I just finished a strong session last night with this amp. I love this thing. It’s so strong and clean. This amp paired with the Sivga Phoenix provides and excellent listening experience. And I don’t care what anybody says, The XLR output sounds better than the SE output. This amp also sounds just a tad better to me in high gain over low gain, but you can’t run the Sivga’s on high gain, they are too easy to drive!
The Elegia also sounds excellent when paired with the SP200, but you have throw just a little EQ at it to perfect it. Sundara is very good also but they can get fatiguing after a while, depending on what you are listening to. But to me the Sivga Phoenix works the best.
So since the way the this amps circuitry is designed is it possible to hear a difference in micro dynamics or staging or imaging though the single ended output vs the balanced output with balanced cable? Feeding it a with a balanced signal even though that shouldn’t matter so much other then voltage.
I need to share this because this amp is…weird, but it’s probably NOT the amp’s fault.
So, I had a thx AAA one, but I didn’t like the size it took on the desk so I got an sp200 and noticed interferences with my setup even on low gain. By interference, I mean the kind that are VERY audible and distracting, they get hilariously bad on high gain too. The strange thing is that on my aaa one, I can still hear it, but MUCH less (like I have to high gain cranked before it becomes annoying).
So I started to check around things because I have a VERY good dac (d50s). I found out that the issue isn’t the dac because I swapped it to my old schiit fulla 2 and I could still hear the noise (this also prove it wasn’t the cable because different usb connector so I needed a different cable).
Where it got VERY strange is when I plugged a laptop I had with the schitt fulla 2 and the sp 200…CLEAN. No noise even at high gain, nothing. I even did stupid things like taking the jack out of my phone to feed it into the sp200 directly without an external dac AND IT WAS STILL WAY CLEANER (a bit of noise, but not much).
So clearly, something in my motherboard or something causes noises on the usb lines, but I tried different back ports AND a usb hub and I STILL got the interferences.
Eventually, I found out that sending the audio to the d50s…through BLUETOOTH is way cleaner than through usb b…
How the heck is this possible? How can this amp be THIS much more sensitive to interference than my aaa one and how can bluetooth yield…LESS interference than usb?
It to me sounds like a ground loop through usb. That’s something you could try and fix with something like an ifi idefender or intona isolator, or swap around/isolate power on your dac and amp (you will need to experiment for what works there, the easiest way is using something like a cheater plug on a powerstrip with both the dac and the amp to break the ground but this isn’t the safest way to go about it, and won’t always fix it either so that might be a last option. If you can try swapping the dac and amp power plugs to a different outlet that might change things, or sometimes putting everything on the same powerstrip works too). You can instead choose to try and isolate the loop with analog gear like an art cleanbox ii or nicer transformer box but this will affect sound quality since you will be running things through a transformer so I’d rather try the first
So my power setup is p much everything was plugged into this 12 outlets UPS that was plugged on the outlet behind my desk. I tried to plug my amp into the other plug of the outlet, no change. I then tried to plug either the DAC, the AMP and even the entire PC into ANOTHER outlet further away from my desk and they all had the same results.
Does this mean that beside the ifi defender thingy, there’s no way to fix this? I can’t access other outlets with my setup.
That would be something to try, and after that if that doesn’t work, you could use toslink from your pc if it has it into the dac, that would remove the possibility of a loop without question, so if you have that option I’d try that before grabbing an idefender (not sure why I didn’t think about using toslink earlier, go try that if you can). If that somehow fails, I’m not really sure what to say other than perhaps invest in a balanced dac like a jnog or modius and hope that common mode rejection cleans up some of the loop or grab a different amp
I didn’t think about toslink because I actually never used it, but this dac does support it…
I guess I FINALLY see the point of it now, lol. This is why I never used it cause to me, it sounds like “do you send digital data with a light that blinks or with wire on usb?”.
It works great at providing full electrical isolation that’s immune from interference, and also works great for very long runs (to an extent) at least compared to something like usb. (I don’t personally like it when it comes to sound quality but it’s not going to matter at this level of dac)
…ok that COMPLETELY fixed it…ok I am never doubting toslink again lol.
Also…how is this amp so sensitive? I could BARELY hear the noise on the thx aaa one and this one which has a similar thx amp just…it makes it painfully obvious it was there.
My schiit fulla can’t even come close for me to hear it like…is it just power or the fact the amp is so clean that any noise would show up?
Perfect glad everything is working for you, then it was a ground loop in the end
Not really someone who can accurately say, but some amps are more sensitive than others even if they have similar topology, honestly most of the time it’s only discovered through trial and error
Man, another very strong session last night with this little power house! Of course, I am not running it by itself anymore. I now pair the SP200 with the XDuoo TA-20, using the TA-20 as a preamp. This combination has given the SP200 a whole new life and is the reason why it’s still in the system.
After I purchased the TA-20 (and later the SA-1) the SP200 suddenly found itself on the outside looking in and at one point had been removed from the system, where I seriously considered selling the M200/SP200 stack. But then the subject of preamping came up a while ago, and it got me to thinking. On a whim, I decided to try it - and the results were a bit shocking! Certainly something I never saw coming. All of the things that annoyed me about the SP200 were suddenly gone, and a whole new and wonderful sound signature was born.
Now this great little amp combo is and will be part of this desktop system until the next upgrade is implemented, which will not be anytime soon as the level of spend required to replace it will be significant. And that is OK, because I am in no hurry to do that. I’m just glad I was able to think outside of the box a little bit and figure out a way to get this amp back in the game.