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How much do HiFi amps really differ?

C

CC

Jan 1, 1970
0
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.


Something worth reading as usual from Mr. Sloman.


Thanks for the input!
 
H

Homer J Simpson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Complete bullocks (nonsense, madness, crap, silly talk, a-tech blabber
etc.

Perhaps bollocks? Bullocks have bollocks.
 
C

Chris Jones

Jan 1, 1970
0
CC said:
Greetings:

Reading some amplifier reviews here:

http://audioholics.audioreview.com/...ated-amplifiers/Arcam/PRD_125582_2717crx.aspx

"The NAD is warm but not nearly as open."

Really funny. I know just what the guy means. Then a ton of additional
reviewers spew paragraph after paragraph of the same silliness.

What do engineers with experience in audio amps think of this stuff? Is
there much difference in the sound of a $250 vs. $2500 amp with the same
"numbers?"

I suppose there might be, if there are differences in numbers not
specified. I recall a long time ago when I bought my Kyocera A-710
integrated amp, a 100W/ch 45 lbs. whopper with 60A peak current
capability (that really impressed me) that it simply mopped the floor
with a Denon component in the shop of similar power level. So naturally
I walked out with the Kyocera. Of course it listed for $1000 vs. the
$600 Denon, and I only bought it because it was a display for $600. The
difference in sound quality seemed apparent when listening, and before I
was even told anything about it's parameters. Perhaps just the
salesman's "you will find this model over here to be far superior to the
Denon" suggestion conditioned me to perceive things differently? I dunno.

Unfortunately, it now has problems and I'd like to replace it with
something smaller, but with respectable quality and capacity for my
impoverished apartment lifestyle. I've narrowed down to:

NAD C325BEE 50W/ch $399 (would really be right for the wallet if it's
decent enough)
NAD C352 80W/ch $599
Rotel RA-1062 60W/ch $699 (folks just gleem over this one)
Arcam A65+ 40W/ch $699 (I just discovered this today)

Nothing is nearly half as heavily built as my Kyocera. It's really
crazy reading folks' reviews, with all the "color, warmth, openness,
etc." Are these guys tripping or what?


Good day!

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:
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/ampins.htm

Chris
 
K

Kryten

Jan 1, 1970
0
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".
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
CC said:
Any yet it would be dramatically more difficult to quantify why.

I suspect not actually.

Possibly easier in fact given the right analytical tools.

Graham
 
B

Bruce Varley

Jan 1, 1970
0
ehsjr said:
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.
No, they're very smart people being paid by other very smart people who
realise there are a heap of suckers out there, and know what it takes to
make them bring out their gold cards.
 
Eeyore said:
I suspect not actually.

Possibly easier in fact given the right analytical tools.

Large-scale winemakers do seem to have access to gas-chromatographs to
separate the flavour constitiuents in wine, usually backed up by
mass-spectrometer detectors which enable you to identify each
successive volatile constituent.

Some of the wine-makers I've talked to on Australian cellar-door tours
do seem to have access to these sorts of tools, while more traditional
wine-makers understand what their more traditional terminology - such
as cat's pee - means in chemical terms.

Professor Max Coltheart at Macquarie University in Sydney has been
studing the subject for more than 25 years to my certain knowledge -
unfortunately I can't find and publications, but
I've enjoyed taking part in several of his long-running series of
experiments on assigning meaning to traditional wine terminology.

Subjectivist hi-fi analysists aren't in the same league.
 
C

CC

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chris said:
Sorry, I posted the same link before I read your post. I did post it more
politely though.

Homer J Simpson is absolutely right to suggest spending the money on decent
speakers, not the amplifier.


Thanks for the second link then!
 
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