Might as well start another War....

[gvimhoof]

Re: Might as well start another War....

Greetings!

Reading the original thread, I would be very happy with the list of "getting into decent" amplifier brands listed. Have you considered a studio monitor amp? Something designed to be clean and quiet w/ no fan? I, personally, have a Crown D150A Series II amp (needs a new power switch) and am planning on either a Bryston stereo preamp or a small format studio mixer once I have the time/energy to clean out the spare bedroom and create a dedicated listening room for stereo playback.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RA500/ should give you plenty of power and no fan noise for a very reasonable price.

[WmAx]

Re: Might as well start another War....

Greetings!

Reading the original thread, I would be very happy with the list of "getting into decent" amplifier brands listed. Have you considered a studio monitor amp? Something designed to be clean and quiet w/ no fan? I, personally, have a Crown D150A Series II amp (needs a new power switch) and am planning on either a Bryston stereo preamp or a small format studio mixer once I have the time/energy to clean out the spare bedroom and create a dedicated listening room for stereo playback.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RA500/ should give you plenty of power and no fan noise for a very reasonable price.

As far as silent pro amps go, you might want to check out the Yamaha P2500S; it is around the same price, offers far more power(RA500 rated 1kHz, 8 Ohms, 150/channel; 1khz, 4 Ohms, 250/channel : P2500S rated 1kHz, 8 Ohms, 275/channel; 1kHz, 4 Ohms, 390/channel) and a lot more features. Plus it's rack mount ears come off for use in regular consumer audio racks. The Yamaha has no fan noise either, btw.

-Chris

[lasse]

Re: Might as well start another War....

Hello,

But in the end of the day.....

If you can avoid big amps (expensive and "brand-shiny") by choosing a better signal handling before and after the amps, you can put your dollars (pounds, yen, kronor, whatever..) where they more efficiently adds to the sound quality.

The next step for me is to hide the power-amps inside the speaker cabinets.

Or am I wrong??
Regards//lasse

[J.Lee]

Re: Might as well start another War....

Wow!!

These are some really excellent thoughts here. I'll need to go back through this thread a dozen times to glean all the wisdom here.

This is what I was after.

There is absolutely no getting around the fact that there are multitudes of people into this Hobby that have more money than 95% of us will ever have. You constantly see guys virtually totally switching out 100K systems for something they think is better and in less than months they're at it again. The same guys write technical testimonies as to why this sounds better than what they had that are virtual dissertations.

Some of it is virtually ugly as Sin ... 'Stingray Tubes' , other stuff bling but cool to look at .. 'Shanling' and then there are all the Amps that simply look homegeneous and are based on the simplest signal path to get the juice to the source.

I look back often at when I bought what I thought then was my 1st excellent system . I spent $3100 in 1971 dollars and bought Quad!! What a foolish system. Whats $3100 in todays bucks? Back then had I considered 2 channel I remember what I could have purchased and it makes me ill.

I remember a thread here from a couple years back from a Guy who'd stated when he got 'stung' by the bug he spent much time at a high end joint and the Salesman was decent enough to teach him how to best spend his money to get what he was really after and that being sound!

Wish now I'd not let my Ego make my decisions then simply for what I would have learned from that.

Now my budget is limited, I'm getting Old despite wanting to admit such and don't want to approach any decision foolishly.

There's a wealth of info in your responses and it's greatly appreciated.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life running wiring and trying to figure out how my stuff works or totally switching out gear every couple years. I want to listen to music that impresses me each time I sit down to listen to music no matter what the label is on the component.

[envisionelec]

Re: Might as well start another War....

The $50,000 amplifier is probably more likely to have intentional changes to impart an audible 'coloration' upon the amplified signal. Fancy brand names and 'reps' by audiophiles on the other hand, will cost you far more to meet that psychological improvement needed to comfort some.

The speaker(s) and room acoustic(s) are by far more relevant.

-Chris

Big "YUP" to that one. I've been quiet about this, but I'm doing some design work for a high end audio amp company in the US. Their big thing is transparency, but a couple models have some coloration introduced by poor circuit design. The interesting part - they get RAVE reviews, but the problems are measurable.

A lot (all?) of these guys building boutique amps have a lot of money invested up front. They're just trying to recoup since they don't have the sales numbers that drive prices down.

Doing work like this has shown me that it's a lot more interesting to let someone else spend the money on an amplifier design. What bugs me though, is that unless you get lucky and hire a good engineer, you end up with a design that is misunderstood and can really throw good money after bad. (Such is the case for the work I'm fixing).

[lasse]

Re: Might as well start another War....

Big "YUP" to that one. I've been quiet about this, but I'm doing some design work for a high end audio amp company in the US. Their big thing is transparency, but a couple models have some coloration introduced by poor circuit design. The interesting part - they get RAVE reviews, but the problems are measurable.

A lot (all?) of these guys building boutique amps have a lot of money invested up front. They're just trying to recoup since they don't have the sales numbers that drive prices down.

Doing work like this has shown me that it's a lot more interesting to let someone else spend the money on an amplifier design. What bugs me though, is that unless you get lucky and hire a good engineer, you end up with a design that is misunderstood and can really throw good money after bad. (Such is the case for the work I'm fixing).

Hello,

I coldn´t help noticing that you "advertize" the unit (DCX2496) that is the "heart" in my set-up. Does that mean that you think that this cheap, mid-end unit has merits comparable to high-end "boutiqish" amps??

Could it being considered cost-efficient to base your setup on that?:D

Regards//lasse