donsachs
Responses from donsachs
| 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 ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp Let's just say that before building my own tube creations I restored probably 300-400 pieces of vintage tube gear, including about 75-80 citation II amps, over 40 citation I preamps, and many Scotts, Fishers, Sherwoods, Macs, Marantz 8b, etc... I ... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @grannyring The preamp, and the matching amps are point to point wired, yes. The tube sockets are all mounted directly to the top panel in both pieces. The only pcbs are there to hold large film capacitors to facilitate mounting them securely. The... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp You can make very nice xlr runs out of Duelund tinned stranded, but it is spendy these days and you are talking long runs. I use Paul's anticables in my system, but they are only 3-4 ft runs. If you are running 8-10 ft over to a powered speaker... | |
| Spatial Audio Raven Preamp @fthompson251 Lynn and I designed the Raven and I have lived with all the prototypes and final version for many months and it has all the tube things you like, but is far better than any tube preamp I have ever built or heard. It throws a sound c... |