Justblairs Audio and Electronic's Pages

The Sure Electronics Tripath TA2024 Board is out of the box a good value for money amplifier module. However with some careful tweaking it can be made to sound better. This article focuses on the power supply to the Tripath chip and shows some improvements that can be made.

So far I have modified several aspects of the Sure TA2024 board. In this article I look again at the input to the device and swap over the input capacitor.

The Sure Electronics TA2024 Amplifier impressed on my first inspection although suffered from Poor DC offset and a slightly dull sound. This is the second modification I have made which is aimed at improving the top end sound of the amp.

In in another article, I showed how the Sure Tripath Boards unacceptable DC could be reduced significantly by removing a pair of resistors from the PCB effectively disabling Sure's attempt at a DC offset reducing circuit.  This article takes the modification a step further to eliminate DC offset completely.

In the last article we looked at the Sure TA2024 amplifier boards, fresh from their box. Amongst the issues identified is that the Sure boards have an issue with DC offset. This article shows how with a very quick modification the DC offset of the boards can be improved upon.

The Sure Tripath amplifiers offer a Tripath 2024 chip Class T amplifier for $22 plus shipping from Najing, Jiangsu, China.  So what do you get for roughly £15 of amp?

I was contacted recently from Gregory Wisniewski, a reader of the www.justblair.co.uk website.  He wanted to share some details of a project that he is quite rightly pleased with and I was more than happy to oblige.

Based on the Sure 2x100watt TK2050 amplifier. Greg has performed similar modifications as I described in my first impressions article.  In his own words:

I have always found the care and attention that PC Case modders take over their creations fascinating.  It is not unusual to see hours lavished upon themed PC Cases.

Well “Mr Chey” has posted his 6L6 / 5881 Single-Ended (SE) DIY Tube Amplifier over at www.diyaudioprojects.com.  And this amplifier is a little different as he has gone for a Transformers theme to the build, much in the same way that PC modders frequently theme their creations.

Transformer covers have logos and other Transformer’s inspired detailing has been hewn from aluminium to create this smart looking device. 

Over  at TwistedPearAudio, Russ White and Brian Donegan  have been busy adding yet another DIY Audio kit to their selection.  Twisted Pear this time have produced what Russ describes as a “Mostly Discrete Opamp”.  Or to put it another way a headphone amplifier! 

This kit occupies two printed circuit boards, one per channel and accepts either balanced line inputs or single ended operation.  The balanced line option is designed to interface with several of their other product offerings.  The Ventus can also easily be setup as a classic non-inverting amplifier with single ended input. It also can be setup as an in inverting amplifier with single ended input.

This is an interesting project that won a Microchip sponsored contest recently in the Subcategory – Effective Use of SMPS Resources. 

Named the MiniTron, designed and built by George Anderson (of tubelab fame) this amplifier blends the old with the new in a manner that fans of the various technologies just might class as sacrilegious!