Bottlehead Forum
Bottlehead Kits => Crack => Topic started by: sfojws on January 23, 2021, 05:55:05 AM
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Over the seven months since I built this wonderful headphone amp, I've noticed that LP surface noise, when listening through headphones with the Crack, is noticeably lower than when listening through the speakers. This has never been the case with headphone listening in the past. Resolution of musical information is amazing; I've heard details, in recordings with which I am very familiar, for the first time. I don't think that it's simply a filtering effect. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?
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That proves Crack is a wonderful amp, it introduces little noise and does a great amplification job so that you can hear the nuance in music. I heard a faint dog bark at 4:06 on Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" track thru Crack, which I had never noticed before. ;D
I think your speaker amp might be a little bit noisier :)
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I heard a faint dog bark at 4:06 on Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" track thru Crack
I think that's James :D
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John, Is this observation with or without the Speedball upgrade installed? Also, which headphones are you using?
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I have noticed that too, here's my setup:
- Modded Crack+Speedball with Schottky PS rectifiers, Triad Choke, bypassed last PS cap and film output caps (there's a forum post about that) and Tung-Sol tall bottle halo 6SN7 with Garage 1217 adapter and can't forget Western Electric 421A
- Modded Byerdynamic DT770 Pro with 600 ohm drivers (there's a forum post about that too)
- Nothing fancy record player (Crosley C100) but with Nagaoka MP-110 cartridge (Drop Carbon VTA record player will ship soon as a replacement)
- Lesbox modded Yaqin MS-23B with three Genelax Gold Lion 12AX7 tubes
I recently started a vinyl collection of only records pressed in the late-60s through early 80's (with just one or two exceptions). I'm noticing things I haven't heard before even though I've listened to these albums many, many times. it's just more alive now is the best way I can describe it. Listening to Spotify sounds dull in comparison, that's for sure!
As for LP noise, I still hear that, but I haven't tried playing through speakers yet, so I haven't really made that comparison.
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Hi - sorry for the delay in replying, and thanks for the observations. It's the basic crack build, w/o Speedball. I'm using either an old pair (~18 yrs.) of Sennheiser HD600's, or a new pair of HD660s phones.