallel.

Yes, I know inside out of my designs. With custom wound iron for each and every build, I hit the “bulls eye” of sonics. Wide free response, low THD, IMD, excellent dynamics, super wide soundstage and incredible imaging. Vocals are smooth yet detailed. I don’t know what listening fatigue is.

Chances of shorts etc are minimal as my layout is long lasting and very reliable for next many years or even decades. I would rather be interested in knowing the cause of anything fails over time, though it’s yet to happen with a build.

DIY requires unlimited patience and efforts and is not cheap but for me getting same quality from off shelf would be quite expensive. Four more interesting amps planned this year and next year would be devoted more to speaker building, mostly horn setups.

All done already in parts, but measuring and crossover designs, something I have not done seriously and extensively. So more learning and new skills…

 

[yogibear]

 

[yogibear]

Fired the double triode SRPP Tube preamp today driving F2a amp. The preamp is 6AX5GT tube rectified and double triode is 6GF7, comes recommended by Thomas Mayer for line level preamps.

 

[rkumarblr]

Wow amazing. Are you playing Vinyl or from the laptop. Have you built or used a streamer and if so are you able to play lossless and Hires audio ?

 

[yogibear]

Wow amazing. Are you playing Vinyl or from the laptop. Have you built or used a streamer and if so are you able to play lossless and Hires audio ?

Would venture into vinyl soon…

Just playing lossless through JRiver or streaming through Spotify premium.

DAC is ECDesigns BX Power R with my own custom designed power supply. Windows 10 laptop optimized for windows.

I guess ample choices now for streamers. Eversolo A8 seems to be great choice.

 

[rkumarblr]

Thanks for the response. I use an Eversolo DMP A8. Yes it’s a great streamer can more importantly allows me to stream Apple Lossless music.

 

[yogibear]

Latest build: 6BG6 SE, no feedback, 5 watts per channel of glorious sound. Driven by 6N2P-EV. Fully dual monoblock design.

Biased for very long tube life. One interesting feature is: once 6N2Ps run out of steam (after many years), just flip them between two channels and they are good for another long run.

 

[rwnano]

No feedback and dual monoblocks sounds like a great recipe for awesome sound