Should I buy a new amplifier; and if so, what?


I have a Mark Levinson 336 amp, Levinson 380S pre-amp, Levinson 390S CD Processor and Thiel 7.2 speakers, with Audience interconnects, cables cords and an Audience AR-6TS2 conditioner. Recently, my amplifier's bad caps blew the drivers in my speakers (including the woofer and crossover circuitry) -- that will probably cost me about $3,000, and the replacement of the caps would cost another $3,000. So, I am contemplating purchasing a new amplifier. Can anyone suggest a good amplifier to consider for my system? Thiel said they have used Krell and Simaudio with the 7.2's with nice results, and probably a few others -- I need to re-contact Thiel's customer service rep. Any suggestions, recommendations from Audiogoners would be appreciated.
gapperis123

Showing 2 responses by hifigeek1

The problem is..older amps use large single caps for plus and minus rail voltages. They take up a lot of space as well. Newer amps use many small caps in parallel to make up the large capacitance. The advantage besides size requirements is, small caps have less ESR (equivalent series resistance). This allows the smaller caps to rapidly deliver their current under transient conditions and recover quicker, which in turn makes the amp sound 'fast'. This is especially true in the bottom end i.e. slam.
You sound like an ad for CDE. Your assumption is that I was referring to a high quality capacitor. I wasn't referring to a super cap. Frankly the reason those caps are the price they are is because of the quality of the cap. Point is, many manufacturers are not going to be using caps like that much longer. They are too expensive and take up too much real estate and dictate the height of the product. Generally speaking, newer designs also use power supply caps at the output circuit board so they don't have to distribute voltage from the main filter caps through wires to the output transistors. This somewhat defeats the purpose of using a low ESR part especially if you're using 16-18 gauge wire in long runs, which I have seen. I'm not familiar with Levinson's circuit topology so I don't know what they are doing. Putting additional low ESR caps at the output circuit board is the best place to put them since you now have current delivery right at the point where it's needed the most, the high voltage plus and minus rails. These caps are also used as a 'by-pass' improving the characteristics of the main filter caps. I guess what I should have said was newer, less expensive, high quality, small value radial type caps can be just as good as expensive computer grade electrolytic's. When they are also located at the output transistor circuit board they enhance fast current delivery and improve bottom end performance. I stand corrected.