Very brave of you James and a great result for you, well done! One question...will the final casings be bought in or will you stick with timber (just thinking of the shielding you'll get using metal casings)? The casings would of course require earthing if you go the metal route.
The difficult part (for me anyway) is going to be drilling the holes out for the IEC etc. With MDF is was easy. Any tips on how to cut irregular shapes out of the back panel greatly appreciated.
Those casings look superb James! Why not try a jigsaw with a metal saw blade for cutting the IEC space out. Start by drilling a hole a bit larger than the blade width, then insert the jigsaw and carefully saw to the required profile. You can tidy up the cut by hand using a fine file afterwards.
Well James? How are these amps? From what I am able to read on t'web, they are somewhere close to being the bestest amps in the world - what do you think?
Quick update to this thread. The other week I heard an Art Audio Quintet power amp in place of the nCore's in my system. To my surprise the Art Audio (valve amp) which outputs 30w or so really drove my speakers in a way I've not yet achieved with the nCore's. In comparison the nCore's sounded less punchy and not as enjoyable. Given all the praise that the nCore's continue to receive on various fora I can't help feeling I've got something fundamentally wrong with my build. Surely with 200w on tap and 24a peak current output the nCore's should be capable of greater slam than a 30w valve amp?
I've re-read the Hypex blurb and note that they continually state the risk of interference from running cables too close to one another. Think over the weekend I'm going to take my amps apart and reassemble them on a table with the components as spaced out as I can manage. Will also double check my wiring....something isn't right, unless of course the nCores and my speakers are a chronic mismatch.
Could be a mismatch I 'spose, but it would be quite epic as far as mismatches go. There's nothing to say a decent valve amp isn't simply better though. Or perhaps you just prefer it.
Forgive me 'Chews massive for I have sinned - I had very poor contact between the jumper cables and binding posts on my speakers. They must have worked loose when I've been experimenting with speaker toe in. I now have a very fine sound emanating from my speakers. I should also confess this is not just because of the Hypex amps. Yesterday I bought a Shindo Monbrison pre....now this would give Norman's Valve Amplification a good run for it's money :-h. Hypex power and a valve pre is a super combo.
Alan - Ignore my ramblings about the Hypex modules lacking dynamics. If you do eventually get some ,just make sure you connect the speaker cables to your speakers correctly and all will be fine
I heard each one of Norman's amps comes with its own personal Norman to do stuff like connect speakers and press play on the remote.....what a chore....the sooner ESP arrives in the land of hi-fi the better
Forgive me 'Chews massive for I have sinned - I had very poor contact between the jumper cables and binding posts on my speakers. They must have worked loose when I've been experimenting with speaker toe in. I now have a very fine sound emanating from my speakers. I should also confess this is not just because of the Hypex amps. Yesterday I bought a Shindo Monbrison pre....now this would give Norman's Valve Amplification a good run for it's money :-h. Hypex power and a valve pre is a super combo.
Alan - Ignore my ramblings about the Hypex modules lacking dynamics. If you do eventually get some ,just make sure you connect the speaker cables to your speakers correctly and all will be fine
Wassat den? A quick google looks really nice - we need some kind of review dude!
Dat's stuff wot's inside it dat is. Certainly doesn't look like airfix.
hi guys, im really interested in the hypex encore, imho they are one of the rising star in the amps world. And even i think im very happy with my actual amps, i would like to hear a side by side impressions between brumjam's ncore and some nva amps, for instance Alan's. I think it could be very interesting for all of us, don't you? ciao s
I've not heard Hypex amps alongside my TDSs, but I've heard @Jim's Hypexes a lot, admittedly, in a system that's quite different from my own.
To my ears, they don't have the subtlety, detail or grunt of the TDSs. But, as I've said many times, I'm so set in the groove of what the TDSs do so well, that after 20 years I haven't found anything I'd swap them for.
I can't remember what amps you're using these days, but maybe a Hypex/NVA A80 bake-off would be a realistic comparison? Or maybe the Hypex would win out there. It's many years since I've heard the black boxes.
Hi ugly, i have a series of NVA :-) : the tss mkII, a pair of mono a70, an integrated ap70 and the little one, the ap10p. But i want to underline that the hypex that have to be heard is the ncore and not the previous models (UCD and so on) because from what ive read the ncore are a giant leap in comparison with the previous models. ciao! s
TBH, I think Dave's TDS mk1 is significantly better in every way than the TSSmk2, so he is in a unique position. Not that I'm jealous, of course...
Jim's are UCDs, with linear power supplies. I thought they were tremendous VFM, even compared the NVA. Given the enthusiasm surrounding the NCore, which are way better than UCDs, I think they are a pretty safe bet. They wil very likely memasure better than NVA, and have a lot more power. Whether or not we might prefer them is another question altogether.
I would love to compare them too. I very nearly ditched the NVA rebuild recently for some NCores, but I didn't have the spare funds to ditch so many of the parts I had bought.
As I say, I think they are fantastic amps. And, with so few of them around, I am almost literally in a unique position :-) You should come over and listen to them with Col's Graphite loudspeaker cabling some day. I'm still at the silly grin stage, months after they arrived.
@brumjam Just out of interest, how much have your NCores cost? (This is where things start to look silly, I suspect).
Hope to have both amps up and running in their proper enclosures this weekend. Been too busy with work recently to do anything hifi related so looking forward to having a tinker (ooh matron).
Amps now in very nice cases but one of them doesn't work :-S. The only thing that's changed is new XLR inputs, so I'm going to swap the inputs over and see if this is the problem. Snowed with work at the moment so will be over the Xmas when I get to look at them again.
Both Hypex amps now up and running. No idea what was wrong with one of them. The faulty amp refused to play music but would send a burst of noise every few seconds to the speaker. My non-technical brain concluded it must have been a faulty connection on the XLR input (complete guess). After replacing the XLR plug, IEC socket, input wiring, binding posts the problem still persisted. So at this point I was tempted to throw the amp at the wall , but instead thought better of it and decided to swap the amp modules over between the two cases. I have no idea why this should have cured the problem but both amps are now working perfectly.
There's zero hiss coming from either tweeter when I have my DAC connected direct to the amps. There's a very slight hiss present when my valve pre is in the loop but that's to be expected. It's inaudible from my listening position though.
So tonight I have the rare opportunity to spend a good few hours comparing the following:
DAC >> Hypex monoblocks
DAC >> Shindo pre >> Hypex monoblocks
and.....
DAC >> Shindo pre >> Art Audio Quintet amp
All comparisons will be conducted in conjunction with a nice bottle of Sauvignon Plonk =D>
Comments
http://www.siliconray.com/catalog/product/gallery/id/1480/image/4336/
The difficult part (for me anyway) is going to be drilling the holes out for the IEC etc. With MDF is was easy. Any tips on how to cut irregular shapes out of the back panel greatly appreciated.
I've re-read the Hypex blurb and note that they continually state the risk of interference from running cables too close to one another. Think over the weekend I'm going to take my amps apart and reassemble them on a table with the components as spaced out as I can manage. Will also double check my wiring....something isn't right, unless of course the nCores and my speakers are a chronic mismatch.
Could be a mismatch I 'spose, but it would be quite epic as far as mismatches go. There's nothing to say a decent valve amp isn't simply better though. Or perhaps you just prefer it.
Hope you get somewhere now James. FWIW, I have to connect my speakers to my amps too. Seems to be some kind of 'requirement' for some gear...
Dat's stuff wot's inside it dat is. Certainly doesn't look like airfix.
Will start a separate thread on the Shindo.....it's tiny compared to the L300 that I had before. Far higher WAF.
And even i think im very happy with my actual amps, i would like to hear a side by side impressions between brumjam's ncore and some nva amps, for instance Alan's. I think it could be very interesting for all of us, don't you?
ciao
s
To my ears, they don't have the subtlety, detail or grunt of the TDSs. But, as I've said many times, I'm so set in the groove of what the TDSs do so well, that after 20 years I haven't found anything I'd swap them for.
I can't remember what amps you're using these days, but maybe a Hypex/NVA A80 bake-off would be a realistic comparison? Or maybe the Hypex would win out there. It's many years since I've heard the black boxes.
But i want to underline that the hypex that have to be heard is the ncore and not the previous models (UCD and so on) because from what ive read the ncore are a giant leap in comparison with the previous models.
ciao!
s
Alan, do you know what Jim's Hypexes are?
TBH, I think Dave's TDS mk1 is significantly better in every way than the TSSmk2, so he is in a unique position. Not that I'm jealous, of course...
Jim's are UCDs, with linear power supplies. I thought they were tremendous VFM, even compared the NVA. Given the enthusiasm surrounding the NCore, which are way better than UCDs, I think they are a pretty safe bet. They wil very likely memasure better than NVA, and have a lot more power. Whether or not we might prefer them is another question altogether.
I would love to compare them too. I very nearly ditched the NVA rebuild recently for some NCores, but I didn't have the spare funds to ditch so many of the parts I had bought.
As I say, I think they are fantastic amps. And, with so few of them around, I am almost literally in a unique position :-) You should come over and listen to them with Col's Graphite loudspeaker cabling some day. I'm still at the silly grin stage, months after they arrived.
@brumjam Just out of interest, how much have your NCores cost? (This is where things start to look silly, I suspect).
I'd be interested to hear them against other amps, so perhaps we can organise a bake off when I've put them in proper cases?
Let's see what we can do with the bake-off. I'd really like to hear the nCores.
I agree comparison would be interesting, but logistics would also be a problem.
Where are you based Sergio?
cheers
s.
Call me of you get really hacked off and want to move them on for the sake of your sanity (and a tenner)!