1970s Design Indulgence

As is now obvious I have handed the Amp on to Ifor.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, despite the unplanned interuption due to my wife breaking her leg. Fortunately my wife can now manage the stairs a couple of times a day, so at least the lounge is back to normal.

During my stewardship the Amp had almost 200 hours of active time, most of that from Internet Radio and local NAS. Dedicated listening sessions totalled about 30 hours.

My overall impressions of the Amp are very positive, I found the current adjustment to be quite stable after about 15-20 minutes warm up, very little drift thereafter, the meters remaining at 21, only rising slightly after a louder listening session. My speakers are moderately sensitive and with no crossovers, present an easy load.

The stereo image is particularly stable, but doesn't seem to have the width beyond the speakers I recall the Proprii presenting. Speech is reproduced with no sign of sibilance. Whilst my speakers have good bass extension, they do not produce powerful bass as you might expect of a 4.5 inch dia cone. I do however feel that the bass is not quite as powerful as it was with the Proprii. On tracks such as Roger Waters' Amused to Death the Amps' ability to present the sound effects and dynamic scale was impressive.

Overall an impressive Amp with no quirks. It doesn't have quite the bass power or wide soundstage the Proprius have, nonetheless just a pleasure to listen to.

It has prompted me to rethink my current set up. I shall have to give serious thought to a new pair of speakers. Although I like much of what Full Range drivers offer, their shortcomings are becoming more of an annoyance these days, particularly with such a capable amp as the Retro.

My Thanks to Graham for all his work and tutorials in developing this and the fine range of HiFi Systems Components.

The question now is where the Retro Amp fits in John Cs plans for the future.

Ian

John and I are having discussions on how he takes the amp forward, and my thoughts are that he'd be better off making it a DIY only item.

My view is that the existing case design ought to be ditched along with the meters, leaving the output stage current setting to the constructor to suit their own supply voltage.

It can then be simplified further by shoving both channels on a single PCB with ground spine, thus getting round the stereo-loop problem.

And then it only requires a large heatsink midships, so could be housed in a Takachi Electric Industrial MB Series Silver Aluminium Enclosure, 350 x 210 x 90mm, which the constructor can source from RS.

So, if John is up for that, I'll build one and see how it goes.

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