Best Of

Yeah, we'll see. It's probably overkill as the Meanwell units sound just fine. Perhaps the $$$ spent on a built one or self build could/should be used for other audio purchases.

I'm pretty much making the dual mono ACA's and the Schiit Lyr 3 - tube pre/headphone amp w/dac my main office rig. It sounds so damn good! The clarity and separation is just crazy good!

This is the pre/dac I truly want to run, but finding them used in the US is few and far between. Too much money new for this kind of rig. If I could pick on one up used for $800 or less I'd do it.

https://power-holdings-inc.com/Keces-S3-DAC-Headphone-Amplifier-&-Preamplifier-p137031938

Before the pandemic these retailed for about $1100 or less. I've missed sales in the past of used ones for $550-650.

Or maybe just stop and enjoy what I am currently running. I bought so many 6SN7's to find the best sounding one for the Lyr3. Abandoning it probably doesn't make sense.....lol.

H9

P.S. the ZeroZone LPS comes with Nichicon FG caps, not cheap Chinese off brands. I agree, avoid those.

If you are going through the effort of building your own ACA kits, why not build your own linear power supply? These things are really quite simple. For the low wattage of the ACA, I'd just build one dual channel ~24V-30V LPS with a dual tap torroid, a pair of 15K 35V filter caps for each channel, a 8 appropriately sized diodes, 8 Wima Caps for each diode, and a pair of decent film caps to run in parallel to the big electrolytic.
I did this many years back for my Pearl Phono and it was really pretty simple. Mine was tad harder because I wanted to run both DC channels in a single umbilical, but for those ACAs, you would obviously want separate runs to the amps. (Note: Later, I went back and added a ground wire to run through the umbilical and tie into the mains ground.)


(note: I'm pretty sure I mislabeled that and it should be 2x30V)
I'm not sure if the ACA needs a regulated supply or if they amps have regulators built in. For my Pearl, each channel of the preamp has onboard regulators to bring that 30V down to 24V if I recall correctly. If it needs a regulated supply, that's a bit more complex.