Sander de Waal wrote:


Just a quick note:

(Bruce J. Richman) said:

Stephen wrote:

Is there a circuit-designing statistical advantage to ICs?

If you want to go the easy way, yes.
All one has to do is to create a power-opamp, meaning an unit with
high input impedance, low output impedance, and high gain.
The amp's parameters are then defined by only 2 resistors.

Throw in a good power supply, and voila, a new amp is born.

Of course, this is a very simplistic view of how it's done, but
essentially it's just that.

And it's just as exciting as watching paint dry, note.
Every EE could do this in his sleep, you will note.

This is NOT an evaluation or judgement about the Gaincard amp, I'm not
familiar with this particular unit.

I'm serously considering the purchase of a rather expensive integrated
amplifier, but have wondered if the compromises involved - compared to
separates - are all that serious. For the particular brand involved, the
separates would be at least twice as expensive, offer no power advantages,
but
*do* feature Class A operation whereas the integrated runs in A/B. Both
their
integrated amplifiers and their power ampliiers regularly get accolades
from
many reviewers. The brand is Plinius. Comments are welcome.

When time permits, I'll do a search on this amp and be back to you.
In the meantime, I've spoken a fellow repairman who told me that ML
panels are prone to lose efficiency to up about 50 % after ca. 10
years. Yes Bruce, I'm still thinking swapping the CJ Premier 11 for
whatever other amp might not be such a good idea :-)

--
Sander deWaal
"SOA of a KT88? Sufficient."








Thanks for the useful information, Sander. I'm not making any hasty decisions
when it comes to amplifier swapping, even though at 70 watts/channel, the CJ
falls below what ML officially recommends for most of their speakers (80 to 200
watts). However, I know that the CJ is also quite stable, has fairly massive
transformers, and, when I first got the speakers several years ago, did not
seem to have any trouble in driving the speakers to very acceptable volume
levels.

I'm going to talk directly to the folks at ML in the near future before I make
any decisions. I'm also considering switching to Quads, in which case the CJ
would probably be an ideal match.

And of course, I'm aware of the fact that if/when I add a subwoofer to either
in the future, the demands on the electrostatics become less.


Bruce J. Richman