@danieljw
Thanks for sharing your measurement gear - this is truly a testament to this extreme design. You definitely need something dedicated to accurately measure this amp, my QA403 will not do!
Do you mind sharing the details of your 8 ohm load including the fancy resistor complement?
I imagine it will have to be very low in inductance so as to not induce any artificial distortion, my Parts Express 8 ohm sand cast 100 watt block is cowering in the corner.
Best,
Anand.
Thanks for sharing your measurement gear - this is truly a testament to this extreme design. You definitely need something dedicated to accurately measure this amp, my QA403 will not do!
Do you mind sharing the details of your 8 ohm load including the fancy resistor complement?
I imagine it will have to be very low in inductance so as to not induce any artificial distortion, my Parts Express 8 ohm sand cast 100 watt block is cowering in the corner.
Best,
Anand.
Yup.
Real Nice. State of the art even.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, power supply noise is the real problem. And by problem I mean makes an FFT graph look ugly. Put that same amp channel into your final use chassis, taking out those nice dedicated lithium supplies and measure again.
Exhibit A - 5w into 8 ohms, REW signal gen - E30II - Wolverine - E1DA ADC.
The PS noise is adding a combined ~20db above the noise floor. Not really a problem for me (amps dead silent on all my speakers). But maybe for 99dB+ efficient speakers. The HD in the graph is from the DAC and not the amp which is wild. But how to get a clean power supply? So far I've only read two amps do it, the benchmark ahb2 (SMPS - assume heavily regulated) and the topping LA90 (external PS). I cant even get cleaner with SMPS I have here.
I can see why its frowned on posting measurements like the above, its not a fair picture of what the wolverine is capable of. But its a more realistic picture of how the 99% of amps will be used.
Can someone start work on the wolverine of SMPS? Or linear PS even?
When I put my preamp on top of my poweramp I've get an instant noise increase from the speakers, so my pre is always positioned in a distance from the poweramp. With that in mind, one can only imagine the impact of one or two big toroidals sitting inside a poweramp. I think the solution is an external PSU.
This may decrease noise, but initially we want the PSU as close to the output stages as possible to get the full benefits from a big toroidal without longer wiring???
This may decrease noise, but initially we want the PSU as close to the output stages as possible to get the full benefits from a big toroidal without longer wiring???
It's not really about the position of your toroidal. Its about the position of your bulk capacitors relative to your amplifier supply rails.
Guy's to be honest your 100% best information source on the subject is Daniel's youtube video. His video wasn't just slapped together in 5 minutes. Careful study of Bonsai wiring bible and months of thought and testing went into the information Daniel supplied. Please check it out again.
Wiring your amplifier
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Hi Anand,
The test load is built with Vishay non inductive 10 Ohm 300W resistors from eBay. It is wired for 2 x 4 Ohm blocks series ~ 8 Ohm or parallel ~ 2 Ohm it is on a 350 mm x 150 mm x 50 mm heatsink. Wired this way to reduce inductance somewhat.
- Dan
I would like to give some feedback on Wolverine.
After a year of delays and with incredible help from Richard (thank you very much again!), I can play music. Had to connect the amp to DAC and laptop first as I continued to work on DCG3 pre by Salas. The current setup is suboptimal but even now I can tell straight away this amp is something I had never experienced before.
Effortless musical reproduction is how I would describe it. Previous test tracks like from Apparat (which used to sound muddy in mid-bass range on other gear) now have each instrument, and sound effect articulated and positioned within its own space, not bunched together. Thanks to all the designers, and testers
Brilliant result
Out of interest, any chance anyone can post their systems so I can get a reference point in terms of other components?
After a year of delays and with incredible help from Richard (thank you very much again!), I can play music. Had to connect the amp to DAC and laptop first as I continued to work on DCG3 pre by Salas. The current setup is suboptimal but even now I can tell straight away this amp is something I had never experienced before.
Effortless musical reproduction is how I would describe it. Previous test tracks like from Apparat (which used to sound muddy in mid-bass range on other gear) now have each instrument, and sound effect articulated and positioned within its own space, not bunched together. Thanks to all the designers, and testers
Brilliant resultOut of interest, any chance anyone can post their systems so I can get a reference point in terms of other components?
Hello Folks,
I am at the very start of my Wolverine build. I just received the diyaudio 5U chassis from Modushop. I have a question regarding the fabricated heat sinks for the IPS and Power boards. I purchased the EF3-4 boards. My question is can I use 3mm aluminum plate for all three of the fabricated heat sinks? I can source this material inexpensively in one go rather than ordering it, and then trying to source 1.6mm thick sheet from another supplier which is more expensive. I am aware that the thermal properties of the same material in different thicknesses is different. Please let me know what you think.
Many thanks,
John
I am at the very start of my Wolverine build. I just received the diyaudio 5U chassis from Modushop. I have a question regarding the fabricated heat sinks for the IPS and Power boards. I purchased the EF3-4 boards. My question is can I use 3mm aluminum plate for all three of the fabricated heat sinks? I can source this material inexpensively in one go rather than ordering it, and then trying to source 1.6mm thick sheet from another supplier which is more expensive. I am aware that the thermal properties of the same material in different thicknesses is different. Please let me know what you think.
Many thanks,
John
No, 3mm is to heavy and to wide to fit in the available space and to hang off the transistor legs unsupported.
I am currently using DIY Elsinore speakers and I have used various DACs and preamps with the Wolverine,Yep, thanks to you
Still, my question re what setup do you guys use with Wolverine? I mean speaker, DAC, pre-combo, if any
I know Richard has RME adi 2 and transmission line speakers.
Just curious
So far it has performed very well with low noise and sometimes less THD than the DACs!
- Dan
Totally your choice, I would look at the reviews which include measurements as well as use and listening.
Opinions are subjective, measurements are less subjective
Lets not get into subjectivism vs objectivism since it will deteriorate the sinad of this thread
In all seriousness we are lucky now since you can get a state of the art DAC/Preamp for obtainable prices now whereas a few years ago that was not possible.
Opinions are subjective, measurements are less subjective
Lets not get into subjectivism vs objectivism since it will deteriorate the sinad of this thread
In all seriousness we are lucky now since you can get a state of the art DAC/Preamp for obtainable prices now whereas a few years ago that was not possible.
Hello all,
Sorry for these questions, but got a little bit of an issue with building the boards.
I had some issues with power (using bench power supply ) on the IPS board (ver 3.8) , I think after setting the bias the - and + got messed up on the breadboard and since then whenever I have negative voltage the LED's D10 and D11 light up, but as soon as I give the board + power D12 and D3 come on but immediately D10 and D11 shut off. I had to replace Q12 and Q14 since they were shorted emitter to collector , as well as changing C3 since the cap was only reading 6uF instead of 10uF. The board still measures 5V across TP1 to TP2 even when the transistors were bad.
Everything else looks ok as far as I can tell, and the led's looked ok before when I put it onto the bread board previously. Just had a couple cooks in the kitchen and got things messed up a bit. The picture is with both the + and - voltage at 25 V and .005 amps.
Also, on my second set of boards (IPS 3.8 and EF-3-4 V4.0) I have tried to check the output (using signal generator at 1kHz and 100mVpp and when ever I put the ground on the speaker output the sine wave goes flat. I did not see anything wrong, and I did not want to try it with the output mosfets since the sine waves are so weird. Not smooth but kind , almost sawtooth. I did set the resistance on the POT on R109 to 485 ohms since it would not go up to 500ohms
but yet still getting full voltage (voltage that is from the power supply) between R111A and R111B
The oscilloscope image is of the board without the ground of the oscilloscope attached to anything as it just goes flat.
Sorry, for being long winded and not sure if I have explained enough.
But appreciate any insight. Thanks!!!!
Sorry for these questions, but got a little bit of an issue with building the boards.
I had some issues with power (using bench power supply ) on the IPS board (ver 3.8) , I think after setting the bias the - and + got messed up on the breadboard and since then whenever I have negative voltage the LED's D10 and D11 light up, but as soon as I give the board + power D12 and D3 come on but immediately D10 and D11 shut off. I had to replace Q12 and Q14 since they were shorted emitter to collector , as well as changing C3 since the cap was only reading 6uF instead of 10uF. The board still measures 5V across TP1 to TP2 even when the transistors were bad.
Everything else looks ok as far as I can tell, and the led's looked ok before when I put it onto the bread board previously. Just had a couple cooks in the kitchen and got things messed up a bit. The picture is with both the + and - voltage at 25 V and .005 amps.
Also, on my second set of boards (IPS 3.8 and EF-3-4 V4.0) I have tried to check the output (using signal generator at 1kHz and 100mVpp and when ever I put the ground on the speaker output the sine wave goes flat. I did not see anything wrong, and I did not want to try it with the output mosfets since the sine waves are so weird. Not smooth but kind , almost sawtooth. I did set the resistance on the POT on R109 to 485 ohms since it would not go up to 500ohms
but yet still getting full voltage (voltage that is from the power supply) between R111A and R111B
The oscilloscope image is of the board without the ground of the oscilloscope attached to anything as it just goes flat.
Sorry, for being long winded and not sure if I have explained enough.
But appreciate any insight. Thanks!!!!
Hi Folks, I'm trying to understand the PSU requirements for my build. I read the Elliott article. It's a little overwhelming. Part of what I got out of it is that I may have overestimated my filter cap requirements by a large margin. Let's say I wanted to run output transistors that require 71 Volt rails. I was thinking of using two 500 VA transformers each with dual 50 Volt secondaries (one transformer for each channel). I would use two diyaudio PSU Boards (one for each channel). Each of those boards will take 8 capacitors. My question is what is the minimum/maximum capacitance that makes sense for each channel. For example 10,000 uF per cap would give me 80,000 uF per channel. Based on my understanding of Elliott's article that much capacitance sounds like overkill. Or have I misunderstood what I read? I have the pcb from diyaudio for the soft start board. Also, I'm in the US so my mains voltage is approximately 120 Volts.
Any help would be appreciated. While I've built a lot of amplifiers, I'm basically an implementor. I'm used to following directions, not designing circuits.
I'm trying to stretch myself a bit with this build.
Many thanks,
John
Any help would be appreciated. While I've built a lot of amplifiers, I'm basically an implementor. I'm used to following directions, not designing circuits.
I'm trying to stretch myself a bit with this build.
Many thanks,
John
