Steve,
i just connected the amp. Wow. I am speechless. I knew I had quite good system, but what I’m hearing now is unbelievable. It’s a new level for me. I have heard several good sounding systems, some of them an order of magnitude more expensive, but this leaves all of them far away behind a horizon.

Replacing my Krell KAV-400xi with your Zen amp was the best investment in audio equipment I’ve ever made.

Thank you. You just made my life better.

Kind regards,
Michal Chaniewski,
A lifelong Decware customer, starting from now.

If you’re thinking about purchasing your first tube amp and understandably tempted by the huge selection of Chinese built amps showing up on ebay I should tell you that they are heavy well built amplifiers. The one pictured was purchased for around $600 plus shipping of from China. It’s claim to fame is the super heavy transformers.

This one ended up in my shop for repair when one of the resistors on the circuit board blew up and cooked the board. This incident was believed to be tied to a bad tube. The owner had a new replacement tube ready to go for when it got fixed. Assuming the repair would be no problem the owner was interested in tweaking the amp because he was never that thrilled with sound. I replaced the bad resistor that I assumed failed from a shorted tube and fired it up only to watch different resistors located all over the board heat up and start smoking just before the fuse blew again.

It’s a shame too, because the although the appearance and weight of a $4000 amp is here - the actual circuit design and sound is not.

Many of our customers have purchased amplifiers from us AFTER experiencing similar disappointments. I don’t know what this gentleman is going to do because I’m not going to fix it. With no schematic I’d have to reverse engineer it and even then a repair would only leave us right back at square one with an amplifier that is what it is… ready to break.

So save yourself the cost of a too good to be true amplifier from China and the aggravation and apply it towards something that IS good. It always saves you money in the end.

Steve

The Zen CD Players are now in production, the first completed unit shipped today. Here are a few NEW updates regarding this player that are not yet reflected on the web site:

The CD Player is your standard 17 inches wide so it will fit in any audio rack that your last CD player fit into. The Rack Mount ears bring the total width to 19 inches and are included with the player. These are removable.

The ZCD is advertised as having a 5 volt output on the web site, but we have changed this to a more standard 2 volts. This can be altered upon request to be anywhere between 1/2 volt and 5 volts.

OPTIONS

We can optionally install an IEC connector for a removable hi-end power cord for an additional $60. This may become standard on the player after the introductory pricing expires.

We can also as it turns out install a variable output via remote control using a motorized ALPS 100K stereo pot. The knob is located on the rear of the unit above the stock output jacks. No other place to put it - but it’s remote control eye is located on the face of the CD player so it really doesn’t matter. The remote for the volume control also features a soft mute button. Keep in mind that you would have two remotes, the standard one for the CD player and a separate one for the volume control. (Note: you could program a single universal remote with both controls if having two remotes is a problem.) This option adds $320.00 and an additional pair of variable output jacks in addition to the fixed outputs.

Also there are not very many pictures of the ZCD on the site yet, so we thought we would post some here!

Above is a rear view of the player showing the tube location and the added RCA jacks for the tube output.

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