Thanks a lot, this is it! Well, I don't know where I can get the necessary extra long shaft 2 mm hex screwdriver, but I'll try.....
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Topping PA3s Review (Desktop Amplifier)
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McMaster-Carr
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Well, it's OK that they carry that line, but in my country (Hungary) no similar product exists or stocked by any dealer.... I'll try to order one from Germany.
Anyway, that's a quite stupid idea to mechanically construct an audio gear that way, necessitating the use of very specialized tools.
Anyway, that's a quite stupid idea to mechanically construct an audio gear that way, necessitating the use of very specialized tools.
Skeptical_Aus
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I bought one, as my tube amp needs repair. I'm using a wiim pro coax out into a Topping D90 and into to Pa3s via rca into Klipsch Heresy IV speakers. It sounds very good indeed. 5% of the price of my other amp and 99% of the performance! Well done, Topping.
Not at all providing the speakers are in proper operating condition.
Because the speakers have a enough dB output at lower voltage levels and that makes them a easier load and they are 6 Ohms nominal resistance and that is a safe load for the PA3 amp.
I suggest frequency sweeping them to test for any issues and then after you know they are operating well.
I don't think you'll damage anything. I attached the amp to my Martin Logan 4 ohm towers. I couldn't push them very hard, but when I maxed it out, the amp simply shut off. I waited a minute, connected them back to my Polk bookshelf speakers in the office, and it's worked happily ever after. The amp has a good protection shutoff circuit if you push it too hard.
Great, I will look how to do that.
Another question: I couldn't find the wattage of the speakers anywhere on the net, is it possible to calculate it? How?
Use this for generating a sine wave and slowly sweep from low to high. As the volume gets loud turn the volume down a little to protect the tweeters from being driven too hard. Listen for rattles, buzzes, crackling, snapping and chuffing.
SONY SS-D105 Speakers 90 watt speakers 6ohm impedance
Thank you for everything. You are amazing!!
Ground loop.
The noise comes in on the ground of the interconnect (it has nothing to do with the amp, except that the amp is (like all the other components in your system) passing on the noise though it's own ground.
Balanced interconnect has the same noise - but it is added equally to the negative and positive inputs When one input is subtracted from the other within the amp, it cancels out and the noise is rejected.
deadwood83
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If it is the same as I observed, it;s not anything close to a 50/60Hz. It's more like a broadband white noise centered around the 2.5k region. Only shows up on sensitive drivers (in my case, 12" waveguides).
Infineon calls it out in their design whitepapers and I mentioned it in the 2nd paragraph here.
Topping PA3s Review (Desktop Amplifier)
Does anyone have a channel misbalance under 1/4 volume. It seems that right channel is very slow to come up to the match volume of the left channel. I worked around it by lowering the volume of the DAC but i was wondering if there is a way to fix this permanently? Another thing i noticed with...
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Signal needs an analog ground ref near the chip or else stray capacitance causes injected noise. Topping uses the mode without compensation in SE, so the chip does not sample AGND. Just acts as a transistor amp like proper old school design instead of using basic on-die filtering and signal conditioning.
ETA: IIRC I want to say that there was also an op-amp in an inverting output mode in SE operation which took signal after input. So the poor pot can strike twice there? I admit, been a hot minute since i was really inside the amps. Been sitting next to my speakers just... doing amp things.
Long story short, the board deviates a pretty havily from the infineon whitepapers and infineon;s own eval options so there were def cuts to hit a price point and keep a heavy chunk of profit for intl sales.
That said, the infineon eval kits are not worth the price diff because (atr least back when i was researching) I want to say they were 25%+ more and no PSU and no case?
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As it is well known - and was mentioned before- , this amp is a particularly good source of, and also very sensitive to high frequency noise. This is the backlash of the filterless design. The thing works as an effective low frequency RF noise transmitter, and in unfortunate cases the radiated noise is being picked ud and fed back by the connecting cables to the input of the amp.
Mine had exactly the same "white noise-ish" problem, but after inserting a 6.8uH ferrite encased filter coil (Coilcraft) to each speaker line (as close as possible to the case of the amp) it disappeared completely. And no, the coils won't have any negative effect on its sound (at least in my amp I didn't detect any).
Mine had exactly the same "white noise-ish" problem, but after inserting a 6.8uH ferrite encased filter coil (Coilcraft) to each speaker line (as close as possible to the case of the amp) it disappeared completely. And no, the coils won't have any negative effect on its sound (at least in my amp I didn't detect any).
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Yes, this amp CAN be pretty noisy. But it's tricky. Sometimes it's a fine AMP.
In one case, it seems happen when the load is less inductive. I drove a full-range drive with very flat impedance(motor with shorting ring), it makes HF noise when the driver is playing pure bass note(I put a minidsp LP filter), but stay quiet when there's no signal. It almost sounds like the driver's fault and only when you switch AMP you know it's from the AMP. After putting an air-coiled inductor paralleled with a resistor attenuating HF energy, the AMP works fine. It almost seems the AMP expects relatively strong inductive load.
In another case, again with active speaker, when I add some ferrite core filter near the woofer section(but not the amp) with ~50cm cable I notice the AMP is picking up strange noise again.
I believe last but not least, when I use PA3S to drive a HF section(capacitor protected tweeter) , the AMP is not happy and make noise of you. I almost blaming my MiniDSP2x4 but finally found it's the AMP.
It's such an annoying little amp. Sometimes it did work fine. I hope I'll try some ferrite coil mod and hope it will work. Hopefully something that fits inside the case.
This is the perfect example that some AMP might be built for benchmarks rather than real-world use cases, probably with inexperienced designer.. To be fair, I have many other topping AMPs and PA5II/PA7 all works trouble-free.
In one case, it seems happen when the load is less inductive. I drove a full-range drive with very flat impedance(motor with shorting ring), it makes HF noise when the driver is playing pure bass note(I put a minidsp LP filter), but stay quiet when there's no signal. It almost sounds like the driver's fault and only when you switch AMP you know it's from the AMP. After putting an air-coiled inductor paralleled with a resistor attenuating HF energy, the AMP works fine. It almost seems the AMP expects relatively strong inductive load.
In another case, again with active speaker, when I add some ferrite core filter near the woofer section(but not the amp) with ~50cm cable I notice the AMP is picking up strange noise again.
I believe last but not least, when I use PA3S to drive a HF section(capacitor protected tweeter) , the AMP is not happy and make noise of you. I almost blaming my MiniDSP2x4 but finally found it's the AMP.
It's such an annoying little amp. Sometimes it did work fine. I hope I'll try some ferrite coil mod and hope it will work. Hopefully something that fits inside the case.
This is the perfect example that some AMP might be built for benchmarks rather than real-world use cases, probably with inexperienced designer.. To be fair, I have many other topping AMPs and PA5II/PA7 all works trouble-free.
Seems the amp is unstable with your speakers. I would not use it any longer, who knows when it starts to oscillate and kills the speakers...
Unfortunately I tried both first/second order pass filter but they make no difference to me. It was a 12uH + 0.47uf + 12uH filter in the picture.
Thanks for your input. So far my issues are all noise-related and I have no evidence to say it's unstable..
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