Ragnarok Versus Speaker Amps

I'll be trying my rag on some mini mags at a local HFers house in a couple weeks, so I was curious about the posts above. He's the one shopping for a do it all amp, I'm not shopping for mags currently.

 

For what it's worth, Maggie claims all their speakers have the same sensitivity. But in a small room, you obviously get room gain. I'd be curious how it ends up sounding, in any case.

 

Fair enough. I don't have the technical engineering knowledge to tell you otherwise.

That being said, I would like to see what a balls to the wall price no object schiit amp would look like... keep it under $3000 and I'd be in.

 

I always used power amps,recievers,intgrated,ect.. To drive my headphones using a ghetto 1/4" to speaker output box. Never used headphone amps really so my headamp knowledge is very small but in technical terms a headphone amp is nothing more then a very low powered power amp of some sort on how i see.

Most well design speaker amps should have good enough s/n ratio unless your speakers or headphone is like 110db+@1w/mw then might be an issues.

Never had chance with rag so i can't comment really bout it compared to other amps but see no reason why it wouldn't work for both headphones and speakers. Only way i see it issue with speakers is your listening habits and sitting arrangement. That can only tell how much output you'll need. 86db though while very low compared to other speakers is not bad. 86db@1m is still pretty frikin loud.

 

Have you ever tested at roughly what volumes the Rag goes into protection mode when used with Maggies?

 

Max have you tried BW yet?

 

No.

 

I remember reading one of jason's post in headfi or chang where he stated that the maximum output for a circlotron topology is roughly 60w into 8ohm, and there will be significant tradeoffs in order to get more power. Does anyone have that post or any idea what the tradeoffs are?

 

Heat dissipation ability of the output devices I'm pretty sure.

 

It looks like Ragnarok.

 

Max output of the Ragnarok, due to the use of the chassis as a heatsink and no fan. I could make a 1000W circlotron, easy.

One of the great things about Ragnarok is that it uses only a single output device per phase, with microprocessor management of bias level, so no matching is required (or beneficial). A 1000W circlotron would need a dozen matched devices (or more) per phase, all hand-matched.

And, when you look at it, what you want is really a single output device per phase, because nothing is ever perfectly matched. This is why amps with multiple output devices tend to be sonically compromised when compared to amps that have single output devices. This is especially true in the case of MOSFETs.

Now, this isn't to say that amps with multiple output devices can't sound great--the problem is that the inherent mismatch is (ahem) no match for an amp that uses only single devices. The catch, of course, is single-device amps are limited to 50-100W output at best.

 

More output devices. The increased parasitics of multiple output devices. The need for skookum heatsinks to make it chooch.

 

Maybe a fancy gain stage upgrade then

I remember seeing that the board is modular

 

Not necessary.

 

tubenarok?

 

Not in any meaningful way, and not without a fan. All this is covered in the Ragnarok chapter of the book.

 

I am gonna be steve jobs and say "no, that's not good enough"

 

I suppose a 1000W into 4ohm Circlotron is possible, but it would be impossible to keep the noise down in the output stage for headphones while regulating a 10A power supply.

After all, a headphone amp is really nothing more than a preamp, some just happen to be more robust that others. High gain, low noise and low power. I dont think you can get a higher output than 100w into 4ohms while staying class A or AB and still keep the noise low enough for headphones.

@schiit. Jason, ive always been curious of how you got the rag to handle the multiple impedances. From whatever little i know, the circlotron is actually worse from other topologies at handling changes in impedance. At least thats what the guy who repairs amplifiers at my place says.

 

@Judeus - this is the amp for you:

 

Actually, power is unrelated to noise. The 1000W amp could easily be as quiet as a Ragnarok. And your repair guy is 100% incorrect. It's actually related to the output impedance of the amplifier, which is unrelated to topology.

This is how rumors get started--like the rumor that a speaker amp can't be a great headphone amp and vice-versa.