One of the cool things about the SMT/through-hole duality is it gives the builder convenient test points for troubleshooting when things go sour on an mostly and all-SMT build. I also like that it will be a four-layer board with mostly complete power planes in the middle. PIMETA v1.1c is already a great amp, and reducing the impedance on those signals should prove to help make a great amp even better. Another great thing is how there is a relatively clean layout despite how busy it is. It was quite neat how the previous iteration had the resistors and outputs all neatly lined up, but I'm a bit more biased to the layout-er's perspective given my first jump into board design. One thing I'd be wary of is the placement of C2A right next to OPAG. I'm guilty of not owning an opamp removal tool, so I've gotten used to grabbing the chip from the socket with my fingers and pushing my power caps off to the side slightly. I think there will be less tolerance for such behaviour with this new board. Nevertheless, that is still a really clever setup of the three capacitor slots, and there's always the possibility of using the scratchpad to even remove that problem from the previous board revision.
I feel like I've said this before, but I'll say it again anyway. I really enjoy that there is the SMT option on account of beginners. After the CMoy, they can come to the PIMETA and have the option of building a substantially better amp either with SMT or through hole, extending the scope of learning available in this project. Some builders don't even get into SMT unless it's with something like an AlienDAC/BantamDAC, not a lot of the mainstream amps have SMT (they're probably more mainstream owing to that fact). I think it's a valuable bit of experience, and the sooner you can get into it, the better. Nevertheless, I think it's an excellent addition to an already great amp, and it will definitely be very valuable to the community on the beginner's front.
I really like the layout in this board, tangent. We'll see how it stands up to the test run, but I'm quite certain it will fair very well. I'm excited to see the finished product.
posted 03-19-2009 05:28 PM CST (US) 
