The Dussun Factory, and One Serious Amplifier Designer
The next stop on the tour was the Dussun factory in Shanghai. Dussun makes a line of ten preamps, power amplifiers, and integrated amplifiers—all of them solid-state. Some of you might know that Dussun designed and built the amplifiers for Mark Levinson’s (the man) company Red Rose Music. Wayne Garcia favorably reviewed Dussun’s $600 DS99 integrated in Issue 176, which was once sold under the Red Rose name.

But the DS99 is the entry-level product; Dussun makes some higher-end products that are highly regarded throughout China. One of these is the V8i, a 250Wpc integrated with dual-mono construction, massive toroidal transformers, a copper chassis, microprocessor control and protection, large heatsinks, and a variable bias technique that keeps the amplifier in Class A operation (“Hyper Class A”) while running cool.

The FETs are all hand-matched; I saw a worker measuring the FETs on a curve tracer and sorting a big batch into smaller groups that will work together in the same amplifier.

This level of build-quality would cost $6000 in the U.S. The price in China? The equivalent of $1600. If you’re looking for a product that vividly illustrates the economic disparity between U.S. or European gear and Chinese audio products, the V8i is it. Incidentally, don’t be tempted by Chinese-made gear that gets to the U.S. through the gray-market; in most cases the product’s power transformer has been replaced with one of unknown quality (to operate on 110V) which could affect the performance. In addition, gray-market products don’t carry the factory warranty.

Like most Chinese manufacturers, Dussun creates its designs in-house and assembles chassis and circuit boards supplied by contractors. The company was founded by Mr. YuanYuan Zou, a man who has a degree is in electrical engineering and who is very serious and passionate about amplifier design. (He developed the variable-bias technique mentioned earlier.)

Mr. Zou wasn’t interested in talking about the industry or product marketing; he wanted to share his views with me about fundamental principles of what amplifiers do and how to make them better. In his view, the amplifier designer’s concern doesn’t end at the amplifier’s binding posts; he sees an audio system holistically and wants to create amplifiers that better interact with loudspeakers. To that end, he’s recently embarked on a research project that attempts to measure differences in amplifier performance by looking at the acoustic output from loudspeakers.

During our long discussion of amplifiers, Mr. Zou asked me (through my guide in China, Ping Gong of AAA-Audio) which amplifier designers I most admired. The first name that came to mind was Nelson Pass, and he enthusiastically agreed. Mr. Zou had studied the work of all the great designers, and expressed his admiration for the innovation and elegance of Pass’ circuits. Mr. Zou himself is regarded as one of the country’s best amplifier designers.

Dussun is working on an interesting preamp, power amp, and integrated amplifier that we’ll see in the U.S. in 2008. The power amp and integrated amp will each produce 150Wpc, sport dual-mono construction, and come with the “Hyper Class-A” variable-bias circuit. The preamp and integrated will employ a newly developed digital volume control (that is, digital control of an analog signal) employing a switched-resistor network. All the products will be fully balanced from input to output, with true differential circuitry throughout.

The company has just started production of an innovative new AC power conditioner (Dussun’s first) that completely regenerates AC using a 60Hz sinewave oscillator and a power-amplifier stage. Three models are produced, with power ratings of 500W, 800W, and 1200W, respectively.

Again, I came away impressed; Dussun was founded by an audiophile with some serious technical credentials who is obviously committed to producing high-quality products.

Next: It’s Not Called Opera Audio for Nothing

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8