Allnic Audio L-8000 DHT Preamplifier

Debate, on both subjective and empirical bases, about the quality of the directly heated triode’s sound reproduction potential continues even today. One of the interesting aspects of these debates is the degree to which they ignore analysis of common, fundamental assumptions based on decades of circuit and mechanical design experimentation and compromise, about the use of these devices. Indeed, because of the difficulties in application of directly heated triodes in audio circuits, many issues arising out of circuit design problems related to them have evolved into assumptions about the audio characteristics of the valves themselves.

Allnic’s Mr. Kang Su Park has spent a lifetime studying and designing circuits and transformers for application of direct heated triodes for audio reproduction. By questioning basic assumptions about the valves and re-examining the original and many historical variations of circuit designs for them, and experimenting constantly in a framework of rigorous application of theory, Mr. Park’s work has resulted in some remarkable audio power amplification devices.

With the 300B, for example, his creations produce significantly more power than is expected (without shortening valve life because the power increase is not achieved by increased bias), in conjunction with exceptionally low distortion and wide bandwidth.

Now, Mr. Park has successfully combined elements of what he has learned and invented over decades to the development and production of a pure, direct heated triode (DHT) based preamplifier. The main breakthrough, which came after several years of work applying all he knows, was the design of a circuit, valve and transformer combination the measured results of which astounded him. The purity of its square wave reproduction – as perfect as anything he had ever seen from a DHT valve amplification circuit – had him questioning what he was seeing!

Of course, he tested and re-tested, replicated and recorded these results many times before assuring himself that there was no mistake. With such an unprecedented outcome for the circuit design, Mr. Park could not be satisfied merely with placing a DHT stage after one or two prior stages of amplification using indirectly heated triodes. This approach is used in a number of commercially available preamplifiers using DHTs, but it is a compromise. It does not result in PURE DHT amplification; it necessarily introduces the characteristics of indirectly heated triode sound into the circuit, so the output DHTs are only amplifying a signal already affected by the indirectly heated triodes in the prior stage or stages.

Mr. Park, though, created a preamplifier that uses DHTs at each amplification stage. In his design, the output stage DHTs are not merely amplifying the signal from previous, indirectly heated triode stages. The L-5000 DHT preamplifier, predecessor to the L-8000 DHT, was pure DHT – from input to output.

Of course, Mr. Park is not the only builder who has accomplished this, but to our knowledge no other pure DHT preamplifiers have been commercially available. There are serious and significant reasons why such preamplifiers could not be acceptable in the marketplace. First among them has been the enormous problem of microphonics. One of the many special elements of Mr. Park’s design is reduction of microphonic influence on the DHT’s. Where others have sometimes accepted the effects of this problem because even with it they prefer the incredible realism of the pure DHT approach, Mr.Park has succeeded in creating a circuit and mechanical design that reduces the DHTs’ susceptibility to microphonic influence to insignificance. Like the Allnic L-7000, which is an indirectly heated triode preamplifier, the L-8000 has a noise floor that is effectively absent.

The Allnic L-8000 DHT preamplifier is the improved successor to the L-5000 DHT, which was THE WORLD’S FIRST COMMERCIALLY PRODUCED, PURE DHT PREAMPLIFIER.

Allnic Audio’s newly developed 61 step constant impedance bridged type attenuator, a world’s first, is installed inside the L-8000 DHT, which contributes to the L-8000 DHT’s outstanding dimensional sound. It does so by ensuring that the attenuator’s impedance is absolutely constant across all frequencies. This is in addition to the zero channel imbalance, a standard feature of Allnic’s in-house produced, motorized attenuators.

The L-8000 DHT has the following features: