Bartock to direct coupled output design amp

[Simon2]

I am considering to connect Bartok apex to Macintosh mc830 which is “direct coupled output design”.
I am not familiar with “direct coupled output design”. Is there any problems in this connection?

[PAR (Pete)]

The MC830 being a direct coupled design does not have anything to do with the input to the amp. It is a phrase describing the coupling between the amp and loudspeakers and that it does not use transformers ( which Macintosh uses on some designs).

There are many threads in the forum about coupling dCS DAC units to power amplifiers and you may like to use the search facility to read some of them.

[Anupc (Anup)]

Simon, you might want to read this post from Phil and further down that thread;

New Lina Questions/Issue/Clicking sounds

Hi Pete, Thanks for flagging this up - I think this is a system that I’ve already been involved in. I believe this is a unit that we have already had back to the US service centre for checking over and it has tested as absolutely fine. We believe that the issue is caused by the combination of our output stages being DC coupled (we don’t pass the audio through a DC blocking capacitor and instead we use a DC servo circuit that actively manages the DC offset on the DAC output) and the rest of th…

[Simon2]

To make it short, it is ok to connect Rossini to macintosh mc830?

[Phil (Phil Harris)]

Hi Simon,

You’ll not let out any magic smoke and there’ll be no knocks on the door from the four audiophile horsemen of the apocalypse by connecting the Rossini directly to an MC830 HOWEVER you may POSSIBLY get clicks or pops on the Rossini muting / unmuting …

I hope that helps.

Phil

[Simon2]

Dear Phil, I appreciate your commemts. Then if I connect Bartok to power amps with transformers, would I avoid pops?
(By the way, Bartok+current Bel canto ref 600M (classD) do not have any clicks and pops…

[Phil (Phil Harris)]

That’s something that would need to be tried in situ should it be an issue…

@Simon2

(By the way, Bartok+current Bel canto ref 600M (classD) do not have any clicks and pops…

It depends on the design of the power amp input stages … Macintosh are generally DC coupled and so CAN exhibit clicks and pops when the system mutes or unmutes, it isn’t a given though that it will.