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boXem

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Manley has always done a great job marrying pro-audio and vintage technology, but it is still interesting to see this.
Nice video.
Sorry to be pedantic, but your title is a bit misleading. This is about an SMPS power supply, nothing to do with class d :).
Manley seems to be committed to tubes and not ready to change this.
 

Blumlein 88

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I am somewhat surprised they didn't use a higher switching rate than 125 khz.
 

Doodski

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I am somewhat surprised they didn't use a higher switching rate than 125 khz.
Before car amps went to class D I repaired thousands of them and they where around ~50-60 KHz. High current output, decent voltage output for lotsa wattage and got the job done with a small palm sized toroidal transformer.
 

Blumlein 88

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That's a normal switching rate for an SMPS.
Yes, I know, but Bruno doesn't always do normal, and there is no compelling reason he couldn't have chosen another frequency that I know of. So I might have expected him to choose a bit higher. I forget the brand, but there are some German electronics that do phono, DACs, and preamps and they went with SMPS using 500 khz switching rates because they wanted their analog sections to have good response to 200 khz -3db and wanted to get the switching rate well above that.
 

Doodski

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Yes, I know, but Bruno doesn't always do normal, and there is no compelling reason he couldn't have chosen another frequency that I know of. So I might have expected him to choose a bit higher. I forget the brand, but there are some German electronics that do phono, DACs, and preamps and they went with SMPS using 500 khz switching rates because they wanted their analog sections to have good response to 200 khz -3db and wanted to get the switching rate well above that.
Wow!
 

boXem

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Yes, I know, but Bruno doesn't always do normal, and there is no compelling reason he couldn't have chosen another frequency that I know of. So I might have expected him to choose a bit higher. I forget the brand, but there are some German electronics that do phono, DACs, and preamps and they went with SMPS using 500 khz switching rates because they wanted their analog sections to have good response to 200 khz -3db and wanted to get the switching rate well above that.
Interesting.
From what I understand from the man, he is not a proponent of high frequencies per se, more high enough frequencies.
For tubes it seems high enough, and it allows to reuse building blocks from the Hypex SMPSs for which higher frequencies would interfere with the amps switching freqs.
 

Matias

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dfuller

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I think that's pretty cool. Lots of tube based gear still relies on big heavy linear supplies and as a guitarist I can tell you right off the bat that if I could get rid of one transformer in my amps, I totally would.
 

Matias

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I wonder what took them so long to adopt the new design in their products. She said she hired Bruno in 2012, it's been 8 years now...
 

stunta

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I wonder what took them so long to adopt the new design in their products. She said she hired Bruno in 2012, it's been 8 years now...

They are still using Windows XP (sorry, I spotted it in the video), so I think they are not what the rest of us would call "agile" :)

What's with the "airy", "blacks" etc.? Just to keep the audiophiles from zoning out?
 

AudioJester

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I am a big fan of Bruno P and use his amps.

But my understanding was someone else was responsible for the power supplies and he had nothing to do with it?
 

dfuller

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I wonder what took them so long to adopt the new design in their products. She said she hired Bruno in 2012, it's been 8 years now...
They've had them in newer designs for a long time. It's the classic gear they're getting around to retrofitting now.

What's with the "airy", "blacks" etc.? Just to keep the audiophiles from zoning out?

Well, lower power supply noise (even with good PSRR, it's still something to keep in mind) and out-of-audible-spectrum ripple should help that.
 
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Matias

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Geez, did he lost a bet or something? Or is this a marketing strategy to look like an audio guru?
"Hire me as a consultant and I will enlighten your design team and elevate the performance of your products to audio Nirvana!". :D
 

pozz

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