Metaxas & Sins solitaire Manuale utente
metaxas &sins
solitaire
depuis 1981
Thank you for your
kind interest in my
work.
This amplifier is the
result of my 35
year fascination
with the art of
music reproduction
from concert
recording,
electrical engineeing
and ultimately,
artistic design.
This solitaire has
been totally
handcrafted by
either myself or
one of my sons.
I consider it an
object of art.
kostas metaxas
solitaire
metallic automotive paint option
The Solitaire is a straight 150WRMS Stereo Power Amplifier or can
be oered like the IKARUS as a higher powered [150WRMS] Stereo
Integrated Amplifier.
It best embodies the sculptural design and “lack-of-sound”
philosophy of Metaxas & Sins.
After over 35 years of work in the field of High End Audio, from the
design and manufacturing of entire playback systems to the
recording of over 300 acoustic concerts to gain further musical
insights, the last thing that artist-designer Kostas Metaxas wanted
to produce was “another box with transistors on a heatsink”.
Kostas was dreaming of the most spectacular architecture, design
and sculpture he had experienced and wanted to bring that
emotional intensity, daring and seductive beauty to an audio
amplifier.
As a recording engineer, Metaxas also wanted to “voice it” for
extremely realistic recording playback, to be able to reproduce all the
nuance and emotion of a musical performance.
His new SOLITAIRE is the result. Machined from a solid block of
either aircraft aluminium, copper or titanium, it’s totally bespoke and
the modular electronics make it future-proof. Even the circuit boards
can be CNC machined from 1mm solid silver coated clear polystyrene.
From the sensual, organic and striking casework [inspired by the
stunning work in Sports cars of the 1950’s/60’s of Ercole Spada, as
well as the architecture of Hadid, Gehry and Calatrava] to absolutely
every part of the amplifier including the circuit, topology, layout and
casework has been developed by Kostas Metaxas. It is the logical
evolution of his groundbreaking design concepts pioneered in the
early 1980’s.
specifications
Then, it true “Bugatti fashion”, each and every amplifier is assembled by
the master or his sins — either Andreas or Alessandros Metaxas.
The individually 5-axis CNC’d “sculptural” enclosure presents a very
heavy, solid, inert, non-resonant structure to RFI shield and ultimately
protect the delicate electronic signals, driving the noise floor to
ultra-ultra-low levels, revealing a wealth of detail that has never been
heard before.
1. INPUT STAGE:
The fully complementary, dual dierential, cascaded input stage is lin-
earised to ensure least distortion over the large volt-age swings to the
amplifier input from the preceeding preamplifier. A very gradual (6dB/
octave) Bessel filter is incorporated at the input to eliminate the needless
reproduction of Radio Frequencies.The second voltage gain stage uses
considerable local feedback to ensure that large voltage swings from
the input stage are accommodated with the least possible distortion. An
overall negative feedback of only 11dB is required to stabilise the
complete D.C. operating point and reduce distortion at full power to
below 0.01% T.H.D. which is primarily composed of second harmonics.
A D.C. servo is built around an integrated circuit to monitor the output
voltage and ensure absolute D.C. stability at all times.
2. OUTPUT STAGE:
Our triple Darlington output stage uses the fastest power transistors that
were previously available, but no longer available since the factory in
Japan was destroyed by a Tsunami. Fortunately, we purchased large
stocks of these devices 30 years ago.
Our printed circuit design borrows techniques from RF and UHF
groundplane technology to maximise the speed of current delivery,
especially at high frequencies. from the ultra high-speed (fT’s 150 MHz)
power transistors.
3. POWER SUPPLY INPUT & OUTPUT STAGE:
The input voltage gain stage of the SOLITAIRE is isolated via the
high-current output stage via a two stage’capacity-multiplier’ cir-
cuit which uses the beta of the transistors to multiply the filtering
eect of the capacitor used. The simplicity of this circuit allows the
elimination of any output bypassing capacitors which would
otherwise reduce the apparent speed and degrade the sound
quality of this amplifier.
4. PROTECTION CIRCUITS: To eliminate the sonic colourations
imposed by sophisticated current limiting protection circuits, the
SOLITAIR Euses only the short M205 fuse types to protect the high
current stages.Apart from the fuses is a four pole relay in series
with the loudspeaker connections. If over 0.6VDC is sensed at the
amplifier output, the relay is activated until the condition is
rectified.
FREQUENCYRESPONSE : DC - 5.0MHz (-3dB)
POWER OUTPUT: 150WRMS per channel into 8 Ohms
with no more than 0.05% T.H.D.
DAMPING FACTOR : Greater than 500 wide band
SLEW RATE : Greater than 1000V/us small and large signal
T.H.D. : Less than 0.05% 20Hz-20KHz
I.M.D.(S.M.P.T.E.) : Less than 0.05%
SIGNAL/NOISE : -117DBV unweighed input shorted
SENSITIVITY: 0.5VRMS in for 150WRMS out (28dB)
INPUT IMPEDANCE : 100kOhms in parallel with 11pF
the making
of a solitaire
These videos trace the creative and
manufacturing process of a SOLITAIRE.
https://vimeo.com/164672495
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