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pants-magic-pants · 1 year ago

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✧⊹JARETH BALLROOM COAT⊹✧

[This post is part of a series about constructing Jareth's entire masquerade ball costume. Visit the master post here.]

Fabric Selection [Part 1 of 2] The Saga of the Metallic Valvet

Welcome back to another episode of Coat Construction. I want to first say that my decisions about fabric, and many other things, were informed by the amazing reference photos I had from both Aria Couture and Yosa Addiss. This post will make more sense after you've looked through all those glorious images of the actual costumes. I may also sometimes be referencing AC in my commentary. I stand on their shoulders, and cannot be given even half the credit for all the great costume study that's already been done about this coat.

With that, let's get to it!

One thing I have noticed is that screen accurate fabric for this costume is extremely hard to come by, and it seems as if those of us who’ve done this cosplay raked over google enough to happen upon, and choose, the same fabrics?! Or at least consider them? I suspect I’ve seen the same golden damask fabric used for Jareth’s cummerbund amongst me and two other cosplayers. Hahaha More on that in the cummerbund post.

What I really want to talk about is the royal blue/navy colored metallic velvet that makes up the coat. It’s like a majestic night sky, but not midnight – late evening, when the darkness plays with the vivid blue of the day. The decorations on top of it are entire constellations, planets, comets, meteors...

I think the important thing to know about the fabric and to insist upon is that it’s real velvet, and not velour, nor velveteen (even though the Jim Henson exhibit sign says it is. It just AIN’T. Whoever wrote that sign needs a talking-to.)

So, what is the difference between all of these? They’re all woven fabrics made from usually silk or cotton. They each have a pile, which is a raised surface comprised of loops or strands of yarn (think carpet). Velvet has a long pile, and it’s usually very glossy and soft, and it more easily drapes over things. Velveteen has a very short pile and less sheen, and it can be a bit stiff. Velour is what you see more often in stores, because it’s an affordable look-alike to velvet, made with less luxurious cotton or synthetic fibers, and it’s stretchy. People will use the terms “velvet” and “velour” interchangeably, but they’re not the same. True velvet doesn’t stretch.

And that is why it’s the best and really only option for this coat. You’ve seen it. It’s heavy, and has heavy things hanging off of it. To be more specific, every step of the way while creating it I was being harassed by gravity. Gravity was trying to claim this velvet back to the depths… I’ve said it before: turning it into a coat felt highly non-consensual because of the heaviness and slippery nature of the materials.

That being said, weight puts stress on the seams, and even if your seams are stabilized, a fabric that’s not sturdy enough or yields to any kind of tugging is not going to be good, and it could lead to warped or misshapen areas. There’s also the glue and jewel shenanigans (which my friend calls Crust). They need to be able to cling to something that reliably keeps its shape. The ballroom coat is extremely structured and exudes power – we wouldn’t want it to start looking like a popped souffle, or like it was melting, would we?

From here I also want to point out that the coat seems to be made from velvet with metallic fibers. This means that it’s classified as a type of lurex - and you can read more about it here. This is different from foiled. Any fabric described as “foiled” if you were to try searching for metallic velvet, is not what you’re looking for. Foiling is the process of adding a metallic sheen to the surface of fabric, usually with heat. It tends to look a lot more solid and shiny, rather than sparkling. The process does not result in soft fabric, either, so it definitely messes with the pile and is much less elegant. Lurex, on the other hand, incorporates metallic fibers in just the same way you’d dot the night sky with stars. ;)

ANYWAY. Since I spent months and months roaming multiple search engines, and don’t wish for others to have to suffer through it and waste their time, I have some opinions to share about what I found. Some of these fabrics have even been mentioned by Labyrinth cosplayers as possibilities.

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Mood Fabrics - Ava Navy Metallic Velvet (Link)

I’ve seen this fabric mentioned by a commenter on Aria Couture’s blogs, because it really does seem like a possible match. I bought a swatch of this fabric, thought about it for months, and then finally bought four yards, but returned them. Here’s what I have to say:

The company is reputable. They treat their fabric and customers with care. This fabric is gorgeous and quality, but it didn’t work for me because the shade of blue was too warm and light to match everything else. I only came to this realization after buying four yards of it, because the swatch that they originally sent was (I suspect) from a time when they were using a slightly different dye. What this means for anyone else is that they may not be able to rely on the swatch to make their decision. I had to return it, but they were very understanding. I still very well think that someone could use this to make a beautiful Jareth ballroom coat, if their color scheme is a little warmer.

Here are comparison photos of the swatch and the actual fabric that was sent, however. Just so you can see what I mean.

(The swatch is on the bottom, the actual fabric sent is on top.)

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Blue Moon Fabrics - D Isis Foiled Stretch Velvet in Black/Royal (Link)

I ordered a swatch of this. I have a friend who also did, and was happy with it, so I feel like kind of a jerk for writing here that I don’t think it works, but I really truly don’t, and I want to save anyone from starting a project with it, only to have it possibly ruined. The reason why this fabric doesn’t work is that it’s very stretchy, and I just know that it couldn’t handle all the stress that would be put on it. In person, it also is an extremely bright, electric blue that will steal the show and will not serve as a good backdrop for all the top decorations. In terms of “what type of sky” it is, it’s more like 7pm on LSD. *covers mouth and laughs* But it’s still cool on its own.

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆ ・・・・

Etsy Seller AlexLAFabrics - Lurex Velvet (Link)

The reason why I’m including this is because it was listed as lurex velvet, appears to be so, and has possibly the right coloring, so it may be easy to find this one and consider it, because I certainly did. Well, I’m here to say do not bother with it unless you’re willing to sacrifice $30 just to find out what this fabric is like in person. The photos aren’t good enough to tell the true shade of blue, there’s no info on how it behaves, and the guy won’t offer you a swatch or get back to your messages.

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆ ・・・・

Zelouf Fabrics – Lurex Velvet in Navy (Link)

The fabric I ended up using. It’s lurex velvet, it’s the perfect shade, but it’s not super quality, definitely not as quality as the Ava Navy velvet from Mood. It was sometimes quite offended by being handled, and didn’t appreciate steam. It seemed a little thin for true velvet, and it puckered so relentlessly that I had to buy a new f*@#%ng sewing machine, and by then there were a couple of seams that had been redone so many times that the edges were… how to put it? Like skin without collagen. There were entire pieces that had to be re-cut, it was so bad.

The company also kinda sucks. Originally, I bought four yards, and it arrived shoved into a plastic wrapping that had been poked throughout transit and bursted open on my tabletop. The fabric inside had been severely abused, obviously not stored well, wrinkled, poked, torn, and they STAPLED the order details onto it. Come on. I wrote a stern email, and was not met with much professionalism, but they also weren’t out for my money and owned up to the mistake. They refunded me and then sent another four yards which was less abused, but still a little sad. Ended up with eight free yards, and some of the more abused fabric could still be used for parts of the coat that were buried under lace.

Ultimately, what I would say is… I have a love-hate relationship with it. It’s beautiful when it wants to be, very soft, and I can’t say I’d have picked something else if I did the project again, because for me it was the best option.

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・☆ ・・・・

Here is one more interesting but sort of outrageous photo, of me holding the Mood Ava Navy fabric together with the Blue Moon D Isis fabric.

You can see all the ways that these two fabrics are different!

Anyway, I hope my bit of foot-work and 2c is valuable to someone, no matter what project they're working on or thinking of working on. The coat took about 14 months to complete, and for at least 5 of those months, I was in a stalemate about velvet. Hoping I can save someone else from that.

There will be another post about the lining fabric. There will also be separate posts about making the cummerbund and the shirt, so those will include information about choosing those fabrics.

Thanks for reading! If you've made it this far and appreciate any of my content, I'm going to be obnoxious and mention that I set up the tip function on this blog. All the posts have a button that looks like this ($) where you can tip me however much you want. This helps me be able to afford further work on this costume, and to go to events where I and fellow Labyrinth cosplayers can create content for you. Yay!

-Jareth--- uh I mean Jenny

#jareth cosplay #labyrinth cosplay #ballroom costume #jareth ballroom coat #coat construction #fabric selection

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taww · 5 years ago

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Class A Amps Explained & Compared: Valvet A4 Mk.II vs. Pass Labs XA30.5

After years of hearing about the benefits of Class A amplifiers, I finally got a taste in my system when the Valvet A4 Mk.II monoblocks arrived. Despite its cost and inefficiency, Class A operation has long been held as a gold standard of amplification by many in the high-end, Krell and Nelson Pass among its better-known evangelists. Different Class A amps have their distinct sonic character like any other amps, and no, Class A isn’t a guarantee of great sound. But one commonality I’ve heard from many of these big hot amps is a lovely naturalness and liquidity that came closer to tubes in capturing music’s tonal colors... as if all that bias current helped burn away the ills of solid state. Once I heard good Class A, many otherwise excellent Class AB amps seemed a bit bland and mechanical by comparison. This was borne out when the Valvet arrived while the excellent Bryston 4B Cubed was also in-house. While the powerhouse Bryston was a great amp in its own right, the Valvet just seems to have less electronic artifact and more musical blood flowing through its veins, to paraphrase an old colleague. I was hooked and craving more Class A, so I jumped at the opportunity to give the Pass Labs XA30.5 a try. Replaced by the XA30.8 a few years back, it’s an older design that became a bit of an icon as one of the more attainable ways (MSRP $5500) to achieve Class A nirvana. It makes for a fascinating design contrast with the Valvet - big American muscle vs. tidy German simplicity.

What is Class A again? 🤓

First, a quick refresher. “Class A” operation means the devices (in this case the output transistors of the amp, commonly MOSFET or bipolar [BJT] devices) have enough bias current applied to them to ensure they always stay conductive (“on”) throughout the entire voltage swing of the musical signal. Remember that transistors tend to behave like on-off switches that require a certain threshold current to become conductive. This non-linear behavior is called the transconductance curve, and the idea with Class A is you always have enough juice flowing to keep the device in the conductive, most linear part of the curve.

Non-linear transconductance (current vs. voltage) curve of a bipolar transistor (BJT). Amazing we can get good sound of of these things, eh? (Source: stackexchange.com)

In contrast, Class AB amplifiers utilize “push-pull” complementary (NPN/n-channel and PNP/p-channel) pairs of transistors taking turns handling the positive and negative swings of the musical signal. They will only apply enough current to keep both devices on for smaller signals, and as power increases one side of the push-pull will cease conducting while the other side takes care of business. This is a clearly a more efficient setup - no wasted power for a device that doesn’t need to be on - but one that does have one device always transitioning in or out of its ideal operating region. Even if it’s not doing the heavy lifting, it’s contributing non-linearity and this leads to distortion that typically requires some form of negative feedback to mitigate. (If you’d like to go a level deeper on the theory of all this, check out this tutorial.)

A couple observations that are obvious from a circuit perspective, but perhaps clouded by all the marketing speak in the audio biz. Firstly, virtually all single-ended audio amplifiers are Class A by definition, and all Class AB amplifiers are push-pull. There would be no point in designing a non-Class A single-ended amp for audio because it would distort massively whenever the signal exceeded its Class A bias range. Class A for push-pull means both devices are conducting all the time, but there is an interesting catch - if the output signal exceeds the amount of bias current to keep one side of the push-pull pair in its linear region, the amp still keeps working because the other device is conducting - it’s being pushed in the opposite direction on its transconductance curve, towards saturation (overload). This means unlike single-ended Class A, push-pull Class AB will simply start acting like Class B at high power levels. Secondly, not all Class A biasing is the same - yes, the device might be fully on, but how far into its operating region (where on the transconductance curve) has it been juiced? This is why e.g. when Pass Labs upgraded the XA30.5 to the XA30.8, they increased bias current significantly, resulting in an amp that was still rated at 30Wpc but used over 100 watts more at idle and weighed 25 lbs more.

Class A Power Ratings 🔌

With all that in mind, let’s look at the rated power of these two amps. The Pass Labs weighs 60 lbs/27 kg and is rated at 30 watts into 8 ohms, which is literally 1/10th the rated power of the similarly-sized Bryston 4B Cubed. The Valvet is rated at 55 watts into 8 ohms, with each compact monoblocks weighing 26 lbs/12 kg - it’s well under half the size and weight of the Pass. How can both be Class A, meaning they both operate at low efficiency, yet the Valvet is purportedly 83% more powerful in such a compact package? While I haven’t spoken with Valvet designer Knut Cornils about how he rated the power of the A4, Pass Labs is very clear that their 30Wpc rating is for fully Class A operation, but that the amp will continue delivering power with low distortion well past that. And indeed, when Stereophile measured the XA30.5 on the bench, it delivered 130 watts into 8 ohms and 195 watts into 4 ohms before hitting 1% distortion. Those famous Pass Labs bias meters (NOT power meters as on e.g. Macintosh amps) also tell you exactly when bias current starts to fluctuate, indicating the amp is leaving Class A. On my 92.5dB-efficient Audiovector SR 6 speakers, they would just start to wiggle on heavy bass notes or orchestral climaxes at high listening levels.

Valvet A4 power draw at idle. Double this for two monoblocks.

Since I wasn’t able to measure the actual bias current inside the amps, I took a look at idle power draw as a rough proxy. Though the Pass XA30.5 is rated at 238W at idle, I measured closer to 190W once fully warmed up; meanwhile, the Valvet monoblocks idled at around 90W each. So, pretty similar, which doesn’t mean their Class A biasing is the same (it depends on a host of other factors such as the voltage of the supply rails) but it hints to the Valvet not being “juiced” any more deeply into Class A despite its higher power rating. This is also borne out by the similar operating temperatures (toasty, but not burning hot) and the fact that the power supply in the Pass, while having less capacitance than the Valvet, likely has just as much (if not more) transformer muscle. I don’t know the rating of the Pass’s massive toroid but I suspect it’s more then double the 400VA in each Valvet.

With the caveat that this is conjecture based on the physical, electrical and sonic observations (more on those later), the Valvet’s 55 watts are likely closer to the 1% THD point where it has crossed over into Class AB, and not at full Class A. And as another point of comparison, I currently have the Gryphon Essence Class A power amp that’s rated at 50 watts Class A, and it weighs all of 100 lbs with an absolutely massive power supply. Just as all watts on amp ratings are not alike, neither are all Class A watts apparently.

Sonics ��

The Pass amp took some time to come out of its slumber after having been powered down for a while, but its famously warm, relaxed character was immediately discernible. After a couple days much of the initial “MOSFET mist” burned off and a wonderful synergy developed between Pass Labs amp, Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté speakers and Furutech DSS-4.1 speaker cables. The XA30.5′s big tone, ripe bottom end and easy power nicely complemented the speed and range of the Audiovectors, requiring no softening or sugar coating from the exceedingly transparent Furutech wire. Compared to the Valvet, the Pass had a bigger sound with more generous bass that was borderline fat without ever getting sloppy. Interestingly the soundstage was noticeably wider as well, despite the Valvets being monoblocks which would ostensibly give them an advantage in channel separation. Vocals on the Pass were a little fleshier on a broader, more spaced stage, and dynamics felt a bit more grounded by that extra bass oomph.

Pass’s XA.5-series styling certainly wasn’t known for its subtlety...

The Valvet counters with a faster, more incisive sound. One of the distinguishing features of the Valvet is the use of a single pair of transistors in the output stage. A number of manufacturers have been taking this approach as of late, including Pass in their XA25 amplifier which takes purism a step further by also eliminating the emitter degeneration resistors. The argument for such a simple topology is that no two transistors behave identically, and thus paralleling them causes some loss of fidelity as you can never get all of them at an identical ideal operating point and things kind of “average out.” The XA30.5 uses 10 pairs of MOSFETs per channel, and it’s only when you listen to the Valvet that you realize the Pass might have a few extra dancers in the troupe who aren’t quite as perfectly in lockstep with the music. The Valvet paints with a finer-tipped brush that can trace all the contours and curves of a musical line with great agility; the Pass doesn’t lack for resolution, but feels a tad slower and mushier, like a brush that has a bit of fuzz around it. This is particularly apparent in the upper frequencies where the Valvet has noticeably more sparkle and precision.

Tonally, both strike me as not deviating very far from neutral, but the Valvet has a subtle bit of upper midrange highlighting that methinks is in part due to its silver internal wiring. Silver tends to have a shinier sound to it, and when balanced well in a system it can really bring the details of a performance alive; but if not properly balanced, it risks sounding lean and forward. With the Valvet, the silver character is applied very judiciously, but I did find I needed to use more relaxed interconnects and speaker wires (e.g. Audience) to get the right overall tonality and perspective. The payoff is in the upper frequencies, where the Valvet makes the Pass sound a bit thick and cloudy by comparison. With a suitable source and preamp (the Gryphon Essence preamp was transformative in this respective), the tinkle of triangles and sheen of violins are presented with effortlessly clarity.

For reference, that’s a bookshelf speaker (Role Kayak) with 4″ woofers.

In terms of Class A qualities, both have wonderfully colorful midranges and a fair helping of liquidity and naturalness, but the Pass wears these quality more on its sleeve by sounding downright lush at times. It also maintains this warmth at higher volume levels where the Valvet can start to get a bit brighter and more strained, perhaps indicating where it’s leaving its Class A bias range. Where both excel is in conveying the lyricism of a tune or the palpability of an instrument or voice owing to their resolving, tonally complete midrange presentations. Both have a singing character that sounds and feels so organic and unencumbered vs. a typical Class AB amp. The Valvet does it with a slightly sharper focus on the lines around instruments and a bit more sparkle and dynamic alacrity; the Pass does it with a big, easy smoothness and weighty low end. Though the Valvet has no problem driving my full-range Audiovector speakers to satisfying volume levels, the Pass feels like it’ll be a bit more effortless and stable into a wider variety of speakers given its beefier output stage.

Going out on a limb: based on Gary Beard’s insightful remarks in Positive Feedback, methinks the Valvet might have more in common with the sound of the newer XA30.8. Gary’s observations of the XA30.5 align very closely with mine, and he describes the 30.8 as being more precise and incisive vs. the 30.5, similar to how I hear the Valvet vs. the 30.5. I would certainly expect the newer Pass to have more grunt than the Valvet given its even more massive power supply, but the Valet might capture some of the delicate qualities of the Pass XA25 as well. Both of those amps would make a really interesting comparison to the Valvet.

Closing Thoughts 🤔

Nit-picking power ratings aside, the Valvet A4 and Pass XA30.5 are both fantastically musical amplifiers that deliver plenty of the famed Class A magic with verve and character. It’s no coincidence that after the Valvet landed in my system, the next two amplifiers I’ve sought out - the Pass and the Gryphon Essence - are also Class A. This isn’t to say I’ll never go back to Class AB (and I’m actually expecting a Class D amplifier soon 😱), but after years of swearing I’d only seek out more practical amps that weren’t so ridiculously big and hot, the Class A bug has bitten me pretty hard. If tonal purity and musical nuance are top priorities for you, amps like the Valvet and Pass Labs deserve a spot on your audition list.

#class a #audio #audiophile #hifi #amplifiers #pass labs

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