Music – Page 2 – Bartola® Valves

Starlight Discrete DAC Festival – London 2014

Jon’s ESL 6C4C drivers

Oh, are you taking a picture?

Bipolar discrete DAC ready

Final adjustments to the bipolar DAC guinea pig!

It never goes as planned

One hand is never enough

Jonathan’s Ti48 + DAC

A lot was already said about this fantastic day at Jon’s. The Starlight CD + Discrete DAC festival didn’t go as planned but we had a wonderful time. I had the chance to bring my own Starlight and sounded nice in Jon’s system despite the ground loop issue. Not clear what it was, despite it played well at low AVC levels but not when volume was increased. Perhaps was the load? Anyway, lots of tests from differential DACs to cathode follower outputs and Tom’s bipolar version.

I have to admit that the transformer coupled DAC sounded very transparent and detailed. The valve output gave a warmer tone and even harmonic contribution. The 6N1P implemented as cathode follower was very well received.

Tom’s bipolar DAC implementation is very promising. Clearly the tiny DC bias saturated the AVC and bass wasn’t good. Once we added the coupling PIO it came back to life with a subtle sound I enjoyed very much. Some challenges aside with the ESL resonances which I hope Jon can sort out soon.

Food and hospitality were superb in another unusual warm September day.

Most of all, a great day with fantastic company.

Thank you all

Ale

Starlight CD transport and discrete DAC finished!

After an incredibly long journey I’m glad to say that is nearly over. The Starlight CD transport (I2S output and 4x oversampling) with its discrete DAC sounds absolutely amazing. Getting back to play my CDs is what I was cherishing for a long time. I will be bringing my +500 CD collection from my previous home soon so that would be perfect timing.

I promise to write up a proper blog entry with a full description of the learning experience. For now, I will just sit down and relax. Listen to many CDs and enjoy!

All the acknowledgements and thanks go to Tom Browne for this fantastic design and all the help provided throughout this journey. I think this is the Starlight number 20 or so built so far. Not sure if there are other ones being built anyway. Also my thanks go to Jon Finlayson for his help on the DAC boards, Richard for the UI stuff and to Tony for inspiring me to give it a go…

Testing Robustiano

Mono listening session, sounds good!

I hate metalwork

Don’t you?

Listening to the new RIAA phono stage

It’s been some time since I built my JFET shunt-cascode RIAA MC stage. I have listened to several well know records for some time with this phono stage in my system and others. I took it to the London Circle Audio meeting recently and it was very well received by most of the circle members. I even had some requests to build units!

Now I can say that it’s completed. Albeit I haven’t built the charger for the lead-acid battery pack, it sounds fantastic and has great autonomy. Long gone days were I was recharging my NiMH pack! Now I can relax and enjoy music without worrying about charging the batteries now and then. I haven’t measured the voltage across the battery cells so far.

More lasting than bronze – John Coltrane

Usually I play my John Coltrane records. Not just because I personally find Coltrane to be one of the best musicians ever existed on earth, I have some specific songs I use for testing. When I was younger, I used to listen for hours the same Coltrane records when learning saxophone. I was keen to listen to every single detail on the phrases, solos and arrangements of the Quartet, Quintet or the Sextet formations. As a sax player, you learn many solo parts, tunes and you know by memory every expression made when blowing the horn. If you don’t have any Trane’s record or even you haven’t heard any of his compositions, I urge you to seek his wide and bast repertoire. From “Love Supreme” to “Giant Steps” and many other gems. Several years ago when I started to rebuild my vinyl collection here in London, I found this excellent compilation of Coltrane: “More lasting than bronze“. It’s a great sample of Coltrane’s music. I use it to test my system. The horn bass notes, the pulsed bass, drums and pianos have a great level of dynamics and detail I constantly listen to. It grabs my mind and takes me to another planet. That is music, more lasting than bronze…

Building your own interconnect cables

I’ve been struggling for some time to find an affordable interconnect cable choice without falling into the trap of the ultra-expensive hi-fi commercial cables. In the end, an interconnect cable has to provide low capacitance, low resistance and proper shielding to protect our desired signal from external noise. We don’t need exotic cables or connectors to achieve this. Ideal dielectric is air, but is not practical build cable using air as dielectric 🙂

Continue reading “Building your own interconnect cables”

Starlight Discrete DAC

Resistor ladder soldered. Now it’s time
For the Logic ICs….

Mood

It’s been a long and wet winter. I barely gone out as it was always pouring down buckets of water. Spring is coming, and with that the mood of everyone is changing. A time to enjoy the open air and play music that cheers us up. New project and challenges. but for whatever reason is, I tend to play a different set of records when the weather is good. Can the british weather affect us so much?

I’m really looking forward to the good weather and for the summer to come, oh yes…

The least we can do…

I recently found a pristine copy of a great record from Van Der Graaf Generator: ” the least we can do is wave to each other”. If you don’t have a copy, I urge you to explore VDGG’s repertoire. Impressive stuff. I was a big fan on my early days of playing saxophone. I was blown away by Jackson, but it was Peter Hammill’s lyrics and music that grabbed all my attention. Still today it does.

And so I did have the great opportunity recently to say hi and exchange some words with Peter when he presented his latest work with Gary Lucas.

London Audio Circle meeting March 2014

We had a terrific day at George’s on Saturday. Weather played in our favour and barbecue was on the agenda. I’m not looking to review a fantastic day with the circle members on this post, but just to capture a moment of this day with Susan Parker fitting her new cartridge on George’s Audiomods arm. I contributed with my Phono RIAA stage which was very well received (I think) despite the hum picked up by George’s system unfortunately. Great records played though…

Thanks George for the hospitality and a great day with friends.

Susan’s cartridge grabbed all the attention this day. I wish I could afford it!

Cheers

Ale