How much do HiFi amps really differ?

"CC"

** Read this, shame it will all go right over your pointy head.

Then PISS OFF - you PITA f****ng TROLL !!

...... Phil

It is done by same bunch of snobs that review wines.

--

    Boris Mohar

No, different bunch of snobs.

Forget it. Get a free one on

or and buy good speakers. They are way more important than any amplifier. And don't waste any money on BS 'super' cables. Cheap speaker wire is fine.

If you can't buy good speakers buy OK ones and a good woofer.

might be a good alternative.

CC wrote: > Greetings: >

>

Most (not all) of the folks buying this stuff can't hear the difference. Many years ago I worked in a stereo shop in a college town

- there's a self important group. My favorite demo was to switch between the cheapest 20 watt amp and the most expensive 500 watt system. As long as the cheapy wasn't clipping and the levels matched, nearly nobody could tell. I don't dispute that there are definite differences between amps. It's just that the 'numbers' don't often reflect this. My opinion is that the measurements aren't nearly good enough. BTW my favorite amp was a Marantz model 15 from way back when.

If you read enough of the reviews, you'll find folks parroting what they've read without having a clue. It's OK as long as they're happy - and even if they aren't.

My general rule is - bring along what YOU think is the best recording you've heard and ask them to play what THEY think is the best. Find something in your price range you like and never mind the numbers. There is ALWAYS something 'better'.

Personally, I love the bottom octave from 16-32Hz and I hate tweeters that have an identifiable pitch when playing pink noise (it whistles). If I can't convince myself it's at least a little 'real', turn it off and read a book.

Same to you

GG

SuSE should not be an excuse for not building one yourself. You have published piccies of PCB's so you must be good to go.....

DNA

Sometimes these write-ups are so full of bafflegab and technotripe that it is impossible to figure out just whatinthehell they are trying to say, other than "buy this product". Maybe the writers are breathing oxygen-free air.

Ed

Would you consider selling me your Kyocera A-710? Thanks.

west

Late at night, by candle light, "Homer J Simpson" penned this immortal opus:

Same snob mentality.

- YD.

--
Remove HAT if replying by mail.

Yes. There is an upper limit on the price it is worth paying for an amplifier - probably around $500.

Anything selling at a higher price probably sells in too small a volume to cover the cost of getting a good designer to design it right in the first place, let alone to cover the rather higher cost of testing it for the various forms of distortion once it has been built.

The only electronic engineer I ever knew who ever looked at a significant series of high priced amplifiers - he wanted something to drive his Quad electrostatic speakers, and the local dealers lent him a lot of gear over the years - found most of them full of trivial electronic errors.

When I last looked, Ralph was a technical director at FEI, and I've no more reason to doubt his competence now than I had when I was working for him back in 1984.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

On a sunny day (Fri, 24 Nov 2006 17:49:13 -0800) it happened CC wrote in :

Complete bullocks (nonsense, madness, crap, silly talk, a-tech blabber etc.

Not really.

Then yo uknow mere then he does :-)

snif snif.

Numbers? Wha tnumbers? 'warm' temperature in degrees C?

What ever you buy, make sure it is not simply gold plated but solid gold. At least you will be able to sell it and get something for it. Before you buy look up the price of the gold, and make sure you buy low and sell high.

I've got an Arcam A65 and CD72 with Acoustic Energy AE1 speakers. £1000 the lot, c. 2002. I've no complaints about any item, don't feel the need to 'upgrade'.

When I worked at Arcam, I liked their attitude. In essence they assumed their market was a keen music lover who was prepared to pay a good price for good kit, and had a realistic salary. Then they work hard to squeeze the best quality sound for that price.

It is certainly possible to make kit with better specifications if money is no object and/or the buyer has more money than sense, but you get diminishing returns for your money. A lot of the time people buy expensive kit as a status symbols, to say "I can afford to pay huge prices that make lesser earners wince".

Yes, this is what I expect. Here is a funny story that tells it all, yet the writer doesn't seem to fully put 2+2 together and reach the obvious conclusion about his own overpriced mediocre exotic amplifiers:

crobinson9512: "One fun demonstration of this fact is to go grab one of the inexpensive TriPath digital amps (Sonic Impact, Teac, etc.) that sell on Amazon for $25 to $95) and run a good source into it (a nice CDP will do very well). These digital amps are very clean, distortion-wise, up to about 5W before they start to get noisy. The sound will blow you away and wonder why loons like me have five grand invested in beautiful tube gear."

Earlier he states:

"having a clean "first watt" from your amplifier is crucial. Solid state amps with high power and low THD figures may not do well, because these amps THD figures are measured at the RATED OUTPUT."

I am rather skeptical of this. Makes me curious to see how my own amp looks putting out a low signal level. Though I'm not sure I could see anything but gross several % distortion if it existed, on my noisy digital scope. Unless I hash up something I suppose.

[edit]

Interesting way to judge if a tweater is worth anything.

Thanks for the input.

--
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
crobc@bogus-remove-me.sbcglobal.net
SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

I run Eagle on Suse.

Time is of the essence. I have many projects in the works already, and I'm not a discrete designer.

Thanks for the input!

--
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
crobc@bogus-remove-me.sbcglobal.net
SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

Something worth reading as usual from Mr. Sloman.

Thanks for the input!

--
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
crobc@bogus-remove-me.sbcglobal.net
SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

I sent you email.

-- _____________________ Christopher R. Carlen snipped-for-privacy@bogus-remove-me.sbcglobal.net SuSE 9.1 Linux 2.6.5

Perhaps bollocks? Bullocks have bollocks.

On a sunny day (Sat, 25 Nov 2006 19:38:34 GMT) it happened "Homer J Simpson" wrote in :

Sorry, not a native Bulloland speaker ;-)

I would not have any expectation at all that more expensive amplifiers are necessarily any better. Maybe if you can see inside and judge the quality of construction then at least it might let you choose one that won't break.

My favourite HiFi magazine review was comparing some cheap brand and expensive brand blank MiniDiscs. These are recordable optical discs, and the players / recorders use lossy audio compression and also a lot of error correction coding, like CDs. The magazine gave some technical information, like that in their testing, the bit error rate of both the cheap and the expensive discs was zero errors, after the error correction logic. In spite of both having zero bit errors, the expensive discs apparently sounded so much better than the cheaper ones. I can't remember the specific bollocks, but it would have involved warmth, clarity and image positioning and all that. However the bits were identical...

Here's a good website about audio:

Chris