atmasphere
Responses from atmasphere
| What Makes a Good RIAA or Line Stage? Hi Thom, I thought I ought to point somethings out. A phono section needs to be really accurate. Many seem that way, but are not as they add something in trying to be 'detailed'.I have found that high overload is a good thing. So our MC section ov... | |
| Balanced in phono stages preamp? Hi jh, the way differential amplifiers work is that ground is ignored. Our preamps are fully differential from input to output and so the ground is merely a shield- no currents are passed through it. This helps prevent ground loops.As I mentioned,... | |
| What Makes a Good RIAA or Line Stage? Hi Thom, having been in the business of balanced phono production longer than anyone else (since 1989- all the prior balanced phono circuit art were not *production* circuits) I can safely tell you that there is a lot of misconception brought out ... | |
| Balanced in phono stages preamp? That is simply not true. It is not required. A cartridge connected to a single ended input sometimes will hum with the ground connected and sometimes without. Sometimes the ground connection makes no difference.This is consistent with balanced ope... | |
| What Makes a Good RIAA or Line Stage? Ok- I have to clear up some misconceptions:To have true balanced, you need 3 signals. A reference level (return), positive polarity, and negative polarity. A cartridge obviously has only 2 pins per channel.The reality is, the pins of the cartridge... | |
| Balanced in phono stages preamp? All right, everyone, a little lesson about why all phono cartridges are balanced and how balanced operation works. Cartridges are balanced as they have 2 wires per channel, neither of which has to be tied to ground for it to work. Proof? invert th... | |
| Disconnecting speaker while power amp on - any dan Yes, if you have signal applied all bets are off! | |
| Balanced in phono stages preamp? -And since phono cartridges are balanced, it is actually surprising that balanced phono sections did not appear sooner! When we built the first one in 1989, we thought that someone had done it before us, as it seemed the logical thing to do. But a... | |
| What Makes a Good RIAA or Line Stage? The idea that power supplies somehow compare to engines falls apart fairly easily. What if you have large capacitances *and* tight regulation for example?In addition to excellent power supplies, a good RIAA section will be low noise with as few st... | |
| Disconnecting speaker while power amp on - any dan Zormi, The load becomes infinite when the speakers are not hooked up. Its OK as long as there is no input signal to the amp. If there *is* an input signal, some amplifiers can be damaged, both tube and solid state.So if you disconnect the speaker,... | |
| Preamp output voltage...affect on volume??? In addition to the output voltages being different (the headroom is there to keep distortion down at the levels you *do* play BTW) the preamps also have different *gain*. The two are not the same, although it sounds like the unit with the higher v... | |
| joule electra vs. atma-sphere any input? Hi Siddh, Thanks for the nice comments! The MkII.2 dates from 1999 to about 2003; we've come a long way since then and are now building the MkIII amplifiers. It might be worth your while to audition again when you get the chance- the MkIIIs are sm... | |
| joule electra vs. atma-sphere any input? Hi Siddh, which version of the MkII did you have? | |
| What phono preamps are balanced Hdm, you got it spot on. In fact almost all cartridges are balanced sources, not just MC. I think the old Decca that had 3 leads was the only one that was not balanced- even ceramic cartridges can be run balanced, and most of the BSRs, Garrards , ... | |
| What phono preamps are balanced Just thought you might be interested in some history:We introduced the first balanced phono preamp in 1989- the MP-1. It is also fully differential and was the first all tube preamp that was fully differential from input to output. The EQ is handl... |