How good are the Pass/AKSA amps in reality?

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Magura said:



I have spoken to both of them, and I sure don't agree with you that they have much in common.


Magura :)

I really don't see why you think it appropriate to be commenting at all. The obvious difference between the two gents would be that you're quite defferential to Nelson Pass, while you seldom miss an opportunity to gratuitously show contempt for, and take swipes at Hugh Dean. As to why, I wouldn't know and frankly don't care. I don't which came first, your conversation with Hugh, or your comtempt. In any event, it is obvious that you are not an dispassionate observer.

I own/have owned products from both, and I consider both of their design and implementation skillsets to be innovative and moreover, they both offer excellent products. Nelson Pass is, in his own way, a legend in audio. His stature, and success allows him share his experience (and older designs) with the diy communinty-
\http://www.enjoythemusic.com/diy/0708/first_watt_b1_preamplifier.htm
and obviously his own area and elsewhere here in DiyAudio.

Hugh Dean is not in such an enviable position. His portfolio of designs do not span such a long time and he can scarcely afford to share current designs with those who may not have his interests at heart. His commercial bipolar amps started as a very sohisticated Baily topology and matured into something far better and sophisticated by both objective and subjective metrics. To those who approach him in a gentlemanly manner, he is still far too gracious for his own good.

They're both 'of an age' that they've realized that minimal benefit accrues to one who tries to build themselves up by denigrating others. Then again, some folks, no matter what their age, might never learn this.

FWIW
 
pmkap said:


I really don't see why you think it appropriate to be commenting at all. The obvious difference between the two gents would be that you're quite defferential to Nelson Pass, while you seldom miss an opportunity to gratuitously show contempt for, and take swipes at Hugh Dean. As to why, I wouldn't know and frankly don't care. I don't which came first, your conversation with Hugh, or your comtempt. In any event, it is obvious that you are not an dispassionate observer.


Let's keep the eye on the ball, shall we?

Magura :)
 
Nelson Pass said:


These days my definition of "boutique" is "not made in China".

:cool:

Sadly true.

If we could shelve personal bias for a while, all the mid-size manufacturers I mentioned arguably target their product to the discerning end of the MASS market. As Nelson Pass pointed out, a market essentially dominated by the big Chinese manufactured players.

Looking at the designs from any of these mid-level (size wise) manufacturers it's often easily seen just what compromises they made in setting the design, if the ultimate goal was accurate audio reproduction. Certainly, size, weight and efficiency are some that come to mind. Often we are not as bound by these same limitations.

So this brings me back, once again, to the beginning. Please keep in mind this is somewhat a rhetorical question so maybe we can save the opinions on whether MF is any good or not :rolleyes: As a rule, are good DIY efforts genuinely better than commercial offerings, and if so why? On the other hand do we put so much time into them, we convince ourselves they are ;)
 
Pete Fleming said:

As a rule, are good DIY efforts genuinely better than commercial offerings, and if so why? On the other hand do we put so much time into them, we convince ourselves they are ;)


In some cases yes, but to be honest, I think it is mostly a matter of the "I made this myself, spent a lot of cash and time, so I love it".

After Nelson began educating the DIY community (here I think of the Zen articles and the FW articles), the cases of genuine high performance DIY gear, has sure become more common, as the design has room for sub-optimal layout and component choices.


Magura :)
 
A DIYer might also invest a lot of time to do things that only the most expensive brands might afford to do commercially, like carefully matching components. Although such things might be less important for certain designs it can also make it possible to build other designs that would be economically prohibitive to even get to work properly for massproduced equipment.
 
That's very true Nelson. I guess one could also argue our process, with the resources we have at our disposal, TAKES a lot of time. Compare, for example the time it may take me to assemble and solder a board, compared to the seconds a machine would take to insert and solder the very same components. The manufacturer has spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars effectively "buying time", money that will need to be recovered in the final selling price.

What prompted my thoughts for this thread, now years ago, was listening to people waxing lyrical about their latest creation then, without wanting to sound too much like a snob, seeing either what they had previously or the rest of their componentry and wondering upon what basis they formed their judgement.

Notwithstanding the above, is this such a bad way to get down to absolute basics of what design is, and look at precisely what compromises we are working to? So far we could argue assembly time, size, weight, efficiency, and protection, are just some of the constraints very seriously affecting mid or larger manufacturers that we don't have to deal with, at least not to the same extent. More knowledgeable people than myself will no doubt come up with more, and I hope take the time to do so.

I feel so often we are herded down a certain path in design simply because we're so used to seeing it done that way by manufacturers. Yet those same manufacturers are operating to different constraints; does it look that way because it reproduces sound more accurately, or is it just easier/cheaper to manufacture? Depending on one's position, either could be said to be "better".
 
Pete,

Most commercial offerings are designed for ease of manufacture, and setup, and maximised profit. There is no love of the product in all but the best boutique gear for obvious reasons; it's highly competitive. The job of marketing is to gloss over this fact whilst convincing the buyer he needs one.....

Nelson highlights that boutique means 'not made in China'. Amusing, but damn true.

Since much of the love comes from the labor, DIY has the advantage that you can do a very good job since it will be yours; and hope that the instructions identify the areas where a little more effort will reap rewards, such as matching devices, mentioned earlier.

A designer needs some courage to talk with his customers, necessarily partly exposing his approach. That Nelson has done this shows there is a love for the craft, which is reflected in his products, commercial and DIY.

Cheers,

Hugh
 
Pete Fleming said:
I was thinking of the mass produced models of course, but also considered smaller manufacturers. Names such as Creek, MF, Arcam, Meridian, and so it goes on. They tend to have quality at the forefront but their designs are often far from "simple".

Not a matter of personal bias, but each of the All-Brit list you mention used to be characterised by minimal AND either cheap or really bad engineering.
Meridian used to be the plastic brand, MF the one with reliability issues.

I thought the original question was whether DIY projects can be compared to commercial offerings, in my opinion they can and do look favourable penny wise.
Only problem is that penny wise becomes a somewhat hollow statement once an individual spent years on building and learning new tricks.
At first, the primary objective for building audio gear yourself is just to save cash, at a later stage sound quality AND flawless engineering become the benchmarks and money merely a budgetering issue.
DIY audio is a death trap for the technical curious perfectionist.
 
Well I think that IS personal bias on your behalf. I have been to Creek and Arcam personally and seen their operations, met with the designers and spoken at length with them. Their target market may not be the same one you circulate in but that neither makes their designs "bad" nor "cheap". They are aiming to deliver reasonably quality at a reasonable price, and simply have different design constraints. Your definition of "reasonable" may well be different to theirs and their target market, that's your personal opinion. Keep in mind that if Nelson took a job with, say Philips and was briefed to design an amplifier with specs amongst which was a retail price of $500 and he came up with the x1000 he'd probably be sacked!
 
:cool:

I am truly glad to read some opinions and posted information on this.
It was and still is a good question put by Pete, long ago:
How good are the Pass/AKSA amps in reality?

Just because a topic or a question is 'old', here in www.diyaudio.com
does not have to say it is not a very good question.
in this case, for anyone into DIY projects of his own --- or considering such an audio project.

Thanks people.
I am busy reading all these very interesting posts.
Not only by Hugh Dean and Nelson Pass themselves.

Lineup :) who decided a revival of this amplifier matter - successfully or as a failure
 
Thanks Lineup, it's really amazing that people are getting onboard this, including both Nelson and Hugh themselves.

In my mind this has morphed into two thoughts. Firstly as I began, how do our efforts compare to commercial offerings? Do we sometimes kid ourselves they're better because we WANT them to be better or because they truly are?

Secondly, since we don't have the same design constraints as commercial manufacturers, it's quite conceivable the end product truly could be "better" by the standard of sound reproduction. So why are 99% of the DIY efforts merely clones in some fashion or another of what would be found on retail shelves? Commercial design is so often design by committee, done by the masses, for the masses; what shade of beige would you like Sir? With the equivalent of an open-source network drawn together by forums such as this, all able to easily share ideas and information, why aren't we seeing the boundaries pushed more often in this arena? Why not have light globes dangling out the top of your amplifier, who says you can't? We produce a box and take some wires from our source and plug them in, the signal zig zags back and forth countless times and gets spat out a bit larger into more wires to our speakers. Beige! Change the topology a tiny bit from the guy next door and you think you're a hero! Who says an amplifier has to look like a box that sits on a shelf or the floor. Does it look that way because it's easier to manufacture? But that's not really one of our design constraints. So why can't it be, I don't know .... be a couple of tubes that run from the source to the speakers? Just some food for thought.
 
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