Mod: Trends TA10.1 amplifier – unleashing the Tripath potential

Having tested my soldering skills in a couple of smaller projects, I gathered the courage to put my faithful Trends TA10.1 mini amplifier under the knife. Big time.

The Trends TA10.1 is a well-received small amplifier operating in “class-D” utilizing Tripath TA2024 chipset, "Class-T". There are plenty of Tripath amplifiers available for DIYers and complete amps for the “usual” listeners such as the ones Trends made. Wikipedia states that Tripath went bankruptcy in 2007, making all the T-amps somewhat unique – who knows they might be even valued one day for their scarcity. Still, today you can find them new quite easily.

Staring point

On paper the Trends’ power output is stated as 15 watts into 4 and 10 watts into 8 ohms. Without going into great distortion levels, the reality is something in the lines of 5-6 watts into 8 ohms. This makes it ideal for desktop use, but many have reported the Trends working beautifully with highly sensitive speakers in the same manner as some tube amps. For me, the Trends has been mostly powering a pair of near-vintage Dynaudio Audience 42s in a desktop/nearfield configuration. 

I won’t be going much into detail as what the TA10.1 is about since as I mentioned, the Trends TA10.1 has been well covered throughout the internet by various HiFi sites and forums. Indeed, one such forum is the diyaudio.com’s extensive thread about modding the TA10.1. Over 10 years old, this is not by all means a new thing, but that’s the beauty of HiFi: it does not need to be new to sound good and thanks to the miracle of the internet the knowledge of the DIYers live on to be discovered by the future hobbyist. That is also one of the reasons I decided to write my experiences in this blog! 

After scouring the diyaudio.com’s thread for ideas and experiences, it was time for action. This is how I eventually built mine.

The list of mods:
-New casing, 80x124x170mm
-RCA connectors, Copper core by Clear Components
-Binding posts, Rhodium plated by Clear Components
-DC connector, generic gold plated
-Power switch, generic high quality
-Input caps, Jantzen Silver Z-Cap MKP 2% 2,2uF
-Bias cap MKP2, 100nF, 5%
-Decoupling caps, NICHICON KG GOLD TUNE 50V 2200μF
-Signal cabling, Neotech SOCT-16/20 AWG
-Removed the RF Caps in “Cd1” (might not work well in all setups)

Additional tweaks:
-By placing the PCB vertically inside the case, I could utilize both sides of the board. The board itself offers some form of signal insulation between components.
-Bypassed input signal greatly by soldering input caps directly to RCA sockets – bypasses jumpers and volume pot and utilizes Z-Caps silver leads.
-Copper foil as shield around inductor coils. I suppose this could be grounded for better effect.
-Heatsink for the TA2024 chip.
-Soldering power switch cables directly to PCB without quick connector.
-After the rebuild, I adjusted the output bias. The Trends has two small caps with knobs, one for each channel, that can be adjusted by placing multimeter to speaker + and - outputs.

You could always go with more expensive connectors, caps etc. but I tried to keep some sense of realism with this one. In hindsight the rhodium binding posts could have been copper ones, as together with Jantzen Silver caps the highs might be a teeny weeny too pronounced. But this can be compensated with IC and speaker cabling. Next step would be to pair the Trends with a linear power supply, as now I am feeding it 13.5V with a generic switching power supply. At this voltage the chip gets hot, but it has been working for years. The datasheet states max voltage for the TA2024 to be 13.2V and nominal 12V. More voltage means slightly more output power. Being a low voltage piece of equipment gave me the confidence to proceed with the heavy mods, as ~12V won't be life threatening any time soon.

Finished and singing again!

All in all, the transformation of the amp was not exactly cheap, but then again not very expensive either considering you could easily spend several hundred euros for a pair of RCA cables. 

But then we have the question; was it worth it? Oh yes! It’s hard to say which mod did what to the sound quality and by how much, therefore one must address the project as a whole. The modding, or rather rebuilding at this point, took the Trends to a whole another level, no doubt about that. The improvements in clarity, dynamics and staging were obvious. And in addition, if one enjoys tinkering and soldering – building something on your own – then any project like this will be always worth it. For me this was an excellent learning experience, and I am more than happy with the end results, although inside the case it might look a bit amateurish. But I take pride in this unique piece that I made myself. And oh brother, it does sound good on top of that. Although at this point, I am heavily biased. But I don’t care! 😉 

ps. Now I just need to find some +100dB sensitive horn speakers to really try this thing out. 

pps. That aged well. I realized I had a suitable Sbooster PSU in my other setup feeding a DAC. It's output of 13.2V is just what the doctor ordered. I hooked it up with the rebuilt Trends amplifier. 

Yesss! Clear improvements in micro and macro dynamics, sense of easiness and lack of background noise were the first things I noticed. But then I realized that once again, the details are lifted - at least a two whole levels. I think this is might be thanks to the improved noise floor, the details become simply much more easier to pick up. Another thing is that amplifier now feels more powerful and the soundstage feels an inch or two closer. Since the Sbooster has its own power switch, I could bypass the one if the amplifier... Well, maybe next time. For now I call the project completed 😎

Review: Dynaudio Focus 160 bookshelf speakers - King of all-rounders, nearing High End Hi-Fi

I’m not sure why I have postponed this review for as long as I have. Maybe because it felt like it would have been a monstrous behemoth of a review and it seemed all too daunting. But I think that’s the way with most projects. The only way forward is to simply start and build it up piece by piece. In the end this review might not be as comprehensive as these speakers would have deserved but I guess it’s still better than nothing.

source:dynaudio.com

This article is about Dynaudio Focus 160 bookshelf speakers – although it would be foolish to place them on a bookshelf, they deserve proper stands as do most “bookshelf” speakers. The Dynaudio Focus 160 is the successor of Focus 140 but all they have in common is somewhat similar size. They upgraded pretty much all the parts including tweeters and mid/bass woofers – I have experience of the former Focus-line with the floor standing Focus 220s and the difference in clarity was substantial. But more on that later.

The Focus 160s are now out of production and used to retail at around 2000 € a pair. That’s a lot of money for speakers, let alone bookshelf speakers. The next choice in Dynaudio’s bookshelf line would have been some from the Contour line or even the legendary Confidence C1s. Anyway, even at this price point the objective performance of an audio gear is becoming more subjective. The Focus 160s have fairly large cabinets of 202 x 350 x 294 mm (W x H x D) and weigh hefty 7.6 kgs a piece. The black piano lacquer finish looks and feels luxurious, but I don’t understand why the grills aren’t magnetic, especially at this price. Take the grills off (as most of us do) and suddenly the front with all the pin holes and screws doesn’t look as beautiful as it could have. Dynaudio’s later models seem to have addressed this issue with magnets.

Focus 160 & Batman

As with most speakers of this size the sensitivity is rated at lowish 85 dB and impedance at 4 Ohms – pair this with Dynaudio’s reputation of building power-hungry speakers and you start to realize that these are not meant to be paired with simple multichannel A/V amps found at a local supermarket. Indeed, Dynaudio rates the power handling of these babes up to 200 quality watts. And they can be played loud, very loud.

I have placed the speakers on Dynaudio Stand 1s, not the most robust stands money can buy, but still Dynaudio here as well.

The first thing that stands out is the bass, as it usually is with Dynaudio speakers. There’s plenty of it, incredibly plenty. The fullness and scale of the sound is mind boggling. And it’s not just the volume of bass but also how deep it goes. For music listening purposes I really doubt that anyone would feel an initial urge for a subwoofer, no matter what you genre you play. It is still however a pair or 17cm woofers doing the job, so don’t expect them to deliver any miracles if you are used to quality floor standing speakers or subwoofers. After you gather yourself, the focus (pun intended) shifts to that sweet tweeter. All while this massive bass is taxing the speaker, the tweeter sings without any hint of strain and all the clarity and resolution is there up to the finest detail – this is what I noticed immediately after switching the older Focus 220s to 160s, the latter just paints so much clearer image and I imagine the upgraded tweeter is to thank for. The sound stage is large and places instruments in their places when needed.

Initially I had the speakers paired with my Dayens Ampino monoblocks, but at 50 watts per channel, albeit high quality watts, I felt like the Focus 160s could use more power and perhaps a bit drier or sibilant amplifier. And so, I made a second-hand deal for Emotiva BasX A-300 power amp, this budget “giant-killer” delivers 150 watts per channel and is equipped with huge toroidal transformer for that steady current. (Oh boy, I think I need to write about the Emotiva A-300 at some point.) After switching the amplifiers, it was clear that the Emotiva was more suitable for Focus 160s. The upper range became even more vibrant, drier and the bass felt more controlled.

I enjoyed the Focus 160s for a few good years, thinking that they might be an end game solution until I had a larger listening room. But the nature of a Hi-Fi hobbyist is to always look for an improvement. And so while I had very little to complain of 160s as they seemed to perform everything very well, and in a balanced manner, in the end I felt that something else was needed; magic, sparkle, excitement – maybe the amplifiers were not the ideal match and could not bring these traits out of the speakers.
And so I ended up selling them. But given the chance I’d love to try them out again in my current upgraded setup as it is clear, that Dynaudios of this caliber require, or rather, scale nicely with high quality system with plenty of power headroom - this is to be expected from a true high end Hi-Fi speakers.

Be as it may, I can easily recommend the Dynaudio Focus 160s for everyone, as they will work with any type of music with ease, offering plenty of dynamic low notes and true hifi-like details. I usually recommend Dynaudios as the first serious hifi speakers to anyone seeking to venture into the world of hifi because of how versatile and excellent all-rounders they are.