I am not an audiophile. I do, however, love music and great quality sound. I am trying to cut through all the rubbish on the internet and start my search somewhere sensible. Can someone advise me of sensible manufacturers of amplifiers which are well made, well suported, not price in inflated and measure well. All I want it to do is amplify my signal, nothing more, nothing less.
You don't have a location listed.
If you're In the US or Canada and are buying something for home use, I'd buy a Peavey CS600s. I have a CS800s, it sounds great, and took 14 years of beating as a bar band amp before the tired power supply caps started tripping the breaker. You don't need the 800 watts for home use, 600 is fine, and I saw a 600 for sale new at the dealer 3 years ago. Either has great protection of the speakers against output transistor shorts, and it has great protection of the output transistors against speaker wire shorts. If you buy the speakon connector output and cables, you shouldn't have speaker shorts. (1/4 phone plugs are notoriously easy to short the output transistors). When I purchased mine, it sounded great. I use piano source material as a test, plus ZZ Top Eliminator as a test of speaker time alignment on the bass drum hits.
If you're into diy, buy a Cs800s or CS800x that is blown up and repair it. The schematics are available from here or Peavey and they have great parts support. I've learned a lot repairing my PV-1.3K. I don't reccommend the PV-watts series for purchase because they don't have great speaker protection against transistor shorts. They were "popularly priced". I'm stuffing an experimental protection circuit in my PV-1.3k.
Peaveys are also assembled in Greece for sale in Europe & elsewhere. I have the opinion that the US plant QA people are quite aggressive on inspection. I can't confirm that opinion on Greek assembled units, I've never worked on one.
The Peavey SP2 speakers IMHO are also the best for sale in my flyover market for home use, even though they look like disco alumni and could blow your ears out of the room if you turned them all the way up. I bought the speakers and CS800s amp used as a package, 94? production date. The speakers have needed no repair whatsoever, just a good vacuuming to get the tobacco ash off.
If you're In the US or Canada and are buying something for home use, I'd buy a Peavey CS600s. I have a CS800s, it sounds great, and took 14 years of beating as a bar band amp before the tired power supply caps started tripping the breaker. You don't need the 800 watts for home use, 600 is fine, and I saw a 600 for sale new at the dealer 3 years ago. Either has great protection of the speakers against output transistor shorts, and it has great protection of the output transistors against speaker wire shorts. If you buy the speakon connector output and cables, you shouldn't have speaker shorts. (1/4 phone plugs are notoriously easy to short the output transistors). When I purchased mine, it sounded great. I use piano source material as a test, plus ZZ Top Eliminator as a test of speaker time alignment on the bass drum hits.
If you're into diy, buy a Cs800s or CS800x that is blown up and repair it. The schematics are available from here or Peavey and they have great parts support. I've learned a lot repairing my PV-1.3K. I don't reccommend the PV-watts series for purchase because they don't have great speaker protection against transistor shorts. They were "popularly priced". I'm stuffing an experimental protection circuit in my PV-1.3k.
Peaveys are also assembled in Greece for sale in Europe & elsewhere. I have the opinion that the US plant QA people are quite aggressive on inspection. I can't confirm that opinion on Greek assembled units, I've never worked on one.
The Peavey SP2 speakers IMHO are also the best for sale in my flyover market for home use, even though they look like disco alumni and could blow your ears out of the room if you turned them all the way up. I bought the speakers and CS800s amp used as a package, 94? production date. The speakers have needed no repair whatsoever, just a good vacuuming to get the tobacco ash off.
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The ultimate goal for many DIYs here, is to design and create our own amplifiers. We wouldn't even get past stage one of that quest without rigid objectivism and adherance to electronic design theory and practice. For most, it means leaving the "listen with your ears" and the voodoo to the final tweaks.
However, even if we were all engineers with years of experience, it doesn't follow that we know much about consumer products or "best buys". It's probably more appropriate to ignore them! Perhaps some members here are in the retail game or still servicing equipment and so have an interest in current commercial products. They may be in a better position to speak candidly about brands, models, value for money etc.
It's not clear, but I assume from your OP that you refer to current products, probably integrated amplifiers, as you find in most new product review publications. Otherwise, consider that good solid-state stereo amplifiers have been around for the best part of 50 years, so it becomes very difficult to make valid comparisons with early stuff.
What do you think is an acceptable retail price for a quality amplifier anyway?
Parasound...Product Lines
Cambridge Audio...Hi-Fi systems and high quality home audio from Cambridge Audio
NAD...NAD Electronics :: High Performance Home Theatre and Hi-Fi
(funny, when you search NAD, you get National Associacion of Deaf)
I'm an amateur musician who would like to listen to some good sounding music without owning and playing all 70 instruments myself. I own my own Steinway, and expect reproduced music to approach that sound, less the room ambient. Until the last five years, every music reproduction system I ever heard more than a CD player and headphones sounded like ****. AR bookshelf speakers sounded like ****, Dynaco speakers sounded like ****, Bose 901's sounded like ****, KLH sounded like ****, LWE had good bass but otherwise sounded like ****, Klipschorns on MacIntosh sounded like ****. Polk Audio sounded like ****. Don't even mention the car audio madness craze. I suppose the coastal megacity residents have had some choice systems in stock, but I never was willing to spend money sound unheard of any system because everything with great reviews sounded like ****. Altec VOT's installed in an actual theater sounded pretty good to my band director and me in 1966, with who knows what amp, but nobody ever stocked them for sale within 300 miles of me, and I could never afford those used anyway. My Dynaco PAS2-ST70 with new e-caps and tubes, into headphones,was just better than the neighbor's fine wood console RCA/Magnavox/Zenith PO*, so for 40 years I maintained the Dynacos. My Dynaco ST120 repaired from cinders sounded like ****, until I got help here repairing it back to specified power, and then solving the crossover distortion and heat problems. My $15 disco mixer sounded like **** until I got some ideas from here on how to make a real preformer out of it.
In 2010 I got wind that a decently priced VOT copy speaker (Peavey SP2) was in stock here. Auditioned some, bought some and the amp as a package. The CS800s amp sounds as good as the ST120 after mods, and is factory stock. Pardon me for being unscientific, I just spent 8 years taking lessons on a Sohmer piano, and 6 years in public school bands, to get some idea what music from classical instruments was supposed to sound like. The HS band opened the Astrodome for the President of the US and got invited to the Rose Bowl Parade, so I have some idea my public school experience with real instruments was fairly high level.
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I work in pro audio, so my brands won't help you. But if I wanted to go out and buy a nice quality stereo amplifier today, I'd probably start by looking at some Yamaha products.
Just an opinion, but I think in this hifi world, you very quickly run into the law of diminishing returns. Is that $3000 amplifier really that much better sounding than that $1000 amplifier? And features - what features you want are lacking on commercial amps? Not many I'd wager.
One thing we drum into musicians is the one single thing you can do to change the sound of your amp is change the speakers. I suspect that different speakers will make a larger difference to your listening experience than esoteric amplifiers.
But that's only my opinion.
Just an opinion, but I think in this hifi world, you very quickly run into the law of diminishing returns. Is that $3000 amplifier really that much better sounding than that $1000 amplifier? And features - what features you want are lacking on commercial amps? Not many I'd wager.
One thing we drum into musicians is the one single thing you can do to change the sound of your amp is change the speakers. I suspect that different speakers will make a larger difference to your listening experience than esoteric amplifiers.
But that's only my opinion.
For brand new: Bryston.(match: well made, well suported, not price in inflated)
For used amp: NAD.
For old amp: Yamaha, Sony, Luxman. (new japanese aren't good any longer, they try to rival chinese prize)
Make your own with best of your careful craft, thats the best.
Thanks so much for your input and thoughts guys, lots of great info here.
Basically, I want value for money; I essentially want a totally transparent power amp (I have a dac/pre) that will (sort of) last forever.
I came across this site as I came across Hypex. And now I am trying to work out whether I should build a UCD180 cheap while it still is in stock having been discontinued; or whether I should just buy a decent amp (2nd hand) from one of the manufacturers mentioned....
Basically, I want value for money; I essentially want a totally transparent power amp (I have a dac/pre) that will (sort of) last forever.
I came across this site as I came across Hypex. And now I am trying to work out whether I should build a UCD180 cheap while it still is in stock having been discontinued; or whether I should just buy a decent amp (2nd hand) from one of the manufacturers mentioned....
Marantz is a brand identity that has been owned by many corporations. Currently it is a second-string Kenwood product and some stereo models are claimed to be Japanese products. The more expensive stereo models like PM7004 are quite well built, as modern audio products go. AV receivers though, are not really our interest here at DIYAudio and looking for products that are good value, totally transparent but also well built is like asking for a Lexus sedan at a generic Chinese compact price. It's just not a realistic expectation in an extremely competitive, low margin consumer market, is it? Those "well built" and "totally transparent" qualities are going to come at a premium, if at all - rest assured.
As other posters have said; if you want consumer advice about current brands and answers to consumer concerns, this is not the right forum. Get the views of people who make it their business to advise retail customers and chat with up to date information at "What Hi-Fi" and their forums, for instance. You'll note that most suggestions here are about either quite old or up-market equipment, which is generally more interesting as a basis for our DIY construction than current models.
As other posters have said; if you want consumer advice about current brands and answers to consumer concerns, this is not the right forum. Get the views of people who make it their business to advise retail customers and chat with up to date information at "What Hi-Fi" and their forums, for instance. You'll note that most suggestions here are about either quite old or up-market equipment, which is generally more interesting as a basis for our DIY construction than current models.
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