vmps, art d/io, & boldercables.com

The Chicago Audio Society did a "shoot-out" comparing the Art Dio to an Electrocompaniet all in one cd player. Of course, they used the Electro as the transport into the Dio. From what our newsletter said, the Electro was picked as sounding better WITHOUT the Dio hooked up. Then again, i think that this was a bone stock Dio, so who knows what would've happened after modifications. One thing is for sure, the ART is WAY cheaper : ) Sean
>

VMPS used the Art D/IO into the 18K CTC Blowtorch full function preamp at the CES which nobody seems to have picked up on......

Bob Crump
CTC Builders

I did notice that the CTC Blowtorch was part of the award winning system and previously have read a rave review of it. Next time I have $18K that I don't know what do with, I'll be in touch. However, if you should decide to sell them for $123 plus shipping, I might call a little sooner.

re: the ctc blowtorch - way-expensive preamps may be worth something for those w/deep pockets, but i'm not so sure about expensive dac's... ;~) and, after i have a chance to audition the vmps rm-40's, i may have the same thing to say about way-expensive speakers, too! :>) actually, considering the relatively reasonable amount i paid for my melos music-director preamp, i'm not sure just *how* much way-expensive preamps really *are* worth... ;~)

brianw - i'm curious - who, besides me, has said anything negative about the class-a op-amp biasing? and, since i've fixed the broken trace from the op-amp, i have to say the mod was an improvement...

i agree that doing the internal voltage-divider mod so you can use any cables is a good thing, but you can also replace eight resistors on the board to reduce voltage - this is even better. instructions on how to calc the exact reduction you want are on a spreadsheet on the yahoo diomods site. ie: to reduce the units' output from 7v to 2.6v, replace 4.7kohm resistors r14, 15, 20, 22 w/13.3k resistors, & replace 4.7kohm resistors r16, 17, 21, 23 w/8.08k resistors. i just ordered resistors for this mod today, but w/a bit higher final output, at 3.2v. i will be yanking & replacing some resistors i just upgraded last week... ;~)

doug s.

Joe B and Sedond, it costs like Hell to build something right and we really don't want to build very many of the preamps anyway...I thought it was necessary to point this out as that was not a cheap system as the preamp cost more than the rest of the system combined.....Regarding digital I never have understood why it should cost so much as you can't do anything to the digital circuit or the thing won't work....About all you can do to any digital circuit is play with the supplies and maybe the quality of any trim caps and resistors.....All this refers to DACs as most transports can be updated with better clocks, output drivers and supplies.....