Is your amp really a tube amp?

[DaveyF]

The 5000 actually has less of a tube power supply than the SA-5.1 which came before it.

Perhaps that's why I remember liking the 5.1 more than the 5000, although on first listen the 5000 did impress me. Both were being sold by the same dealer who sold ARC at the time...I generally preferred the Counterpoint gear, BUT I do think the SA3 that I used to own wasn't in the ARC league at all. Too bad that Mike E had to close up shop and seems to have lost his way ever since.

 

[Jazzhead]

I'm pretty sure the price alone will limit the run. PDF is still a bit cryptic. All I could pickup is that it doesn't attenuate (?), uses battery PS for signal gain stages and AC for power stages. There are a lot of hybrid and reverse hybrids in the market. Veloce has already built a pure battery tube/SS hybrid power amp. Jean Hiraga has built all battery/all tube systems (like the one that caught fire ). I'm not so sure what is exactly ground breaking here. Surely not the use of batteries.

Yes Battery PSU have been implemented many a time in the past , but from what I understand it is more the unique gain structure, where the the standard 2V source signal is not attenuated to line level as is the norm , only then to be re-amplified when fed to the power amp. The V1/P1 power section is engineered to to handle the increased voltage without clipping or overload. . Helping preserve dynamic range , of which the SAGA claims 128dB !!! Also used is their Apollo Light Drive which further isolates the P1..PSU from the gain stage transistors by converting DC into light . Houston we have a problem !! As Micro states , may be not unique by themselves , but the implementation and concept as a whole does have their merits .

 

[JackD201]

Well, I do agree it is about implementation as everything is. I did put this (?) with regards to attenuation. Nobody listens at unity gain. Not if you want to damage yourself and your equipment anyway. Your amps may or may not clip (some Nagra amps are selectable 1v or 2v internally) but you or your speakers will. Even if you don't drop input sensitivity by building a "resistorless" input stage that won't be overloaded, you will still attenuate the signal somewhere down the line and not send continuous 2v to your amps. Now if they said that they made a module that performs equally well from typical analog at 1v to upwards of 5 to 6v for some digital components THAT would be very impressive indeed. Except that isn't what they said. Hence "cryptic".

I'm totally lost about the benefits of converting DC to light then back again. Companies have been using light for volume control for ages. Edge has been using light (laser modules) for biasing for ages. DC to light then DC again? I guess if the post optic DC stage is pure battery then there is some benefit to it but if the second stage is still drawing from the wall........

In any case, I haven't heard it. For all I know it just might be a game changer. I just think they did not do a particularly good job in their materials explaining why that might be. Something expected when you use the word "Revolution" in your thesis statement.