Q:So is this a integrated amp, or a headphone amp?
A: Yes and yes.

Q: So which one is it?
A: Both.

Q: Well, I’m an old-school audiophile who doesn’t like this “do-all” idea. How can it be a great integrated amp and a great headphone amp at the same time?
A: How can your phone be a phone and a compass and a camera and a voice recorder? It’s magic.

Q: No, seriously.
A: Because there’s really no difference between a great integrated amp and a great headphone amp, except for the special care and feeding needed for very sensitive headphones—IEMs need a low-noise amp with fine-grained volume control, while speakers need more brute force. We found that by incorporating multiple gain levels with a relay-switched stepped attenuator, we could create an amp that is truly universal—from sensitive headphones to speakers.

Q: Well, I already got a 1979 receiver with a headphone out and speaker outs, whatcha think about that?
We think good for you! People should keep their gear longer. However, your receiver has little in common with Ragnarok—the headphone outputs may be run from a resistor divider, or may be a separate low-power op-amp circuit.
A: Ragnarok uses the same balanced output stage for both speakers and headphones—there is no difference.

Q: Wait, I thought you said circlotrons didn’t do single-ended output?
A: They don’t. That’s why Ragnarok has separate discrete summing circuits to transform its balanced output back to single-ended, for single-ended headphones and for RCA outputs.

Q: What if I want to run speakers and headphones together?
A: Sure, no problem. You can also run just speaker output or just headphone output by holding down the source select button. Ragnarok will cycle through all three modes.

Q: Talk to me about this relay-switched stepped attenuator thing. What is that?
A: t’s a volume control. Unlike the continuous, potentiometer-based volume controls in all of our other amps, it uses relays to switch in and out a set of precision resistors based on the volume setting on the front panel. The result is perfect channel tracking down to very low levels, with 64 steps of 1.2dB available at each gain level—much more than most stepped attenuators. Note that our attenuator also works just like a regular potentiometer—there are no continually-spinning encoders, but an actual knob with stops at the low end and high end of the gain.

Q: Let’s talk microprocessors. What’s the big deal?
A: Lots of amps use microprocessors to oversee their fault protection. That’s fancy speak for when you accidentally short the speaker wires together. But Ragnarok goes much farther than that. It uses a 16-bit PIC micro controller and 12-bit DACs to monitor and regulate all operational points of the amplifier, including quiescent current, DC offset, and overcurrent protection. It samples key operational points about 30 times a second, and provides continuously updated control inputs to the gain stage about 3 times per second (or faster, in the case of a fault.) The benefits of this are threefold:

1. Ragnarok's operating points are set in stone. They won't drift over time. Once it's on, and the control system has settled to its thermal operating point, Ragnarok's performance is consistent and predictable.

2. We can throw out the DC servo entirely. DC servos are a technique that many amps use to eliminate DC offset on the output without coupling capacitors. A good DC servo is very good, but the best DC servo is no DC servo at all. Ragnarok’s signal path is DC-coupled from input to output, with no DC servo—and no worries that the DC operating point will drift over time.

3. If there is ever any fault (shorted speaker cables, Dr. Pepper spill through the top grate, AC power loss, etc), Ragnarok is engineered to provide a hard shutdown to protect speakers and headphones—disconnecting all outputs, reducing the input volume to minimum, and defaulting to the lowest gain mode.

Q: Is this a Class A amp?
A: For most headphones, this is technically a Class A amp. It runs about 4W of Class A bias. For speakers, it reverts to Class AB operation.

Q: Over the past decade and a half, I have been assembling the highest-performance system in the universe, comprised of a Scintillant Mega-Complex Uber-Transport, a Pinnacassio Modum 14 TransQuantum DAC, quad Puissance Series Seven Monoblocks (Rev 2 with new Series Z Output Transformers, hand-wound by Buddhist monks, of course), Bi-wired through Cantessa Gate Limited Edition Oxidized Gold cables to Stratoz Kemplaflammar Gas-Plasma full-range speakers. Do you think your new amp has the performance to match this system, and why? Please include a 1550-word or more dissertation on the design principles employed in this amplifier, including cryo-treating (which components), types of premium fuses used, type of wiring used internally, whether or not the PC board has been treated for maximum neutrality in a Black Gate Field, and other important considerations.
A: What? I fell asleep reading this.

Q: Ahem, I am a very important person! I have spend $55,000 last year alone in assembling the ultimate listening system on planet Earth. I—
A: Ah, right. Gotcha. Unfortunately, we are not qualified to dispense psychoactive medications nor consult in matters of psychology. Nor do our products come with a psychologist, either standard or as an option. The shipping is brutal, and the psychologists don’t like it too much.

Q: Why, I never! What cheek! I will tell all my friends about your lack of respect for a true audiophile! You’ll never work in this town again!
A: Cool. Please do. Remind them we make cheap gear, maybe they need presents for their less-fortunate relatives.

Q: No audio component should cost this much! This is absolutely outrageous! If you apply the principles of transparency espoused by M. David Gartner, Senior, M.Sc. Ph.D, author of the book, Audio Can and Should be Be Hella Cheep, then all you need is a couple of op-amps and some LM7815s. This thing could cost $50! And it’d probably perform better! All you guys are just using snake oil to pull the wool over our eyes and deceive less discerning audiophiles! all just a bunch of poorly-engineered hoo-ha, and it’ll probably just blow up your speakers!
A: Was there a question there?

Q: Ah. Well. But it’s outrageous, you see! You’re ripping people off! You could do this a lot cheaper if you just used 40-cent op-amps and 10-cent regulators in a plastic chassis. How can making something like this possibly be fair?
A: Corvette. Viper.

Q: Corvette Viper what?
A: You can get around town just as well in a 10-year-old Civic as a Corvette or Viper.

Q: I fail to see the connection here!
A: You can rail against people buying expensive cars all you want, you can show them all the charts and graphs that they won’t get there any faster in their Corvette or Viper or Porsche or Mercedes or Bentley or what-have-you, you can regurgitate all the Consumer Reports stuff you want showing how high-end cars just cost a lot more money to buy and repair and maintain and insure and that in the end they don’t do a damn thing for the owner’s ego or attractiveness to the opposite sex. And you know what? They’ll still want the Corvette, Mercedes, Porsche, whatever. Same with audio. Bottom line, there’s great stuff available very inexpensively, and there are options that cost a lot more.

Q: Well, I’ll still never buy your stuff! What do you think about that?
A: You wouldn’t anyway.

Hey, these tubes don’t really light up! You threw some LEDs in there to make it look like they’re glowing. What’s up with that?Submini tubes running 1.25V heaters don’t really glow, sorry. And yes, there are LEDs in there. But we didn’t just “throw them in.” They bias the output stage. Nifty, huh?

jecr a écrit :Ah ouais, effectivement les mots peuvent dire ça, je cherchais du technique derrière. Ils vont vraiment très loin dans l'humour  (Y)(Y)
Merci DZ.

jecr a écrit :D'ailleurs, il y a un truc qui m'a interpellé dans ce que j'ai lu.
Je mets ça ici, mais ça concerne plus les DiYers qui pourront expliquer.

Hey, these tubes don’t really light up! You threw some LEDs in there to make it look like they’re glowing. What’s up with that?Submini tubes running 1.25V heaters don’t really glow, sorry. And yes, there are LEDs in there. But we didn’t just “throw them in.” They bias the output stage. Nifty, huh?

ça veut dire quoi la partie en rouge?