What lies beneath?

[mep]

Dick Olsher gave the Concert Fidelity CF-080LSX2 line stage a rave review in the Sep 12 issue of TAS. This is a $24K preamp that was designed to be a minimalist design in order to have as few as parts possible in the signal path.

 

[microstrip]

I have worked as an electrical engineer and project manager in many industries over the last 40 years. The prices being asked for so called audiophile equipment seems as ludicrous to me as what goes into it. Even the designs are at times so absurd as to leave me gasping. Here's a simple example. A few years ago I looked at a review of a Nagra preamplifier. Its signal path contained just three 6AT7 vacuum tubes. There are only so many ways to bias and connect these tubes, the number of options are limited. This circuit could have been built by any electronics hobbyist (except for the polypropylene capacitors that weren't available until later and are quite cheap) inthe 1950s for $50 or less. List price? $10,000. Are they effing crazy? No! It's the people who buy it believing there's some magic in it that are the crazy ones IMO. 99.99% of all of the high end audio equipment on the market could be reverse engineered and built by hobbyists if they wanted to but in this "Let George do it" world we live in, and this "I'm no expert, I have no idea how this thing really works and don't care to find out, manufacturers can charge anything and people seem to buy it.

Parts are standardized, that's the basis of the modern industrial age. You specify a transistor, a resistor, a capacitor, a transformer by its performance criteria and usually there's something already on the shelf that does exactly what you want. The idea that most parts that go into consumer audio equipment are "custom" or that they're even culled is rediculous. There were some manufacturers in the past, AR, Bose, possibly KLH that actually did cull speaker drivers and destroyed reject parts. AR had mountains of them in barrels. But today, manufacturing tolerences are tight even for speaker drivers thanks to ISO9001 and ANSI. In the production of millions of transistors and ICs of a particular run, you can bet one that passes inspection is electrically indistinguishable from another. BTW, inspection is automated. That's why they only cost a few cents to a couple of dollars apiece. There are no secrets in this industry.

Strangest of all is the idea that simpler is better. The simplest is the windup gramaphone and while it's fascinating as a museum piece, performance wise it's junk. If you had any concept of how many transistors and tubes, capacitors and inductors the electrical signals that eventually became your vinyly phonograph record went through before it got to you (same for cds) you'd gasp. Dozens, hundreds, possible many many hundreds. What makes you think an extra two or three more in your preamplifier or power amplifier are going to make the critical difference? BTW when those old records were made, those circuits weren't built to nearly the precision that goes into modern equipment.

What kept these people in line decades ago that isn't there anymore and lets them get away with their high prices? Widespread DIY. In junior high school and in high school kids were already gettig their general class radio licenses, tinkering with building short wave receivers and transmitters, tearing down car engines and rebuilding them. Today in a world that is largely helpless and thinks knowing how to type a command on a computer keyboard is technical savvy, consumers are at the mercy of the market for manufactured products. For consumer audio that market will make any claim no matter how outlandish and charge whatever it thinks the market will bear. That laquered finish on the outside of your speaker cabinet you can see yourself in that will eventually suffer mars and scratches would probably have cost more than the speakers inside....if it hadn't been made in China where labor only costs about $1 a day.

Soundminded,

Sorry to say, for most of it -1

IMHO, your post is full of nostalgia, addresses a few weakness of the current high-end scene – why people who just want high-end equipment need to buy equipment that costs a fortune mostly because it is made to professional standards, able to survive in the jungle? - but it fails to understand high-end aims, design , production and most of all, its customers. And the chosen Nagra unit – the PLL – could not be replicated by usd 50.00 as you pretend.

I will not try for now explain you why gear such as Soulution, Burmester (FrantZ, can you help me ) or DartZeel is so expensive, and remember that high-end is not a standardized industry. IMHO, this happens because the mainstream audio industry failed to address its requirements and most of it preferred to bury the head in the sand as ostriches, ignoring the full potential of existing recordings. They wisely focused on most of the population, from where real significant income comes, and forgot about this niche of people who want high quality sound reproduction. But the search for something better is intrinsic to humans, and some people wanted to pursue this route.

Surely any one believing that the standard industry specifications are enough for high-end audio can not understand its pricing. We had several inconclusive threads on measurements where we happily disagreed most of the time.

Again IMHO your romanticized view about car tweakers and DIY people policing the audio arena in the past has no solid foundation. Most of the high-end just started from these brave DIY’s, that have shown that something better could be attained with non orthodox means. Do you remember the very complicated circuits shown in japanese magazines in the 60’s and 70’s? Or the exotic and expensive DIY systems of that period?

BTW1, industry can manufacture one million parts that are exactly the same. It also means that if one them is not suitable for a specific purpose, the other 999999 are also not suitable.

BTW2, I believe that young (better, no so old) talented people, using the simulation capabilities of their computers, their knowledge about psychoacoustics and the knowledge they grasped from the previous generation of talented high-end designers, are really designing better state of the art products. As you, I regret that they are not being able to do them cheaper, as the use of technology seems to have price to pay.

 

[microstrip]

I had another thought about this as well. When you think of the original audio companies, like WE, RCA, GE and some of the others, they were pretty big companies who could subsidize product development and still bring things in at a reasonable cost, particularly given the 'pro' market where they were competing. Once 'high-end' audio became the province of smaller, boutique manufacturers (there aren't many of these big industrial companies that make high end stuff, it is mostly mid-fi), they need to build in a substantial profit margin, just to pay themselves, that goes far beyond the costs associated with R&D and parts/assembly. Not defending this, just sayin'.

Whart,
+1, but why not defending?

 

[Soundminded]

Soundminded,

Sorry to say, for most of it -1

IMHO, your post is full of nostalgia, addresses a few weakness of the current high-end scene – why people who just want high-end equipment need to buy equipment that costs a fortune mostly because it is made to professional standards, able to survive in the jungle? - but it fails to understand high-end aims, design , production and most of all, its customers. And the chosen Nagra unit – the PLL – could not be replicated by usd 50.00 as you pretend.

I will not try for now explain you why gear such as Soulution, Burmester (FrantZ, can you help me ) or DartZeel is so expensive, and remember that high-end is not a standardized industry. IMHO, this happens because the mainstream audio industry failed to address its requirements and most of it preferred to bury the head in the sand as ostriches, ignoring the full potential of existing recordings. They wisely focused on most of the population, from where real significant income comes, and forgot about this niche of people who want high quality sound reproduction. But the search for something better is intrinsic to humans, and some people wanted to pursue this route.

Surely any one believing that the standard industry specifications are enough for high-end audio can not understand its pricing. We had several inconclusive threads on measurements where we happily disagreed most of the time.

Again IMHO your romanticized view about car tweakers and DIY people policing the audio arena in the past has no solid foundation. Most of the high-end just started from these brave DIY’s, that have shown that something better could be attained with non orthodox means. Do you remember the very complicated circuits shown in japanese magazines in the 60’s and 70’s? Or the exotic and expensive DIY systems of that period?

BTW1, industry can manufacture one million parts that are exactly the same. It also means that if one them is not suitable for a specific purpose, the other 999999 are also not suitable.

BTW2, I believe that young (better, no so old) talented people, using the simulation capabilities of their computers, their knowledge about psychoacoustics and the knowledge they grasped from the previous generation of talented high-end designers, are really designing better state of the art products. As you, I regret that they are not being able to do them cheaper, as the use of technology seems to have price to pay.

"And the chosen Nagra unit – the PLL – could not be replicated by usd 50.00 as you pretend."

Why not? What's in it that wasn't available in the 1950s except for the polypropylene capacitors? The power supply is so chintzy it all fits in a small sealed box.

I worked for the largest research consortium in the world for 12 years, a spinoff of Bell Labs. I've worked in the electronics, semiconductor, telecom, and now the pharmaceutical industry. I know real research when I see it. High end audio ain't it. It's nothing more than tinkering. It is you who is the romantic IMO thinking that the people who invent or make this stuff actually know something. All I see is a lot of very fancy packaging, a lot of claims with nothing to back them up, and a dwindling market for a product few people care about anymore. And no wonder.

"why people who just want high-end equipment need to buy equipment that costs a fortune mostly because it is made to professional standards"

Crown amplifiers are made to professional standards. So is QSC. When Bryston has to bid against Crown, QSC, and their like, those audiopile prices go out the window. Industrial versions of their amplifiers with little or no difference from their consumer products with the exception of 70 volt outputs and utilitarian enclosures get priced at about the same as Crown and QSC or they'd never win a bid. Professional users aren't fooled by advertising hype. BTW, a lot of so called high end audio equipment when disassembled turns out to be manufactured to very low standards. Not only is there often very little to it, some of it isn't made very well either.

 

[Bill Hart]

"And the chosen Nagra unit – the PLL – could not be replicated by usd 50.00 as you pretend."

Why not? What's in it that wasn't available in the 1950s except for the polypropylene capacitors? The power supply is so chintzy it all fits in a small sealed box.

I worked for the largest research consortium in the world for 12 years, a spinoff of Bell Labs. I've worked in the electronics, semiconductor, telecom, and now the pharmaceutical industry. I know real research when I see it. High end audio ain't it. It's nothing more than tinkering. It is you who is the romantic IMO thinking that the people who invent or make this stuff actually know something. All I see is a lot of very fancy packaging, a lot of claims with nothing to back them up, and a dwindling market for a product few people care about anymore. And no wonder.

"why people who just want high-end equipment need to buy equipment that costs a fortune mostly because it is made to professional standards"

Crown amplifiers are made to professional standards. So is QSC. When Bryston has to bid against Crown, QSC, and their like, those audiopile prices go out the window. Industrial versions of their amplifiers with little or no difference from their consumer products with the exception of 70 volt outputs and utilitarian enclosures get priced at about the same as Crown and QSC or they'd never win a bid. Professional users aren't fooled by advertising hype. BTW, a lot of so called high end audio equipment when disassembled turns out to be manufactured to very low standards. Not only is there often very little to it, some of it isn't made very well either.

I haven't listened to a Crown piece in years, but back in the mid-70's it sounded bright and harsh (DC300A and IC 150 pre) compared to the competition from hi-fi company oriented stuff, e.g, Phase Linear 700 (which hardly had the build quality of the Crown) and Audio Research (which had the build quality and the sound, but at a price).
I agree that the pro market wouldn't tolerate crazy pricing for boutique products, or crappy construction. It amazes me- maybe it shouldn't given what I think we both agree on- that some of the WE stuff from before WWII is still around and being run. Ditto some of the other early theatre sound equipment.

 

[mep]

I think if one digs back through history a bit that they would find that high-end as we know it today had its roots with men who were discharged after the end of WW II. We had lots of guys who were trained in electronics in order to repair/maintain the transmitters and receivers and other electronic gear of the day. I still have some of the text books that were used to train the electronic techs in the military and the training they received back in those days was damn good. I believe Sid Smith from Marantz took that route. I think much the same thing happened in England with our brothers there. Look at pictures of the old Marantz and Leak gear to name but two companies and you will see the ties to the way military gear used to be built. The beautiful layouts, the wire lacing which hardly anyone knows how to do today, are all representations of a bygone era.

With regards to tube gear, outside of housekeeping chores that some companies have automated, the basic circuit designs aren’t much different than they were in the 1940s and 1950s. The primary differences are in beefier power supplies that use SS rectifiers that can push big capacitor banks and better quality resistors and film capacitors to work with. We can argue whether or not the art of winding output transformers has gotten better. I don’t think too many people would argue that the vacuum tubes available today aren’t in the same league with tubes from the golden era.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I have worked as an electrical engineer and project manager in many industries over the last 40 years. The prices being asked for so called audiophile equipment seems as ludicrous to me as what goes into it. Even the designs are at times so absurd as to leave me gasping. Here's a simple example. A few years ago I looked at a review of a Nagra preamplifier. Its signal path contained just three 6AT7 vacuum tubes. There are only so many ways to bias and connect these tubes, the number of options are limited. This circuit could have been built by any electronics hobbyist (except for the polypropylene capacitors that weren't available until later and are quite cheap) inthe 1950s for $50 or less. List price? $10,000. Are they effing crazy? No! It's the people who buy it believing there's some magic in it that are the crazy ones IMO. 99.99% of all of the high end audio equipment on the market could be reverse engineered and built by hobbyists if they wanted to but in this "Let George do it" world we live in, and this "I'm no expert, I have no idea how this thing really works and don't care to find out, manufacturers can charge anything and people seem to buy it.

Parts are standardized, that's the basis of the modern industrial age. You specify a transistor, a resistor, a capacitor, a transformer by its performance criteria and usually there's something already on the shelf that does exactly what you want. The idea that most parts that go into consumer audio equipment are "custom" or that they're even culled is rediculous. There were some manufacturers in the past, AR, Bose, possibly KLH that actually did cull speaker drivers and destroyed reject parts. AR had mountains of them in barrels. But today, manufacturing tolerences are tight even for speaker drivers thanks to ISO9001 and ANSI. In the production of millions of transistors and ICs of a particular run, you can bet one that passes inspection is electrically indistinguishable from another. BTW, inspection is automated. That's why they only cost a few cents to a couple of dollars apiece. There are no secrets in this industry.

Strangest of all is the idea that simpler is better. The simplest is the windup gramaphone and while it's fascinating as a museum piece, performance wise it's junk. If you had any concept of how many transistors and tubes, capacitors and inductors the electrical signals that eventually became your vinyly phonograph record went through before it got to you (same for cds) you'd gasp. Dozens, hundreds, possible many many hundreds. What makes you think an extra two or three more in your preamplifier or power amplifier are going to make the critical difference? BTW when those old records were made, those circuits weren't built to nearly the precision that goes into modern equipment.

What kept these people in line decades ago that isn't there anymore and lets them get away with their high prices? Widespread DIY. In junior high school and in high school kids were already gettig their general class radio licenses, tinkering with building short wave receivers and transmitters, tearing down car engines and rebuilding them. Today in a world that is largely helpless and thinks knowing how to type a command on a computer keyboard is technical savvy, consumers are at the mercy of the market for manufactured products. For consumer audio that market will make any claim no matter how outlandish and charge whatever it thinks the market will bear. That laquered finish on the outside of your speaker cabinet you can see yourself in that will eventually suffer mars and scratches would probably have cost more than the speakers inside....if it hadn't been made in China where labor only costs about $1 a day.

+...what are we up to? +++++++. The simplicity thing is particularly confusing because the same "high-end" that promotes simplicity seems to believe that only separate components are acceptable, then duplicates, with every component, some of the noisiest parts and some of the greatest opportunities for interference in any system. Then, of course, to compensate for the stacks of boxes full of duplicative resistors capacitors, wire, power supplies...connected by nests of more wire, long wire, and plugged into multiple outlets through multiple power cables, they put in only the best duplicative parts, marked up by a huge margin, of course. Suggest that DAC, pre and amp placed in one well-designed box with good isolation, good shielding and a single power supply might sound better, that a lot less wire actually bemore effective than a lot more expensive wire, and the conventional wisdom runs in circles; the sky is falling.

My only point of disagreement is that we don't need a DIY community to hi fidelity back; we ohly need to kill the sacred cows and listen anew. We need to listen to some pro audio. We need to drive some of our big passive audiophile speakers with some Crown and QSC and Yamaha and compare them to "high-end" amps. Blind, of course. We need to set up some active speakers and subs up behind an acoustically transparent curtain next to some towering full-range "high-end" speakers and listen. We even need to compare all of the above to some good midfi and get a real assessment of the gap.

We need to close our eyes, trust our ears, and be unafraid of what we might learn. Hifi needs a reality check. MHO. YMMV....

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I had another thought about this as well. When you think of the original audio companies, like WE, RCA, GE and some of the others, they were pretty big companies who could subsidize product development and still bring things in at a reasonable cost, particularly given the 'pro' market where they were competing. Once 'high-end' audio became the province of smaller, boutique manufacturers (there aren't many of these big industrial companies that make high end stuff, it is mostly mid-fi), they need to build in a substantial profit margin, just to pay themselves, that goes far beyond the costs associated with R&D and parts/assembly. Not defending this, just sayin'.

Are you sure about what you percieve to be the gap between the two? When was the last time you actually listened to high-end speakers being driven by a powerful midfi receiver? Most of the better AV receivers allow you to bridge four amps to stereo to double the power to the main front speakers to get 250, 300 watts per channel. I think a great test would be a Yamaha, Onkyo, Dennon.... used this way, driving some respectable audiophile speakers and compared, blind of course, to a full SS "high-end" stack -- DAC, pre, mono blocks of similar power.

Tim

 

[microstrip]

+...what are we up to? +++++++. The simplicity thing is particularly confusing because the same "high-end" that promotes simplicity seems to believe that only separate components are acceptable, then duplicates, with every component, some of the noisiest parts and some of the greatest opportunities for interference in any system. Then, of course, to compensate for the stacks of boxes full of duplicative resistors capacitors, wire, power supplies...connected by nests of more wire, long wire, and plugged into multiple outlets through multiple power cables, they put in only the best duplicative parts, marked up by a huge margin, of course. Suggest that DAC, pre and amp placed in one well-designed box with good isolation, good shielding and a single power supply might sound better, that a lot less wire actually bemore effective than a lot more expensive wire, and the conventional wisdom runs in circles; the sky is falling.

My only point of disagreement is that we don't need a DIY community to hi fidelity back; we ohly need to kill the sacred cows and listen anew. We need to listen to some pro audio. We need to drive some of our big passive audiophile speakers with some Crown and QSC and Yamaha and compare them to "high-end" amps. Blind, of course. We need to set up some active speakers and subs up behind an acoustically transparent curtain next to some towering full-range "high-end" speakers and listen. We even need to compare all of the above to some good midfi and get a real assessment of the gap.

We need to close our eyes, trust our ears, and be unafraid of what we might learn. Hifi needs a reality check. MHO. YMMV....

Tim

Tim,

One of the nice things about the high-end is its diversity. Some people (that IMHO do not understand its aims) see it as a negative aspect. Not me.

 

[microstrip]

When was the last time you actually listened to high-end speakers being driven by a powerful midfi receiver?

Very recently. As most of my equipment is tube I often use AV amplifiers with SS modest CD players in repeat mode to burn-in speakers. And I can assure you that the sound is very poor compared to my current system, even at easy listening levels!

When was last time that you carried a similar comparison?

 

[rbbert]

I am a SS fan in general; about a year ago I moved my old Bryston 4B-ST amp to drive my NHT 3.3 front L/R speakers in my home theater, using my Denon 4310 only as a preamp for those speakers. The difference in sound was quite noticeable and a bit surprising. I thought it might have been just higher volume, but the automatic level setting in the Denon kept the volume setting the same.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Very recently. As most of my equipment is tube I often use AV amplifiers with SS modest CD players in repeat mode to burn-in speakers. And I can assure you that the sound is very poor compared to my current system, even at easy listening levels!

When was last time that you carried a similar comparison?

It has been a couple of years, but it was a much closer comparison, as the sources remained the same, the speakers were not being burned in, the equipment was all solid state and the outputs were volume-matched. Could I hear a difference? Yes. Was it dramatic? No. Such differences almost never are. But I don't doubt for a moment that you could hear the difference between any solid state equipment and tube gear. And I don't doubt that you very much prefer the tubes. That is not the question. What AV receiver do you use?

Tim

 

[astrotoy]

My experience is that there is a very large community of really excellent reverse engineers. They are in China. If you go to Shenzhen (across the border from Hong Kong) there is a huge multistory mall (right next to the main train station from Hong Kong) devoted to reverse engineered products - purses, suitcases, eyeglasses, all with the names of the original manufacturer. There are also different grades - those which use the same quality materials as the originals (real leather, for example) vs. those which use plastic. There is a price difference between the lesser and higher quality also. For example a Bottega Veneta purse pirate of the same quality of the original is about $100US when the retail of a real one was about $2000US. You can get a faux leather copy for about $10US. By the way there is a big banner in the mall proclaiming in Chinese and English "Protect the Intellectual Property Rights."

If a $10K amp or preamp can be built from $50 of parts, my guess is that you would see it copied pretty quickly and sold for $995 in the US under a Chinese label (with a whisper campaign that this is really a copied XXXXX model). As for the wealthy Chinese themselves, I went to the hi-fi mall in Shenzhen (not near the train station and not easy to get to - primary customers are Chinese) and it is full of small shops with used MacIntosh, Marantz and other tube equipment. There was even a MBL Radialstrahler (the big one). From the appearance of the equipment, they didn't look copied.

Larry

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I am a SS fan in general; about a year ago I moved my old Bryston 4B-ST amp to drive my NHT 3.3 front L/R speakers in my home theater, using my Denon 4310 only as a preamp for those speakers. The difference in sound was quite noticeable and a bit surprising. I thought it might have been just higher volume, but the automatic level setting in the Denon kept the volume setting the same.

The differences I heard the last time I did the exercise, between a very hefty Onkyo AV receiver driving stereo at double power vs a Mac pre and power amp were also noticable. I'm not suggesting that we should compare good, powerful "midfi" to high end electronics because there is no audible difference, but because it's good, from time to time, to understand what the real differences are rather than to just continue to accept conventional wisdoms.

Tim

 

[Bill Hart]

Are you sure about what you percieve to be the gap between the two? When was the last time you actually listened to high-end speakers being driven by a powerful midfi receiver? Most of the better AV receivers allow you to bridge four amps to stereo to double the power to the main front speakers to get 250, 300 watts per channel. I think a great test would be a Yamaha, Onkyo, Dennon.... used this way, driving some respectable audiophile speakers and compared, blind of course, to a full SS "high-end" stack -- DAC, pre, mono blocks of similar power.

Tim

Tim, I am pretty sure I could get musical sound from a modest set up, using a good receiver or integrated. I don't think that would necessarily work well with the horns I use in the main system for music. I did have a highly regarded solid state amp on that system temporarily, when the Lamm SETs went out for repair, and the system was flat and lifeless. As to comparing mid-fi to high end solid state digital, I can't say, since I don't use any digital in my main system, high-end or otherwise.
I'm not saying my way is the only way, and I'm the first to admit that I am trying to achieve tonality, dynamics and a certain kind of luxurious midrange, rather than 'accuracy,' per se, so I'm going to admit to my bias and get that out of the way up front. Could I get a mid-fi receiver or digital to duplicate what my system sounds like- I doubt it, but I have no reason to try.
Don't get me wrong- I'm not trying to justify the price of the exotic high end gear.
Nor was my point that mid-fi or big company products are 'bad.' Indeed, you'll remember my shock at how good that little PA system was at the Shakespeare festival some months ago.
Instead, i was just making the observation that much of the 'high end' stuff is from smallish, private companies that don't or can't deliver at a price or need the markup to survive. Yes, there are some companies that are apparently able to do pretty good digital at very reasonable prices, e.g. the Oppo player, which I never heard, and certain DACs (none of which I've used).
Even by limiting myself to vinyl, though, and recognizing that there is now a glut of cheap turntables, I'm bettting that I COULD hear the difference between a modest turntable rig and what i'm running. So, where does that leave us?
I think there's more room for delivering the goods cost effectively in the digital domain, perhaps based on an entirely different approach than the one I've adopted. Whether what I do is right for others- probably not and I'm not advocating it as a benchmark.

 

[microstrip]

It has been a couple of years, but it was a much closer comparison, as the sources remained the same, the speakers were not being burned in, the equipment was all solid state and the outputs were volume-matched. Could I hear a difference? Yes. Was it dramatic? No. Such differences almost never are. But I don't doubt for a moment that you could hear the difference between any solid state equipment and tube gear. And I don't doubt that you very much prefer the tubes. That is not the question. What AV receiver do you use?

Tim

Tim,

The differences will be dramatic if you have optimized your system for the best amplifier - perhaps not so much if the system only sounds average. Anyone can make the best hi-end gear sound poor just choosing pieces that do not show synergy.

The AV receiver I use is either a Denon AV4803 or an Onkyo, older but heavier and more powerful. Sometimes I also use a QUAD 606 system for this purpose. And since summer I am not using a tube power amplifier, but a DartZeel NHB 108b. It sounds great and dramatically better than the AV system. What were the amplifiers and sources you were using?

 

[microstrip]

My experience is that there is a very large community of really excellent reverse engineers. They are in China. If you go to Shenzhen (across the border from Hong Kong) there is a huge multistory mall (right next to the main train station from Hong Kong) devoted to reverse engineered products - purses, suitcases, eyeglasses, all with the names of the original manufacturer. There are also different grades - those which use the same quality materials as the originals (real leather, for example) vs. those which use plastic. There is a price difference between the lesser and higher quality also. For example a Bottega Veneta purse pirate of the same quality of the original is about $100US when the retail of a real one was about $2000US. You can get a faux leather copy for about $10US. By the way there is a big banner in the mall proclaiming in Chinese and English "Protect the Intellectual Property Rights."

If a $10K amp or preamp can be built from $50 of parts, my guess is that you would see it copied pretty quickly and sold for $995 in the US under a Chinese label (with a whisper campaign that this is really a copied XXXXX model). As for the wealthy Chinese themselves, I went to the hi-fi mall in Shenzhen (not near the train station and not easy to get to - primary customers are Chinese) and it is full of small shops with used MacIntosh, Marantz and other tube equipment. There was even a MBL Radialstrahler (the big one). From the appearance of the equipment, they didn't look copied.

Larry

You can not buy them for usd 50.00, but for about usd 200-300 total you can buy a Jadis or Audio Research preamplifier perfect copy in kit form from China at eBay. A good acquaintance of mine bought the top Jadis JP200 "equivalent" - a perfect copy of the Jadis schematic. I helped him assembling it - but in the end it sounded much inferior than the entry level Jadis preamplifier.

 

[taters]

Very recently. As most of my equipment is tube I often use AV amplifiers with SS modest CD players in repeat mode to burn-in speakers. And I can assure you that the sound is very poor compared to my current system, even at easy listening levels!

When was last time that you carried a similar comparison?

I was at a Magnolia checking out a Rel sub and it was hooked up to some Sonus Faber speakers and a Denon reciever. It sounded absolutely terrible. After 5 minutes I left.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Are you sure about what you percieve to be the gap between the two? When was the last time you actually listened to high-end speakers being driven by a powerful midfi receiver? Most of the better AV receivers allow you to bridge four amps to stereo to double the power to the main front speakers to get 250, 300 watts per channel. I think a great test would be a Yamaha, Onkyo, Dennon.... used this way, driving some respectable audiophile speakers and compared, blind of course, to a full SS "high-end" stack -- DAC, pre, mono blocks of similar power.

Tim

i own a Rotel Reciever that i use to power a pair of Dynaudio Audience 52SE bookshelf speakers for the Fujitsu 50" Plasma in my family room. i like what this combo does and enjoy the sound i get. this Rotel is not rated for very much power, maybe around 100 watts a channel, but it's rated for 5 channels at full power....unlike some other Recievers. the quality and respected reputation of the amps in the Rotel are well earned in the context of Recievers. when i bought it i felt that it was as good sounding as any reciever i had heard. maybe not as much brute power as some recievers, but in my context that is not needed. i have my full blown 7.1 Home Theatre in the room next to it with a 7 channel Lexicon amplifier, 2 powered subwoofers, a 10' wide 2:35 screen, etc. etc.

i've had the Rotel in my 2-channel system for temporary duty a few times. and in the 2-channel system it only needs to power the mid and tweeter and it's a 93db, 6 ohm load. in any case, the performance is not anywhere near what other 'big-boy' amps can do, let alone the darTZeel. the Rotel makes music, but the truth from the MM3's reveal the Rotel as congested and closed in. in the context of my acoustically accurate room and low noise signal path the Rotel is out of it's element.

it's not a trivial matter to build a high quality amplifier that aspires to approach the SOTA. if you look at design targets and expectations for mid-fi recievers it's wishful thinking to make the claim you are making. it would be like winning the lottery in odds for one to compete with SOTA.

 

[opus111]

You can not buy them for usd 50.00, but for about usd 200-300 total you can buy a Jadis or Audio Research preamplifier perfect copy in kit form from China at eBay. A good acquaintance of mine bought the top Jadis JP200 "equivalent" - a perfect copy of the Jadis schematic. I helped him assembling it - but in the end it sounded much inferior than the entry level Jadis preamplifier.

They probably got the schematic right but screwed up on the layout. That would reflect the educational mentality - work hard on grammar and neglect pronunciation