Clipping; Headphones; Burn In; Design - Decware CSP3 Operation Manual

OPERATION MANUAL

Clipping

!
Clipping is another term for distortion during playback. The CSP3 has up to 30
volts of output with an industry standard 2 volt input signal without distortion and
can be adjusted to handle any input voltage via its variable input controls. Since
most amplifiers are set up to play at their full rated power with as little as 1/2 to 2
volts, it would be virtually impossible to clip the line level outputs of the preamp.
!

Headphones

!
Believe it or not the CSP3 was originally designed as a reference grade OTL
headphone amplifier. It wasn't until later that we decided to make it also work as a
preamp and since no additional circuity was required it was the logical thing to do.
You can use any dynamic headphone between 32 and 600 ohms with your CSP3.
In fact there are several of the more efficient planar headphones that will also work
reasonably well.
If your headphones get too loud too fast, you can turn down the input level
controls.
The CSP3 can be built with either a pair of 1/4 inch headphone jacks, or a pair of 4
pin XLR jacks, or one of each. Also it can be built with dual 3 pin XLR jacks. Your
headphone cables are what determine what kind of jacks you need. Many people
will configure it with one 1/4 inch headphone jack and one 4 pin XLR headphone
jack which covers the most popular headphone cables.
!
Burn-in
!
When your CSP3 is new it will require about 200 hours of use to reach what we a
term "burned in" state which is to say a state where the sound is pretty much
where it's going to be from then on out. During the 200 hour burn in period the
preamp and the tubes will season and you will hear the sound continue to improve.
The biggest differences happen in the first 20 hours.
!

Design

!
The CSP3 has a somewhat interesting design behind it. It is a dual triode driving a
pair of dual triodes where there is one for each channel. The pair that is being
driven is wired so each triode is in series (SRPP) giving it both massive output
levels but also low output impedance to drive long cable runs.
!
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MODEL : CSP3 - CLASSIC STEREO PREAMP REV 1 MAR 2018
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