donsachs
Responses from donsachs
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp The Raven will have no trouble driving an RCA output at the same time as XLR. This has been tested by Spatial. You should have no problem except that the XLR output is higher level than the RCA. That is as it should be. If your subwoofer amps ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @wsrrsw Also, yes, in my experience the streamer has a huge effect on things. So play around. The Raven will happily use RCA inputs, but your best performance will most likely be with a DAC that has XLR outputs. Then you have an entirely balan... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @wsrrsw It will not be the amps unless something is wrong with them or you have a bad tube. The easy test is to move them to your other system. Your Sonus are 86 dB, 4 ohm. Not the best load, but the blackbirds will drive them and that will tell ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp To further the transformer discussion. We don't need to name companies, but many take a sort of swiss army knife approach with multiple windings that allow for many connection schemes. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But they are not... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp The transformers in the Raven preamp and Blackbird amps are all custom designed to work perfectly with the tube sets chosen. They don't require loading resistors, and there is no need for a grid resistor on any of the tubes. The number of parts ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @jc4659 I know Spatial runs the tubes at least 20 hours before they send things out, just to weed out any failures. A 6SN7 is pretty well run in by 20 hours. Yes, there are subtle changes in them out to 50-100 hours, but most of the sound is t... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @jc4659 Glad it arrived safely and fired right up. Thanks for your initial impressions! It will become more 3D, with more sound stage depth and pinpoint imaging as it runs in for another 50-100 hours. Tone colours will become more vivid as wel... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @brbrock It is a cumulative thing. Especially if your source is a DAC with balanced output. The Raven will happily communicate with all things RCA on both input and output. The gain is slightly less because XLR is a 5V swing and RCA is at most ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp The Raven requires a 6sn7 tube on each channel that has matched sections. Really, a difference of 1 mA is no big deal, but tubes with wildly mismatched sections will not have good bass response. Any modern 6sn7 you buy will have sections within ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @marantz2270 No. The Revelation preamp and the Blackbird amps both preserve phase. So just hook them up straight. | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp What Lynn said is very audible. Both the Raven preamp and Blackbird amps use this approach to power supply and balanced circuits. Once you start listening to circuits built and powered this way it is very hard to go back to conventional approac... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @charliee The damper diodes are extremely tough, they are very quiet, and we are running them VERY conservatively. They have tons of headroom and will last a long time. That, and you can buy lots of them for very little money. So a customer can ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @jc4659 Well, it's ok to post an initial impression:) But then please follow up with the 20+ hour report. You get most of it within 20-30 hours, but there are subtle improvements out to 100 or so as the big cathode bypass caps run in. Most of... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp I have word from Spatial that the next batch of 5 Ravens is in production, so those folks awaiting builds should have them pretty soon. Then some of you can post your impressions here! It will be good to know how people like the preamps in a var... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp Indeed the signal path on both the preamp and amp is very simple. That said, the power supplies supporting it are rather complex and they are kept well away from it. Also, the preamp output transformer and amplifier interstage transformers took ... |