Sunfire cinema grand Series II - Manual (Page 6)

6
User's Manual
Introduction
Dear Friend:
Thank you for purchasing my Sunfire Cinema Grand five channel power amplifier. I hope
you enjoy it and the music it makes as much as I have enjoyed creating it for you.
This magnificent amplifier represents my very latest thinking - and my best amplifier design
ever. I’ve spent over twenty years developing it, and cannot imagine how I could make it any
better, or refine it any further. No matter what, its performance is, at first, somewhat difficult to
believe.
The Cinema Grand Signature Edition can produce 425 watts rms per channel into 8 ohms
and 850 watts rms into 4 ohms.
The Cinema Grand Standard Edition can produce 225 watts rms per channel into 8 ohms,
and 450 watts rms per channel into 4 ohms.
The big breakthrough feature of the Cinema Grand is its uncanny tracking downconverter,
which uses 18 Herculean Mosfets in the Signature Edition and 12 in the Standard Edition.
The circuit boards are heavy glass epoxy, double sided, with a Faraday shield on the back
side. All resistors in the signal path are 1% tolerance, metal-film. Critical capacitors are film
devices with high dielectric strength and ultra low absorption characteristics. An enormous
Cinema
Grand power source built around a massive power transformer provides the ultimate muscle for
limitless dynamics.
I could go on and on, but here’s the best part: I’ve included two kinds of outputs on the front
left, front right, and center :
(1) a standard voltage-source (i.e., near zero impedance) output for all typical applications and
(2) a higher-impedance current-source output, which many prefer for electrostatic, planar mag-
netic, or ribbon speakers. Or you can biwire your system with the voltage source driving the
woofer(s) and the current source driving the upper part of the system. In many cases this provides
by far the best possible interface between the amplifier and the speaker system.
Whichever way you decide to hook up the Sunfire Cinema Grand, it will create a multilayered
soundstage that is deep, wide, three-dimensional, and utterly believable. The optional current-
source output can coax forth a sensuous, delicately detailed musical voice long associated with
low-powered classic tube amplifiers. (The current-source characteristic of vacuum tubes is the
dominant factor in the soundstage delivery of classic tube amplifiers)
.
Bob Carver, Amplifier Designer, Physicist
Introduction