MCD-255 amplifier
Towards the end of 2006 (yes, that long ago) I became interested in building a new amplifier to have over here with me in the UK. I had a fairly decent LM3875 chip amp setup at home, which I built a few years ago. Anyway, stuff moves on, and I read about some new Class D modules available from Hypex. Anyway, I gave up on that plan.
Then about a year later, I was interested again (these things tend to go in cycles for me; also, the prospect of another UK winter made me want to have something nice to listen to when it’s freezing outside). I found a forum post from a guy in China called Fumac (well, that’s his forum handle anyway). He was building some modules based around the Hypex UcD ideas, but with a much higher switching rate (around 1MHz). It seemed like an interesting idea to me, for various reasons. Also, his modules called MCD, were cheaper and easier to setup (more stuff built-in to the modules, like speaker protection etc, and a power supply). So I ordered some from him.
And they sat around for a few months (along with the transformer I ordered) — suddenly I was very busy at work! Then I bought some speakers (EPOS M12.2 — somewhat similar to these; it seems they’ve been updated, oh well…), and thought I should probably get the amp working. So an entire day of walking between four different Maplins stores got me enough stuff that I could hook something up. And by midnight I had one channel working through a car speaker — terrific!
About a week later (work again!) I had the new speakers hooked up to the modules, and the whole setup sounds wonderful. Actually significantly better (I reckon, non-scientific of course) than the same speakers hooked up to a Roksan Kandy amplifier — this is what I tested in the shop. Bass is terrifically well controlled — subtle, but you can definitely hear the difference between different types of instruments. And, whether it’s the speakers or amplifier, the treble never gets annoying or grating.
I really am pleased with this — the MCD-255 amplifier and speakers sound absolutely magnificent. I’ll post some pictures later…