Great article highlighting the high costs for developing new amps-etc

[Orb]

Linking a great article that follows the prototype development of a new amp by Nelson Pass, and what stands out is the time and costs to do such ventures, along with the task of ensuring quantity sound the same in production.
I feel this is important because there are a lot out there that feel the high costs of a product do not reflect reality and should be cheaper (excluding obvious cases that are out there).

Anyway great read with some useful insight on developing a prototype and then considering building in quantity for production.
Nelson Pass First Watt SIT Proto:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/firstwatt12/1.html
Please appreciate it covers from 2010 up to late summer 2011.

Enjoy the read.
Orb

 

[Steve williams]

wow and I thought Frank was going to show us his 2.4 Kw amp in no time at all

 

[amirm]

Hardware development is a pain in the neck. It can certainly become expensive in a hurry. And let's not forget about the cost of any mistakes that require manual re-work or re-spin of the boards and such.

Love this comment: "200 watts at idle for just 10 power watts dissipated by merely one output device per side the size of a postage stamp? " Better not be into global warming and such .

BTW, the transfer rate of those transistors is quite nice:

He is running it without feedback as a result. Distortion is still high as the lines probably never become straight as an arrow but still, pretty darn good and tempting.

 

[Orb]

Yeah,
this transister definitely caught the eye of Nelson enough to spend a fair bit developing a prototype around it.

Cheers
Orb