I bought an ICEpower 50ASX2 amplifier from Ebay in 2018. It was an impulse buy if I’m honest as it was very cheap, they retail at about £100 in the UK and I got it for £35, but it’s been sat in my drawer since then waiting for a purpose. I must admit, I’m running…
Tag: amp

An open source LM3886 chip amplifier.
I decided to build an amplifier for a friend. There are a number of good chips for amplifiers and I managed to purchase a pair of LM3886 opamps new for £5 from a seller on DIYAudio a few months ago. With the chip decided upon, a suitable layout was sought. As much as I would…

PeeCeeBee V4 Class AB amplifier
This latest build is the PeeCeeBee, a discrete Class AB amplifier, now in its fourth iteration. It was designed and made available by Shaan through a group buy over at DIYAudio. He has recently designed a very nice PSU as well and so I ordered a couple, one of which powers this amp. Although Shaan…

Workspace listening setup
For this short post I thought I’d just show the setup I’m using for the spare bedroom now that both Idiot Children have left home. The room still has a bed but I’ve managed to have a desk for my electronics.

CMoy Mark IV – preamplifier
Whilst many modern sources provide enough voltage to feed a reasonable signal to amplifiers, some, such as the Pass ACA, may benefit from a boost in gain, particularly if paired with inefficient speakers. As I had most of the parts, I thought I would try a variation of the CMoy headphone amplifier as a preamplifier…

Attack of the Clones
What does a $3300 amplifier sound like? I suppose I’ll find out soon when I finish building a Gainclone amplifier. A Gainclone, as its name suggests, is a clone of an amplifier which first appeared in 1999, the Gaincard built by 47Labs. Heralded for its sound by Stereophile magazine, people were nonetheless surprised to discover…

CMoy headphone amplifier version 3
After building my Mark II CMoy headphone amplifier I decided to make a version which resembled more of a desktop model.

Nelson Pass ACA v1.5 DIY build
When I first started searching online for information about DIY audio, I came across the DIYAudio forum, as I expect most people do. Feeling bewildered, I clicked through to the store and saw what seemed to be the answer to my problems, the Amp Camp Amplifier, designed by Nelson Pass. This is a complete kit…

CMoy Headphone amplifier version 2
After building my first CMoy amplifier, I wanted to have another go and correct some of the problems I had with the first build. Specifically, I wanted to see if I could get rid of the hum and find a better case.

Building the Objective 2 headphone amplifier
Anybody who looks into building their own headphone amplifier will come across the Objective 2 at some point. It was designed by the anonymous electrical engineer known as NwAvGuy as an experiment in high quality, well designed and engineered equipment, but crucially at low cost.