ATHENA has fallen!

Mark repairs the Denafrips Athena Pre-Amp. Being an Audiophile pre-amp, mandates that it must be very heavy. And it is. Did I mention my bad back?

[Pacific]

I’ve absolutely no idea what this chap is talking about but his cheery, knowledgable presentations are a real pick-me-up. Welcome back.

[greenbanananas]

Probably the highest quality device I've ever seen with the label "Made in China".

[TheHeed]

Glad to see you back! Love watching your videos. Even the wife recognises your theme tune and sits down to watch with me!

[Timothycan]

Excellent. Seeing all that, those banks of capacitors and host of relays, I'm left wondering how much better this unit is than an ordinary mid-budget HiFi preamp. I think it's rather about diminishing returns, that you spend five times as much to gain a 0.01% improvement in signal quality! As for me, my 65 year old ears would never tell the difference...

[VoeViking]

Beautifully made machine. And the video, the time to film just one bolt being tighten just made it complete and beyond great. Excellent filming and editing.

[mikemmikem]

I've never seen the inside of an amp this beautifly made.

[Jonathan_Doe_]

Not designing equipment to be able to deal with 210-250v (when it doesn’t have separate 220-230-240 settings) is pretty bad form.

[hardlines]

It couldn't cope with UK power supply? Not very well designed. 🤣 "Audiophile" anagram of "saw you coming"!
Welcome back. Entertaining and informative as ever.

[Recessio]

9:05 I'm surprised by this. The UK and Europe now have the same voltage range of 230+/-23 (so 217-253), so why would they sell a product that couldn't sit comfortably anywhere in this range? Even if it was sold before the standards were harmonised, the old UK range was 240+/-14 (226-254), not that much higher than the old European range of 220+/-22 (198-242). Did they just cheap out on the transformers or something?

[TheRidgeChannel]

I’d have put a Perspex lid on the amp. It’s beautiful in there!

[daveghtfadlibaudio]

Nicely built but rusty screws in the IEC mains socket

[gamerpaddy]

no fuses? not even a thermal fuse in the transformer? as nice as it seems, its a bad design. sure brits have their fuses in the plug but its not a problem having one in the device aswell certainly dont need a directional voodoo one to keep up the quality.
also they should have gave the transformer a different amount of windings while keeping the ratio, to at least give it 5..10% headroom before it goes into saturation.. at 230v it is near saturation, wouldnt that distort the ac sine wave coming out of it? not that it makes any difference, but those people spend thousands on power regeneration equipment just to get a clean sine wave

[samuelfielder]

What an absolutely ludicrous design, clearly aimed at people with more money than sense. Plainly a mere preamplifier does not need such massive power supplies.

[stripey]

Interesting fact: You put three feet on the bottom of box, it will not wobble if the surface it is sitting on is not flat, so it is always stable - effectively self levelling!

[peterofenback]

This preamp only costs about $2000. Therefore, one probably had to save a little in the selection of components. A short circuit in the primary winding of a presumably little loaded transformer suggests an inferior quality. Overall, I classify the device as audiophile silliness.

[User_not_found_]

Nice work. I feel so satisfied even though I did nothing except watch you fix this thing :)

[iantyler]

Wasn't expecting it to be the transformer but the 220/240V issue is a real problem. In Aus we also have 240V mains and I'll bet 99% of people with 220V devices are totally unaware. Great video as usual.

[Nicoya]

They spend all that money throwing absurd piles of high spec capacitors and relays in there, and they can't even be bothered to include a transformer that can handle ordinary ranges of line voltages?

[tenmillionvolts]

An audiophool's delight. I'm not sure if there are enough capacitors to handle the massive preamp current from those little transformers :-) I see they carefully sandwiched that noisy switch mode supply under the board. Can't have the purists noticing that red flag.

[joshuaalbright]

Another brilliant episode from my favorite electronics repair guru! Thank you sir!