2.4KW amp, anyone?

[fas42]

I DO recall john telling me about some guy (dunno if it was you, but some clues are there) who auditioned some speakers using an atrocious Status Quo album..was that you frank?

But, if it was you, then you could not have met me eh. As I was not there when some guy auditioned speakers using an atrocious status quo album....

I'm the MAN!! We've hit the jackpot, that was the Status Quo album I've mentioned here many times, I use it as a quick giveaway as to where a system's at and, as you also indicated, the setup in Bathurst did a pretty poor job of it. Which meant that I basically gave up on really assessing the gear there from then on, because it had too many obvious problems. To put it into context, the friend's setup with Naim 50 watt amp is starting to do a pretty reasonable effort now ...

Your current setup should do very nicely, a full active, with plenty of meat: you're well ahead of the game compared to a lot of people. Meaning you don't have to worry about sound as most do, all the amps in your system are just dawdling along.

Frank

 

[mep]

Frank-Do you have a business plan and financial backing? If not, how are you ever going to turn your idea into a commerical product? Also, ARC publishes the schematic for everything they make and always have.

 

[fas42]

Frank-Do you have a business plan and financial backing? If not, how are you ever going to turn your idea into a commerical product? Also, ARC publishes the schematic for everything they make and always have.

Business plan, should be able to do; financial backing, zip, nada, no go. My biggest problem, if you look at my profile, is that I've cooked my brain doing too much highly focused computer work over many years, and my levels of mental stamina are very poor. So the path to commercialising is very, very rocky at the moment, it will be very much a seat of the pants effort to get things moving.

In simple terms, I'm an ideas man -- not a business wizard.

As regards a schematic that wouldn't be the point: as I've said many times, the devil is in the details, the precise way something is organised in space and how it is assembled. I'm sure a lot of ARC's winning comes about for the same reasons ...

Frank

 

[terryj]

I'm the MAN!! We've hit the jackpot, that was the Status Quo album I've mentioned here many times, I use it as a quick giveaway as to where a system's at and, as you also indicated, the setup in Bathurst did a pretty poor job of it. Which meant that I basically gave up on really assessing the gear there from then on, because it had too many obvious problems. To put it into context, the friend's setup with Naim 50 watt amp is starting to do a pretty reasonable effort now ...

Your current setup should do very nicely, a full active, with plenty of meat: you're well ahead of the game compared to a lot of people. Meaning you don't have to worry about sound as most do, all the amps in your system are just dawdling along.

Frank

so we haven't met frank?

I don't recall saying it did a poor job of it?? I was not there remember. So did we or did we not meet.

Personally, I would not care for a system that blurred the edges so much that a poor album was not distinguishable. If it brought a good album down to the level of a bad album coming up..ie they met in the middle, then it would not be for me.

YMMV

In any case, per your own lights, you were not, in fact, able to evaluate the speakers no? It was probably a poor amp.

 

[mep]

ARC shows pictures of their layouts too or at least the ARCDB website does which ARC endorses. But based on your response, your idea for an amp will never become a commerical product. You would probably be doing good to come up with a rough prototype.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

If I'm hoping to commercialise it in some sense then I don't think that is going to be the brightest thing to do ...

Frank

Then it will, I assume, just manifest itself here as more of your ramblings. Not much interesting there in terms of audio.

Tim

 

[fas42]

Then it will, I assume, just manifest itself here as more of your ramblings. Not much interesting there in terms of audio.

Tim

In one sense you're correct, Tim. Much more interesting is that virtually all audio can be optimised to give an extremely good account of itself, the point I've been making since the very beginning. And as I have emphasised, over and over again, the "secret" to that, is being obsessive about the finer points of one's setup. Take the care to get everything right and you will be richly rewarded; just throw a heap of very expensive gear together, you may be lucky to some degree or you might not, just praying to the "synergy" gods may not do the job, and it never quite gets there, remains the curate's egg ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

so we haven't met frank?

I don't recall saying it did a poor job of it?? I was not there remember. So did we or did we not meet.

I obviously only met John.

Personally, I would not care for a system that blurred the edges so much that a poor album was not distinguishable. If it brought a good album down to the level of a bad album coming up..ie they met in the middle, then it would not be for me.

YMMV

In any case, per your own lights, you were not, in fact, able to evaluate the speakers no? It was probably a poor amp.

The point for me is to bring all recordings up to the highest level, "bad" or otherwise. Much interesting music is "badly" recorded and I'm not interested in the SQ middle, not one iota. As I have emphasised many times, all recordings have enough detail to enable a powerful music experience; systems not at their best stop the ear/brain being able to focus easily on the good bits, and the whole exercise of listening becomes a torture test. That Status Quo album reproduced cleanly demonstrates that the recording technology did its job well, it's just the reproduction of a busy mix being mucked up by the playback system that's gets in the way of properly enjoying it ...

Frank

 

[mep]

This is back to the Evelyn Woodhouse's No Bad Dogs theory. There are bad recordings. No amount of "being on song" can change that. Garbage is garbage. Anything you say about being able to make a garbage recording sound good is fantasy.

 

[JackD201]

Frank,

If you're serious e.g. not pulling our legs (are pulling and wanking synonymous or is tugging and wanking? Hahahahahaha!), I suggest you drop the paranoia. Case in point. Herve (Deletraz) of Dartzeel fame started out as a DIYer. Heck all of them did! His DIY journey was chronicled in a major print publication and that garnered enough interest to get him some backing. Look where he is today. If it's a case of implementation and you haven't invented a new circuit there's no IP to speak of. Trust me I authored our country's IP code which is synch'ed with international law. You're secrecy is doing you no good. Nobody but nobody will hand over a 2.4KW based on your partial (I'm being generous here) disclosures. It's like North Korea asking for a batch of enriched uranium to play with. Now make that Japan asking and guess what will happen. It's your call though. At some point, say you win the lottery and can fund the project and being optimistic, you accomplish what you set out to achieve, that unit will be out there, open for all to see. Fact is though, the market is so small, the incentive for any company to spend resources to reverse engineer an amplifier is so close to nil, there really is nothing to be afraid of.

So grab a razor, hair gel, a white lab coat for effect and start snapping some pics!

The Devil from the Tropics

 

[fas42]

This is back to the Evelyn Woodhouse's No Bad Dogs theory. There are bad recordings. No amount of "being on song" can change that. Garbage is garbage. Anything you say about being able to make a garbage recording sound good is fantasy.

There's always a chance that your and other's hearing works differently from mine, Mark. Though I suspect not, because those who've experienced good vs. bad sound from systems at the same time as me have agreed on an assessment of quality.

The trouble with "bad" recordings is that as soon as something is not quite right with the playback the ear/brain just zooms straight in and picks up the problem: it sounds rough, harsh, fatiguing, crappy, how many words does one need here? "Perfectly" executed recordings just make it extremely easy for the system to impress someone, the playback can be as sloppy as hell and it still sounds good.

A case in point: only very recently I finally heard the infamous "Jazz at a Pawnshop", and I thought, what's all the fuss about?? Yes, very nice live recording, lots of subtle background noise coming through, etc, but I've been listening to that sort of stuff from all sorts of recordings for years, nothing to get excited about ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

If you're serious e.g. not pulling our legs (are pulling and wanking synonymous or is tugging and wanking?

Shirley, I am (been busting to do that for ages ...)

If it's a case of implementation and you haven't invented a new circuit there's no IP to speak of. Trust me I authored our country's IP code which is synch'ed with international law.

If the case of the HT there is new circuitry, my very own ideas. In the case of the big fella it's basically pure implementation, unless I decide or need to add the IP bits to get it working to a high enough level

Nobody but nobody will hand over a 2.4KW based on your partial (I'm being generous here) disclosures. It's like North Korea asking for a batch of enriched uranium to play with. Now make that Japan asking and guess what will happen.

Don't quite follow you here, Jack ...

It's your call though. At some point, say you win the lottery and can fund the project and being optimistic, you accomplish what you set out to achieve, that unit will be out there, open for all to see. Fact is though, the market is so small, the incentive for any company to spend resources to reverse engineer an amplifier is so close to nil, there really is nothing to be afraid of.

So grab a razor, hair gel, a white lab coat for effect and start snapping some pics!

The Devil from the Tropics

Remember, this is just an idea at the moment, comes back to the thrust of the original post, how much of a turn on would it be for others? Of course, it's a bit of a show off piece, but that's what a lot of speaker makers do ...

As a last thought, if the 2.4KW didn't sound as good as the new Spectral stuff appears to perform like I wouldn't be happy with it.

Frank

 

[JackD201]

There are two legal ways to get your hands on a 2.4kW to work on Frank, an owner sends it to you or you buy it. The first will only happen under a limited number of circumstances, many of them in conjunction with each other. I'm just being practical here. It's an expensive piece of kit and the owner has no idea whatsoever you will do to it. IMO if there will even be the slightest glimmer of hope, either the owner should know a whole lot about what will be done and what the final output will be or he treats his expensive stuff the way we treat sticks of gum.

Now as far as the show off pieces go, these things actually get built and brought on the road. To do that you still have to hurdle what I said above.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Remember, this is just an idea at the moment, comes back to the thrust of the original post, how much of a turn on would it be for others?

And back to the original answer: If you're going to talk vague nonsense about getting on song by twiddling the wobbly bits and soldering the fairy hairs together and ending up with a clock radio that puts Yo Yo Ma in your bathroom from down the hall and around the corner, well, you may as well stick with the HTIB, it's as credible as anything. If you want to show us something real, if you've got something real to show, that might be interesting.

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

There are two legal ways to get your hands on a 2.4kW to work on Frank, an owner sends it to you or you buy it.

Oh my, I thought Frank was going to build the 2.5k! Is this another "on song" project? This time with someone else's property?

Tim

 

[fas42]

There are two legal ways to get your hands on a 2.4kW to work on Frank, an owner sends it to you or you buy it. The first will only happen under a limited number of circumstances, many of them in conjunction with each other. I'm just being practical here. It's an expensive piece of kit and the owner has no idea whatsoever you will do to it. IMO if there will even be the slightest glimmer of hope, either the owner should know a whole lot about what will be done and what the final output will be or he treats his expensive stuff the way we treat sticks of gum.

Now as far as the show off pieces go, these things actually get built and brought on the road. To do that you still have to hurdle what I said above.

You misunderstand completely, Jack. This unit will be built totally from scratch by myself: I'll wander down to the local friendly electrical parts supplier, get a whole lot of bits and pieces and glue it all together. So the circuit will be my own circuit so to speak, but it will be based on known ideas out there, using standard parts.

The biggest cost, apart from tarting up the box will be the power supply bits: my own version of a gainclone is 95% power supply, that's where the action is ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

And back to the original answer: If you're going to talk vague nonsense about getting on song by twiddling the wobbly bits and soldering the fairy hairs together and ending up with a clock radio that puts Yo Yo Ma in your bathroom from down the hall and around the corner, well, you may as well stick with the HTIB, it's as credible as anything. If you want to show us something real, if you've got something real to show, that might be interesting.

Tim

Funny that you should say that: that's almost exactly what I have on right now, a freebie CD of Mozart top 10 hits, running close to maximum volume. Doing Yo Yo Ma at realistic levels is dead easy, as I have said a million times, it's all about getting all the watts that your system produces to be good ones ...

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Funny that you should say that: that's almost exactly what I have on right now, a freebie CD of Mozart top 10 hits, running close to maximum volume. Doing Yo Yo Ma at realistic levels is dead easy, as I have said a million times, it's all about getting all the watts that your system produces to be good ones ...

Frank

Oh I think pretty much everyone here can get up to cello volume, Frank. That's not the part that lacks credibility.

Tim

 

[fas42]

Oh I think pretty much everyone here can get up to cello volume, Frank. That's not the part that lacks credibility.

Tim

Is it the fact that I can do it with a 20 watt amplifier? Sort of like a Lamm unit?

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Is it the fact that I can do it with a 20 watt amplifier? Sort of like a Lamm unit?

Frank

No, it hasn't anything to do with facts at all, Frank.

Tim