BHK Beta Tester Reports

The P10 is better than the P5 in this regard and it will certainly stop the noise from the BHK amp but I am afraid it won’t be totally eliminated in the P10 itself. I wish we still made the Humbuster.

So if I get a P10 and still have transformer hum, using the Humbuster in front of the P10 would help? I know they come up occasionally used so I could keep that option open. Still, would like to find what is the source …

You bet. Eliminates it. And I think Upscale Audio sells one too.

Hi, I’m new to this forum, but have lurked for a bit now, curious about the BHK products, particularly the 300 Mono’s. How much of “room heaters” do the 300 Mono’s get to be?

I am used to a stereo tube amp that is sufficient to warm my well-insulated basement room up in the winter, and gets too hot right about now in the summer months. How much of an effect to the 300 Mono’s have? After being on for 3 - 4 hours, how hot are they to the touch? Thanks!

Welcome!

I'll be Bach said Hi, I'm new to this forum, but have lurked for a bit now, curious about the BHK products, particularly the 300 Mono's. How much of "room heaters" do the 300 Mono's get to be?

I am used to a stereo tube amp that is sufficient to warm my well-insulated basement room up in the winter, and gets too hot right about now in the summer months. How much of an effect to the 300 Mono’s have? After being on for 3 - 4 hours, how hot are they to the touch? Thanks!


They do make some heat, warm to the touch, but nothing like a tube or class A amplifier.

You could hold your hand on the heat sinks .

Alekz said OK, I can't post photos in this thread... Tried several times in different ways. Giving up ... I'd better publish it somewhere else and post a link here...

Unless they are somewhere in the moderation queue.


If you are on an iPad, attachments don’t work.

Alekz said OK, I can't post photos in this thread... Unless they are somewhere in the moderation queue.
There is no moderation cue, post away!

(I was unaware of the iPad issue. Thanks, Frode)

Ok, I have mentioned it a couple of times in the forum issues thread.

Now that you mention it, this does sound familiar.

Not having any iThingees nor control over the forum’s workings it appears i promptly forgot about it. :frowning:

Well, it seems that only a few of us seems to bother. I am troubled with getting to my PC or Mac every time I need to append something.

+1. This issue has been around a while and it would be nice to get it fixed.

I’m in Oz. 230v. Quick question about the 300’s and very soft hum (transformer?), should it be there or should they be silent?

The 300’s are connected to a P10 (high current OP) and the P10 connected to a DC mains remover(as an experiment to see if it was DC generated). Hum still exists. It is low level but the frequency is such that I can hear it at my listening position - about 2.5m away. My room ambient noise level is reasonably low, 30-35Db.

I’ve recently been using full tube mono-blocks (replaced by the S300’s) and I still have a large SS, NGFB power-amp running direct from the mains plugs without any hum.

I can easily take one or both back to the distributor to have it checked if that is the best thing to do.

Ta Frank

My first audio review ever….

What sort of component is the BHK Preamplifier on first look? At $6000, it is well within the median price range of high-end preamplifiers, such that only serious audiophiles will give it a look / listen. This prompts my first observation about this preamp: what it costs and how it looks are seemingly at odds with each other. I've no complaint about the appearance--I've enjoyed the modern industrial aesthetic of PS Audio's recent gear. But look at almost any other preamp on the market, anywhere near this price range and you will see more buttons, knobs, lights, brand name logos, face plate sculpting, etc. Not so here: with the BHK Pre you get on on / off button, a volume knob, a headphone jack, a well-hidden source button and a simple read-out that mainly tells you the volume setting. Elegant and simple as the finish is, this must not be what you're paying for. The BHK Pre doesn’t scream "come over here and touch me.”

The remote control is fine enough. It's lighter and more comfortable to hold than the brick that came with my Mark Levinson 326s, it does much more, and everything I'd want out of a remote. As I also own the PS Audio Direct Stream DAC and the P5 Power Center, it gives me control of those as well. I do miss not having more switching controls on the preamp itself--handy for when I'm doodling around at the equipment rack--but the remote is well laid out and handy, so no major complaints.

Installing the BHK Pre in my system was a cinch. The manual is helpful and well-written--up to the usual PS Audio standards. I gave it about a couple of hours to warm up by playing a CD on repeat, then gave it a quick listen. It sounded promising, and then I ran out of time. But it was enough to tell me that I had not taken a step down compared to my reference Mark Levinson. Over the next 2 weeks I continued to break it in (about 150 hours) without giving it a long serious listen, as the rest of life beckoned, and my Quicksilver Audio V4 monoblocks were in the Quicksilver shop. I'd listen an hour now and then in the evenings and enjoy the music immensely, using Mark Levinson 434 monoblocks to power my Quad 2905s. Then the Quicksilvers came home, I declared the BHK Pre "broken in enough" and listened a while.

Whenever I've installed a new component, I've played it too soon, too loud, and too hurried to discover how great it is. I've learned over the years that the truth of the component’s quality will be discovered over and over as I live with it. By living with it I mean specifically this: I listen to music as part of living my life, not in order to impress myself with how great my audio system is. In the mornings I'll play Bach or choral; in the evenings it'll be jazz, chamber, orchestral, vocals, or rock at times. I'll spin vinyl on my Linn sometimes, but mostly I'll stream files from my NAS to the Bridge II on the DSD DAC using JRemote on my iPad. Often I'll read while I'm listening.

It's hard to read when listening through the BHK Preamp. I've tried typing this review while listening and I've been repeatedly distracted. Everything about the music is clearer and easier, as other reviewers have noted. Horns played by Miles, Mark Isham or Mathias Eick are more present, more defined and yet larger, as well. The drums in back of the guitar on Shelby Lynn's "Just a Little Lovin'" are more clearly “just there,” and more clearly felt each time the tom is hit. The studio wizardry on Sigur Ros' first album, "Agaetis Byrjun" is more engaging, inviting me to appreciate more deeply the soul and spirit of their art. The flow of notes as Angela Hewitt plays a Bach partita has me looking up, listening for the next voice in the fugue, appreciating the subtlety of touch as the many voice lines emerge from those mere two hands. "How does she do that?!" I think to myself, even though I've listened to her recordings dozens of times.

Compared to my Mark Levinson 326s, the BHK Pre provides a soundstage that is slightly more forward but also deeper. Mid- and lower-midrange are fuller, which accounts for the bloom of horns and vocals. Instruments and voices are equally detailed in space, but the BHK Pre makes them seem a bit larger. Both units are equally “black” in background noise. The Mark Levinson provides a more engaging set of controls on the face plate. But the BHK Pre, when all is said and done, provides the more engaging listening experience.

I think the BHK Pre is more true to the recording than any preamp I've owned, and, I suspect, more so than many I've heard at other venues. This is most evident on so-so recordings of great performances, like Imogen Cooper's “Schubert Live Volume 1”, in which she plays the D. 959 piano sonata in a live setting. The engineers captured the sound of the hall, the live piano on the stage in front of an audience. I can easily imagine myself sitting 10 rows back. The sound doesn't jump out at me, I don't have to suppress a "WOW" as the sonata begins. But then I'm hearing the second theme, the development--the nuance of the keystrokes, the sound of foot on pedal--and I'm there in the Queen Elizabeth Hall of the Southbank Centre in London, even though it's merely a good recording, and nothing like "Wow" by Beck. It's in that moment I know the BHK Pre was designed not with cosmetics or tactile senses in mind, but a care about the artist and her efforts.

You can read about the circuitry and design choices on the website. It makes for good reading, but if you're like me it won't convince you that this is a product for you, though it may tease you more than a little (as it did me). You can read my colleague's descriptions of this fine unit, and that may do more to persuade you. But here's my summation about this work of great vision and integrity: when I listen through it, I'm consistently reminded "this is what I love about this music." I think that's where the PS Audio collaborative decided to put their engineering dollars--into the music that the world's artists are making. They did it their way, as engineers and designers, but, in the main, they did it as music lovers, and it shows.

A footnote: All cabling is Audience Au24 Special Edition. I use single-ended interconnects between the BHK Pre and the Quicksilver V4 monoblocks (with KT 120 tubes), which have no balanced option. I like the synergy. With the Mark Levinson 434 monoblocks, however, single-ended connections were a poor fit, causing the BHK Pre to distort significantly for about 3 seconds every time I changed the volume, whether up or down, at low SPLs or high. Switching to balanced interconnects with the Levinsons resolved this issue. I am at a loss to understand why the single-ended ICs / Levinson combo yielded such a disagreeable effect, as I’d not had that problem when using the Levinson 326s Pre.

A good read.

Great review. Personally I rather like the elegant, minimalist front panel. And the sound is to die for, which is what I really care about.

Indeed, a great, well written review. Thanks!

Old thread revives: I find absolute phase is album and track dependent. I pay no attention to in or out, I can’t see the front panel of the DS from the listening room, and simply push the button and more often than not prefer one over the other.

For many tracks, the stage gets a bit wider but even more so I hear it get either deeper or shallower, mostly the central image vocals. It can be a couple of feet difference in depth.