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Lehmannaudio
Black Cube Linear USB Headphone Amplifier
Norbert Lehmann is a highly skilled a power supply that’s quiet enough to be in And who else would have made the chassis
and very talented engineer who operates close proximity to low-level voltages without entirely out of 2mm steel and the front panel
from what must be the world’s best address introducing noise. from 4mm thick anodised aluminium, then
for an audio company: Mozartstrabe, Koln, Another reason for designing an internal held everything together with stainless steel
Germany. I do wish, however, that he didn’t power supply is no doubt the popularity of and blackened high-tensile steel nuts and
have such a penchant for naming his prod- Lehmann’s products in the professional audio bolts, all with hex-heads?
ucts ‘Black Cube.’ At least the original ‘Black field, where almost everyone uses headphones Flip the Black Cube Linear upside down
Cube’ was black, even though it wasn’t whilst monitoring, and thus has need not and you’ll see even more ‘Engineer At Work’
a cube, but this latest ‘Black Cube’ is neither only of state-of-the-art headphones, but also a signs in the form of two pairs of DIP switches
black nor a cube! state-of-the-art headphone amplifier to drive (used to adjust the gain individually for each
Even its name is not completely descrip- them! (About which more later…) In a profes- channel between 0dB, 10dB and 20dB) and
tive because, in addition to being a head- sional situation, where you have equipment the fact that the operating instructions (as well
phone amplifier, and a DAC that will con- strewn everywhere about the studio, you just as the labelling for the rear panel input and
vert your digital audio files to analogue (via don’t want a two-box solution, particularly if output terminals) is also underneath, neatly
a USB interface), the Black Cube Linear is also the power supply has been separated from the printed on aluminium ‘stick-on’ patches.
a high-end preamplifier (albeit one that has low-voltage electronics because it’s noisy! A I’d judged the Black Cube Linear a work
only a single input, so if you want to access professional would immediately realise that if of art even before I pulled out my trusty hex
multiple signal sources, you’ll have to add an the Black Cube Linear’s power supply is quiet key to remove the ten bolts that would give
outboard passive switch.) enough to be contained within the case, the me access to the secrets of the interior but ten
Black Cube Linear itself won’t introduce any screws and 100 turns later, I was even more
The Equipment noise into the recording chain. impressed. Firstly, the two 6.5mm headphone
The Black Cube Linear USB Headphone Am- You really only need take a passing glance jacks on the front panel that appeared to be
plifier/Single-Source Preamplifier (which here- at the Black Cube Linear to see immediately black plastic actually turned out to be Neu-
after I will refer to as the Black Cube Linear, that it’s very obviously been built by an en- trik’s top-line gold-plated phone jacks. Id
rather than continue to use its full title, for gineer. Who else would be game enough to already picked the volume control as one of
the obvious reason) is surprisingly large and have the very large volume control knob pro- Alps’ finest, just from the perfectly symmet-
heavy. One reason is that Lehmann has de- trude through an equally large hole on the rical rotation and the way it glided around
cided to integrate the power supply into the front panel with such a fine tolerance? Who freely as I turned it, yet stopped without
case, whereas with many of his other designs, else wouldn’t care that in order to attach such any backlash at any point I released it, but
he provides a completely separate power sup- a large-sized knob (which makes the volume it was nice to have my hunch confirmed.
ply. I suspect there are a number of reasons so easy to adjust in tiny, yet precise incre- Then there’s the shielded Sedlbauer Poly-
for this, not least being the fact that recent ments) a large grub-screw hole would need to tronik 30VA toroidal transformer that feeds
improvements in power supply technology be clearly visible on the upperside when the the two Vishay 4,700μF/40V capacitors and
now mean that it’s possible (though by no volume is set between 7 o’clock and 9 o’clock discrete rectifier diodes. Although the left and
means easy, and certainly expensive!) to build and also between 3 o’clock and 5 o’clock? right channels share the same power supply,
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Australian Hi-Fi | 23
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Test Results
The frequency response of the Black Cube
Linear proved to be highly linear, and very ex-
tended, reaching up to 70kHz at the high end,
and down to 2.8Hz in the bass, –3dB. The 1dB
down-points were at 4Hz and 34kHz, giving
a normalised frequency response of 4Hz to
34kHz ±0.5dB. You can see from Graph 1 that
the main deviation in level was at the upper
end of the audio spectrum, with the response Graph 1: Frequency response of line input at 2V output when driven by 500mV input, using
20dB gain setting. [Lehmann Black Cube Linear USB]
Graph 2: Channel separation 500mV input/2 volts output. [Lehmann Black Cube
Linear USB]
Graph 5: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz using 20dB gain setting with
500mV input and 500mV volt output. [Lehmann Black Cube Linear USB]
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pact on your power bill and will certainly im- Maximum Gain at 0dB/10dB/20dB Settings -0.28/10.61/19.72 dB
prove performance in the long run. Power Consumption 9.36 watts
Steve Holding Mains Voltage Variation 238–250 volts Min–Max
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