The Rock Puppy Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 3 hours ago, Cafad said: Also, pancakes. Look more like pikelets to me! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ICUToo Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) On 2/3/2024 at 8:27 AM, Cafad said: Well it would appear my hamfisted assembly is complete. All parts assembled, check. Several screws left over, check. Lights turn on, check. Lack of smoke... check. Excellent, now let's move on to the more satisfying (hopefully) side of the hobby. I may have missed it above, cafad- what kit is this? Edit: sorry, yes just saw "Purify 1ET 400A modules " in your first post. I thought you had found a Purify GaN kit somewhere!! Edited March 3 by ICUToo Inadequate Caffeine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgehifi Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) 16 minutes ago, ICUToo said: I may have missed it above, cafad- what kit is this? Edit: sorry, yes just saw "Purify 1ET 400A modules " in your first post. I thought you had found a Purify GaN kit somewhere!! Off topic and not GaN based, and that's what this thread is supposed to be about, even if it's the OP that's taken it off topic. Cheers George Edited March 3 by georgehifi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cafad Posted March 3 Author Share Posted March 3 (edited) 22 hours ago, The Rock Puppy said: Look more like pikelets to me! Well the recipe said "Pancakes" so I went with that. Also, they were banana pancakes and that is definitely a thing. Oh, a quick googling tells me that banana pikelets are also a thing. And the 2 main differences between the two are that pancake mix is slightly runnier and that results in a lighter cake while pikelets tend to be a little more dense. Also that pancakes seem to be more a northern hemisphere thing while pikelets are more an NZ and Aussie thing. So it seems my breakfast was un-Australian. Apologies to my fellow countrymen, I will find a banana pikelet recipe for use next time the urge strikes. And I shall eat nothing but Vegemite on toast and meat pies, and drink nothing but beer for the next 3 days to atone for my mistake. And now, on to more thread related events. The Purify kit sounds very nice. I ran it for about 12 hours yesterday and it performed extremely well. The bass is tight and full, mid range is prominent and clear with vocals taking center stage as they should. The stereo separation is detailed and articulate with instruments moving from left to right as they are meant to. I need to listen to a few more treble-ly songs as I'm thinking some of the piano came across a little hard but not hard enough to be bright, just a little harder than I was expecting. So my preliminary thoughts are that this is an excellent power amp. I'll get into more details as I go. My feel is that this amp won't change much with run in but I still feel I should put 100 hours on it just to keep things consistent. (after all, that's what I've done with all the other amps in the past) Edited March 3 by Cafad 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Rock Puppy Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 1 hour ago, Cafad said: eat nothing but Vegemite on toast and meat pies, and drink nothing but beer for the next 3 days 3 days? That's a prescription for a lifetime! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rand129678 Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) On 22/2/2024 at 11:18 AM, Cafad said: If anyone finds any interesting links to GaN related articles or posts please share them. I'm always up for some reading and I'm sure others are too. Some of the links that got me hooked are listed below. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-purifi-1et400a-amplifier.7984/ Amirs' measurements of the Purify 1ET400A modules (with the dual input eval board, which is exactly what I will have to work with when all the bits arrive. He measured a Peachtree GaN amp and it wasn't that great, in comparison to Purifi's latest In terms of noise and distortion and frequency response https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/peachtree-gan400-amplifier-review.42910/ Edited March 3 by rand129678 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cafad Posted March 3 Author Share Posted March 3 6 minutes ago, rand129678 said: He measured a Peachtree GaN amp and it wasn't that great, in comparison to Purifi's latest https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/peachtree-gan400-amplifier-review.42910/ Yeah, I'm hoping the next series of models from Peachtree will be distinct improvements on the last. Although that wasn't exactly a terrible amp, just expensive for what it did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rand129678 Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 Just now, Cafad said: Yeah, I'm hoping the next series of models from Peachtree will be distinct improvements on the last. Although that wasn't exactly a terrible amp, just expensive for what it did. Yes it just goes to show GaN itself is no panacea at all Like anything, to me it is better to look at actual real world technical performance, than the marketing hype At least the Starkrimson looks good, other than the rising frequency response Purifi is still the leader in my opinion (even then needs to be implemented properly) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgehifi Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) 3 hours ago, rand129678 said: Yes it just goes to show GaN itself is no panacea at all No it doesn't, specs like the "dead time" and "switching speed ability" alone makes yesterdays Mosfets look like old school germanium transistors in comparison to silicon. Time will show where the future is with these new GaN fets and then all will start using them, and yesterdays mosfets will go the way of the dodo like germanium did. Quote rand129678: He measured a Peachtree GaN amp and it wasn't that great, in comparison to Purifi's latest https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/peachtree-gan400-amplifier-review.42910/ Also you need to get your facts right first, the GaN 400 wasn't Peachtrees latest it was quite old, the latest from Peachtree is the GaN1 (poweramp) or the Carina GaN ( digital integrated) very different to the older 400 Cheers George Edited March 3 by georgehifi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rand129678 Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) 10 minutes ago, georgehifi said: Also you need to get your facts right first, the GaN 400 wasn't Peachtrees latest Sorry I missed where I wrote the GaN 400 was Peachtree's latest? Was simply an example of an average performance GaN amp. Edited March 3 by rand129678 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgehifi Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) 14 hours ago, georgehifi said: 17 hours ago, rand129678 said: in comparison to Purifi's latest Naturally one would also compare GaN's (Peachtrees) latest, which get very good reviews from those that have heard it. Cheers George Edited March 3 by georgehifi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blakey72 Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) @CafadDamn it! My interest in amps was just starting to fade and now you come out with something new......Now I gotta look into this audio sorcery Edited March 3 by blakey72 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cafad Posted March 3 Author Share Posted March 3 2 hours ago, blakey72 said: @CafadDamn it! My interest in amps was just starting to fade and now you come out with something new......Now I gotta look into this audio sorcery Yep, I'm a troublemaker. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cafad Posted March 10 Author Share Posted March 10 (edited) OK, so two things to talk about today. The first is about how good I am at getting things wrong. I can be something of an overachiever in this area. The Purify class D designs are not GaN designs (thank you George). And now that I've realized that, I'm trying to figure out why I thought they were in the first place. I guess I combined the "new and innovative class D design" with a high switching frequency and saw the letters g, a and n in my minds eye. My mistake. The Purify designs are a more traditional class D (at least as far as the physical electronics go) that uses large amounts of feedback, applied in innovative ways, in order to generate some very impressive measured performance that older class D designs simply cannot match. So I don't have a GaN amp in my lounge at the moment but I do have one of the most advanced non-GaN designs available, and that will suit my purpose almost as well. So later in the thread I'll be comparing the best non-GaN amp around with a very good GaN amp. I can work with that, it just isn't what I thought I'd be working with when I started this thread. The second is how well the Purify 1ET400A based power amp (which is lacking in gallium nitride, didn't you know!) performs. And that performance is excellent. After my self imposed 100 hour run in expired at noon yesterday I spent several hours playing as much as I could through the little Purify amp. Not just audiophile recordings, I played Adele, Alice Cooper, Alan Taylor, Amanda Marshall, Anette Askvik, Baby Animals, Big Pig, Billy Idol, Bjorn Berge, Chris de Burgh, Chvrches and the list goes on. I started at A and went all the way through to Wilson Pickett. I'm going to go bottom to top here. The bass is the stand out performer. It's tight, controlled, articulate and prominent. It is not forward and it does not intrude on the mid range but it is so noticeable that it simply cannot be ignored. This is bass that is up there with the best I've heard. It sounds so good that even after you have listened to it long enough to suffer from listening fatigue you will keep listening because it still sounds so damn good it is worth listening to and you will deal with that oncoming headache at a later time, when you're done listening. The mid range is very resolving, there is a lot of detail on display here and many instruments and effects that you have to concentrate to hear on other gear come through unmissably on the Purify. This is generally good but can sometimes be a bit of a shock. Vocals are so clean they can come across much stronger than you remember them, and on songs that already have strong vocals it can be pretty damn amazing, and also potentially overwhelming. But mostly amazing. The Purify may just make you re-think what some vocalists are capable of. Strings are vibrant and strong but only so energetic. This limits the "wild and unleashed" effect that can come with powerfully played electric guitar but not so much as to make it sound tame and broken in, more "currently corralled". The treble is the potential problem child. While generally excellent there can be quite a bit of treble energy on display. Some songs have boosted treble and this can come across as just too much to take. I'm not going to say it sounds bad as such, more overwhelming. I only found this to be too much to bear on two songs and both are pop songs so if you stick with audiophile fare then it may never come up (it is also possible that it's a system synergy effect, I don't usually listen to those two songs so I'll have to give them a run with another amp in use to find out what is going on). In more general terms the treble is very clean and very honest and that is both good in that it gives you what is on the recording and bad in that it doesn't help your ears when that recording does something that you won't like hearing. I have never heard the triangles on Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" sound so metallic before. I've heard them twinkle, I've heard them sparkle, I've heard them sound both like tiny little bells and slightly larger little bells but I've never heard them sound like shapes of metal struck in a circular motion with metal rods before, which is odd because that is exactly what they are. They don't sound bad, but they do sound different. You may have heard honest treble in the past but you may not have heard treble this honest. It is quite educational. One general thing I did note is that the Purify sounds very good at low volume, and arguably even better at very low volume, many conventional amp designs do not. And that is where I'm up to currently. Next up, the Orchard Audio Starkrimson Stereo Ultra. Edited March 10 by Cafad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgehifi Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 (edited) 1 hour ago, Cafad said: Next up, the Orchard Audio Starkrimson Stereo Ultra. These are early 1st gen GaN amps, that use large amounts of global negative feedback never a good thing (and their Achilles heel) like all todays mosfet Class-D's do, nothing special. You really want to hear the 2nd gen (digital input) GaN amps that use "NO global negative feedback" (their forte), like the Peachtree GaN1 which is a poweramp, or better still Peachtree's Carina GaN Integrated both which are "digital only input" they uses no D/A converters in them and stays digital all the way through to just before the GaN output stage where it get changed via DSP (not dac) to analog, after then analog to the speakers (they uses no D/A converters in them) The only thing to remember with the Peachtree GaN1 is your digital source/s need to have their own digital domain volume control, where the Peachtree Carina GaN being integrated does not, it has it's own multiple digital inputs and digital domain volume control (this is my potential favorite). Cheers George Edited March 10 by georgehifi 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cafad Posted March 10 Author Share Posted March 10 20 minutes ago, georgehifi said: You really want to hear the 2nd gen (digital input) GaN amps that use "NO global negative feedback" (their forte), I look forward to the day that I can hear them, because that will mean that they have been made available in Australia. Have Peachtree released any updates on when that might be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgehifi Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 (edited) On 10/03/2024 at 12:47 PM, Cafad said: I look forward to the day that I can hear them, because that will mean that they have been made available in Australia. Have Peachtree released any updates on when that might be? To me they are still both in limited supply outside of the US. Addicted to Audio here in Au don't have either of them yet, they do list the older Hypex NC500 based "Carina integrated" and early 1st gen GaN400 both at $4.7kaud. But they aren't the new 2nd generation "Carina GaN" ($3kusd) or "GaN-1" ($1.5kusd) which they can't get yet because of short supply I believe. If the exchange ratio is the same then once they do get to Australia the Carina GaN will be around $7.2kaud!!! and the GaN1 around $5.1kaud!!! BTW: The massive German semiconductor company "Infineon Technologies AG" have just finalized the acquisition of GaN which is now floated, before it wasn't and was small in comparison, maybe see a lot of movement with it now. https://gansystems.com/ Cheers George Edited March 16 by georgehifi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cafad Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 And now, the Starkrimson Ultra. The bass is not only clean and clear but also smooth and deep. It has impact but also the ability to back that impact up with a deep follow through. This ability makes for very satisfying lower registers. The mid range has articulation and detail but also a sweetness to it. Vocals come across so pleasantly, you can pick slight vocal changes so easily it isn't funny. Strings sound so natural and they decay away so well, and you can hear that decay even with other instruments playing over the top of them. This is a very nice mid range. I want to listen more to this mid range. And the treble, no issues here at all. Sweet and delicate and none of that hard or metallic nature that can push a listener towards untimely listening fatigue. Soft piano is delicate and sweet and decays away slowly, triangles sound like sparkly little bells again. Cymbals are possibly a little soft but I'll take that over hard any day. With direct comparison to my Purify observations above I will say that the Starkrimson Ultra is more mellow and more musical. It has more natural sounding piano, woodwinds and vocals and it has a much more relaxed soundstage with a quieter background. If the Purify rates a 7 out of 10 on piano then the Starkrimson rates an 8-to-8.5 out of 10 and the situation is the same on woodwinds and vocals. Sooooooo much more natural sounding. If you were a full on dyed-in-the-denim metal head and you told me that you preferred the Purify over the Starkrimson then I would understand, you want those full on instrumentals and you aren't too worried about intricate vocal details or the more natural reproduction of delicate sounds. For those of us who really enjoy a softer song on occasion, well you just won't get the same level of satisfaction out of the Purrify that you will out of the Starkrimson. If the Starkrimson is the direction that GaN designs will take class D amps in (and only time will tell on that) then I'm pretty happy about it. For listeners who lean towards a bit of audiophile content the Starkrimson really is twice the amp that the Purify is. And a few caveats. 1. If you were to compare the RRP of the Purify and the Starkrimson in aussie dollars then yes, the Starkrimson does cost about twice the price of the Purify, however that's OK because it sounds about twice as good (to my ears anyway). 2. I have been using the Orchard Audio PecanPi+ DAC for this comparison. and that may have given the Starkrimson the edge. However I chose the PecanPi+ DAC on its own merits as a DAC. I like it, I also like the way it works with several integrated amps I've tried it with so it's staying in my system until I get the urge to change it. And that's it. Have a good weekend everybody! 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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