Of curse the fly in the ointment is the little "If I had that kind of money" bit 😉
From Oxford languages:
As of:
I BET they will brag about their new $250 Million Yacht or mint 1929 Bentley or Bugatti they found in a derelict Hungarian castle barn instead of a burger money (for them) $60000 preamp.
It´s about 0.03% of the yacht cost.
Would anybody brag about something which is worth 0.03% value/cost of his other possessions?
$60000 is "impressive" only to very common folk.
How many yatches around, in numbers?
How many units did the amp sell?
Do they insist on expensive cables?
Anyone open it to see the chips used?
I have seen a $200 remote for an American valve audio set, milled from solid aluminum.
The few cent switches failed, I offered to replace them, the owner bought a new one instead, shipped from the USA to India.
Like the ABBA song : 'Money Money Money,
Rich Men are Funny.....
It's a Rich man's world..."
How many units did the amp sell?
Do they insist on expensive cables?
Anyone open it to see the chips used?
I have seen a $200 remote for an American valve audio set, milled from solid aluminum.
The few cent switches failed, I offered to replace them, the owner bought a new one instead, shipped from the USA to India.
Like the ABBA song : 'Money Money Money,
Rich Men are Funny.....
It's a Rich man's world..."
Cheating by always playing the same bass tone that has no harmonic relation with the music? Amazing.
I knew about the old trick of deliberately distorting the signal and using the fact that people then hear a fundamental that isn't there. It's a filthy trick, but at least the fundamental you hear fits in the harmonic structure of the music.
I also heard about equalization and predistortion to cancel the loudspeaker's distortion. That actually does improve the reproduction of the sound.
Nah...it seems there was a filter and extra bass was boosted.
Same principle in 2.1 kits, the sub woofer is supplied through a 4558, with a frequency filter to supply the lower frequency notes, those being amplified by the sub woofer chip amp.
So the bass boost actually gave more boost to the lower notes, resulting in 'thumpa thumpa' stuff.
This was at the time of rap music, and ghetto blasters...
Seen 400W labels on Philips sets here, chip was 20w/channel....
That means 40W PMPO, per channel, or 80W total.
How that becomes 400 I do not understand.
Or 2800 on a Japanese with 40+40W.
Even the ohms figures are distorted in the flyers, 4 instead of 8 are shown.
All off us here know Watts will double at half ohms, how many customers know that? That itself is misleading.
I think a lot of the big makers have shifted to other products, like home theaters, and there the deception is mind boggling...500 mA transformer, the label says 2000W PMPO...how?!
Same principle in 2.1 kits, the sub woofer is supplied through a 4558, with a frequency filter to supply the lower frequency notes, those being amplified by the sub woofer chip amp.
So the bass boost actually gave more boost to the lower notes, resulting in 'thumpa thumpa' stuff.
This was at the time of rap music, and ghetto blasters...
Seen 400W labels on Philips sets here, chip was 20w/channel....
That means 40W PMPO, per channel, or 80W total.
How that becomes 400 I do not understand.
Or 2800 on a Japanese with 40+40W.
Even the ohms figures are distorted in the flyers, 4 instead of 8 are shown.
All off us here know Watts will double at half ohms, how many customers know that? That itself is misleading.
I think a lot of the big makers have shifted to other products, like home theaters, and there the deception is mind boggling...500 mA transformer, the label says 2000W PMPO...how?!
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What you are discussing is basically "The way of the world today" - altered reality to profit/benefit the rich, and delude the masses.
And that's a sorry thing to happen, naturally.
Deception, lies, bloated ratings... etc etc etc.
It's also a shame that the Dumbing Down Of Society has allowed that stuff to perpetuate.
Indeed, but it's gotten so much worse over the past few decades - attributed to greed and shady dealings.
Those CEO's and rich executives - bunch of criminals and eccentrics.
Eccentrics like Bill gates.
In general there's nothing wrong with eccentrics; WWII would have lasted a lot longer without the Bletchley Park eccentrics.
I, along with other humans, and even the animals, walk 'forward', naturally.
That is why our feet are attached the way they are, and our eyes are 'up front'.
I certainly don't prefer to walk backwards.
And as for 'history', it's exactly that.... 'back in time'.
With that stated, we're living in the present, 2022.
And that's all I want to be concerned with, this is the time that I'm living in.... not any past history that I cannot change.
And in today's present times, the eccentrics are not a part of society that I choose to like.
There are plenty of decent offerings In the 50k range. Absolutely no excuse for something as poorly designed as this. If they could not match the tubes in both channels and eliminate the hum in the review sample just imagine the *rap they would sell the average rich Joe. Kudos to Stereophile for telling it as it is.
And i'm dying to catch a glimpse at those remarkable trannys under the hood. My bet is on Lundahl 🙂
I was going to say, my home brewed preamp has better specs (except stereo separation), and could be reproduced for $300-$400 including a nice case and fancy aluminum knobs.
This address listed for the company "Musical Artisans" (Ricardo K Reyes President) is literally around the corner from me. I walk 1-2 hours every day and I'm positive I've walked past this house before. I must meet Mr. Reyes.
Off topic, I guess Mr. Reyes and I picked the right neighborhood to own real estate! His house has gone up $16K in 30 days, a tidy profit!
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8335-Keeler-Ave-Skokie-IL-60076/3537297_zpid/
Prices are stupid! No way I could afford to move here today. I know what comes next - taxe$. There's sharks patrolling the neighborhood and they want to tear the whole community down and build McMansions and luxury high rise condos. How high can it go?
I too was impressed by the bass output of small, cheap systems. I reverse engineered a few and found that they all used equalization to achieve the bass response.
But I don't know if I'd call it cheating. It works. I do it with "higher end" stuff. My system boosts the bass 6 dB @ 40 Hz with a hard wired shelving equalizer and has a 36 dB/octave (sixth order) high pass filter. It sounds so loud and clear from modest 8" 2-ways. It still has the "punch you in the chest" bass in spite of the small speaker enclosures.
Call it cheating if you will but it works with actual hi-fi components just fine.
Eccentric and genius are not the same thing although there may be an overlap.
Einstein was a genius who had some eccentricities eg he never wore socks. However, I wear boat shoes without socks but I am not eccentric.
Einstein was a genius who had some eccentricities eg he never wore socks. However, I wear boat shoes without socks but I am not eccentric.
Me too, and if you know the engineering behind the products then drivel like this is downright insulting.
I noticed that one of my vendors "Parts Express" was looking for engineers to assist the marketing department. Too bad I'm such a scrupulously honest person or else I might take that job.
I attended a marketing seminar for crafters/artisans a number of years ago and was struck by one of the speaker's remarks: 'if an item isn't selling, raise the price'. Which is, I gather, a different version of 'they've got more money than brains'.
This is a well known phenomenon. It's not just a matter of "more money than brains." I recently read about a cheap little gadget on flea bay that was selling for like $3.00. After a year, only a few had sold. Then the seller raised the price to $9.00 and sales picked up. Then they raised it to $19.99 and the remainder sold out in a couple of days.
It even works on me sometimes. I used to chuckle at all the phenolic ring tweeters for sale for $3.00 or so. That's so 1970s and it's so cheap!
But some really excellent speakers (like the JBL 4310*) use them. Plus they're now selling for $20.00! I sure wish I had bought 10 for $27.00 or whatever a few years ago, because I already would have used a couple pairs. They're exact replacement for about half the speakers from that era (1970s).
*I wish I would have nabbed a pair of these somewhere along the way. They're really expensive now! One of my high school buddies ponied up for a pair (I don't know how much they were but they had to be at least $500/pair) and I remember how incredible they sounded, even in his small high school bedroom. Remember $500 bought a decent used car in 1975.
It's no more cheating than the tone control circuitry built into every single high-end phono preamp/amplifier ever built (RIAA). It never ceases to amaze me that audiophools will turn their noses up at anything other than a volume control on a system, when EQ has been applied both at the cutting and playback of vinyl. Snobbery or just plain ignorance?