Great deal on a 6 channel amp

[scottw]

Good point, and I can't really answer that. I would almost first look at the drive because all the music has to come from there. If looking at device speeds, that would be the bottleneck. Since the motherboard has a SATA port, I'm planning on getting a SATA drive soon. That should help out. I just wanted to get everything up and running to try and I had a 40gig IDE drive available at the time.

Yeah that is what I was thinking too. I have ben testing with 3 copies of Winamp and it does not seem to put much of a load on the CPU but I would imagine the HD going thru a little stress since you are running 3 copies of Winamp and pulling 3 different songs.

I plan on having 6 zones but can't image using more that 2 at a time.

[samgreco]

Honestly, most drives can handle alot more than you'd think. I have a recording studio that is PC based and I can get 16 tracks (equivalant to 8 zones) on any drive I've tried. I get 32 tracks from a wide SCSI drive, so a newer SATA should be cruising with 12 zones.

[rembetis]

FWIW, these amps are still available but unfortunately he raised the price by $10. Search for item # 220052011980 on fleabay.

[Marbles_00]

And he also raised shipping by $2.75 as well.

[sharp_1]

Still a good deal considering the alternatives. Too bad he had to lose money on the first batch...only 60 left.

Marbles: Were you able to obtain one for yourself?

[Marbles_00]

Yes, I was able to get two. I was hoping that he would start selling to Canada, as I wanted one more to play around with and modify.

Again thanks for everyone who offered to help me out.

[jowaldo]

man I can't believe I missed this thread somehow!

I just might have to get one of these... although I'm wondering if I want to bother making those cables needed

[edge]

FYI. These items were relisted for a few days on ebay. Check out item #220055933831.

If interested, you should act quick. The auction ends tonight. After that, looks like he is selling the whole lot -- no more one offs.

Good luck. I just picked up 2.

[sharp_1]

Any of you guys getting a hum from this amp thru the speakers while powered on but not playing anything? Not sure if this is to be expected...maybe the gains are turned up too high on the amp???

[Marbles_00]

Usually if the gains are turned up too much, then you start clipping. A hum is some noise induced in the signal path somewhere...just where is the FUN part.

Sounds almost like a grounding problem. Double check all your grounding, including shielding. Technically, if the shield is being used as...well...a shield and not acting as a return, then it should only be connected at one end. Connecting a shield at both ends could induce a ground loop and this could cause the hum.

Unplug your source from the amp. Does the hum go away? If so then it is either the cabling between the source to amp, or the source itself. If the source is a computer then it could be the power supply noise getting through. Computers are horrible for grounding. Try a different source input like the line-outs from your receiver.

How are the low-level audio cable running from source to amp? Are they close to AC lines?

If the hum is still there then it is either in the amp or, least likely, your speaker wire (or speaker). Which then you could try thicker guage/shorter length of wire or even different speakers (sheilded types maybe).

Another usual thing to try is to star ground to one point but try and seperate that ground return from earth ground. Usually something like a 10ohm 5watt resistor between the two (though difficult to acheive with a computer power supply).

Usually the problem lies with cabling...type/route or length. Take your pick.

Hope this was helpful.

[scottw]

Mine does not seems to hum. I had messed with all of the input gains while trying to get the amp to work (turned out to be something else) so I was not sure what they were set to by default. I had ordered another amp since then and noticed by default they were turned just above all the way down so I set all of mine to that.
Don't know much about this stuff, Marbles seems to be the expert, but from what I know it is usually in the cabling. Most likely the ground (as Marbles says).

Hope this helps!!!

[sharp_1]

Thanks for the help...I am sure that it's a cable issue since I used a temp. ground wire I grabbed from my workbench. I will let you know what I find.

[Marbles_00]

To all the users of this little amp. I'm getting close to powering them up. I just finished running wire from the basement to the attic...what a joy that was.

I'm just curious to know, does this amp produce any turn on or turn off "THUMPS" that we should know about. I think I read over at Part's Express TechTalk that these amps were pretty quite, but I figured I'd ask here as well.

I just want to know if I'm going to have to build additional circuitry to take care of it or not.

Thanks in advance.

PS
Sharp, did you ever find out where your hum was coming from?

[sharp_1]

Sharp, did you ever find out where your hum was coming from?

Hey Marb: No thump here when turning off with the amps on/off switch. I haven't tried to turn off any other way yet...i.e. x10 or other remote switching device.

As far as the hum, I haven't changed out any wiring yet to see if the cheap ground wire I used is the culprit. I plan on getting to that tomorrow.

Happy New Year!!!

EDIT: I changed my ground wire to a nice high quality wire and still am realizing a hummmmm. I have the ground wire attached to the amps ground screw at the back of the amp then from there to my zone adapter.


I did not use the ground within the amp channel connections as indicated below: (guess I should try to rig something to see if that's it)

[sharp_1]

Marbels:

Thanks for all your help. I have a few questions below.

Bold = your questions

Double check all your grounding, including shielding. Done, not sure what to check on the shielding part.

Connecting a shield at both ends could induce a ground loop and this could cause the hum. Not sure what you mean

Unplug your source from the amp. Does the hum go away? Yes

Try a different source input like the line-outs from your receiver. Connected my receiver no improvements to hum

How are the low-level audio cable running from source to amp? Are they close to AC lines? No

If the hum is still there then it is either in the amp or, least likely, your speaker wire (or speaker). Which then you could try thicker guage/shorter length of wire or even different speakers (sheilded types maybe). All my speaker wire is 14g or larger Monster in-wall type. I am now thinking this is the amp!

Another usual thing to try is to star ground to one point but try and seperate that ground return from earth ground. Usually something like a 10ohm 5watt resistor between the two (though difficult to acheive with a computer power supply). This is the only thing I have left to try...can you explain a bit more on how I could do this?[/b]