Not yet. But the people that sold it to me claim that it measured in spec.
The connectors I was using appears to have caused the problem with the sound.
The biggest issue I am having with it are cronically leaking capacitors.
At this point I don't.
Interesting of course, but it may not be necessary at this point.
It appears to be a clean amp with badly leaking mains capacitors, no corrosion.
That was the idea.
That makes little to no sense.
Connectors have to be really bad to affect the sound. Capacitors that leak either need replacement, and if you have done that you are buying junk - like extremely bad stuff. Ebay maybe?
Connectors have to be really bad to affect the sound. Capacitors that leak either need replacement, and if you have done that you are buying junk - like extremely bad stuff. Ebay maybe?
They are made with junk metal, which appears to be a well known issue with these connectors.
I replaced the caps on the amp boards with caps from legitimate sources. I overheated a few the first time do to a bad/insufficient soldering tip.
The mains caps still need replacement.
Why not?
Maybe Russian oil caps, which we all know were specially made for Military use, have something special going for them.
Tubes, oil caps, have a recurrent tendency to beat latest hi Tech in many areas, with well known examples.
In Serbia, a 1960 air defense system chock full of tubes and paper in oil capacitors
managed to shoot down the most advanced plane in the World, an "invisible" F117 Nighthawk
chock full of the latest Digital processing and Software, the best stuff 1.6 billion dollars can buy.
Am I surprised?
Hardly.
Just by looking at the schematics that Onkyo M-505 is obviously designed to have wide bandwidth, high OLG, low distortion, which could be described being a typical "dry and boring" from a subjective point of view, making it subjectively sing requires so much redesigning well beyond rolling a few caps it wouldn't resemble anything what it looks like in its current shape.
It would probably be better to leave it intact and pass it on to someone who appreciate its qualities and instead look after amplifiers with a different design philosophy in mind, something like Pass Labs offerings usually designed around a relatively few components making up an amplifier with a bit higher distortion but mostly of very low order harmonics, typically subjectively euphonic, may very well fit the bill.
One could go on and on and second guess why the current amp isn't sounding well in the current system, maybe it's depending on something in the current chain setup(?), distorting speakers showing its ugly side with a very "correct" amplifier(?) etc... but I will refrain from walking that path working out what is what.
It would probably be better to leave it intact and pass it on to someone who appreciate its qualities and instead look after amplifiers with a different design philosophy in mind, something like Pass Labs offerings usually designed around a relatively few components making up an amplifier with a bit higher distortion but mostly of very low order harmonics, typically subjectively euphonic, may very well fit the bill.
One could go on and on and second guess why the current amp isn't sounding well in the current system, maybe it's depending on something in the current chain setup(?), distorting speakers showing its ugly side with a very "correct" amplifier(?) etc... but I will refrain from walking that path working out what is what.
I prefer an amp to reproduce the original singer, not sing itself! Just like I like my windows to be clean and transparent and not covered in dust or sepia-toned.
Which is a stupid way to describe something thoroughly competent, but goes with the chinese curse - may you listen to interesting amps!
The main filter caps the least likely to require replacement for many reasons. They are currently in vogue to replace.
If you cooked those caps, it isn't a chronic problem. What are you classifying as "junk metal"? Early (non gold) RCA jacks were engineered for the best performance, gold plated connectors have issues some times. Those RCA jacks on Japanese equipment ... well engineered if they are made decently. They can perform better than the Tiffany style easily. Also less expensive to manufacture, but everyone calls them cheap. They are much better than most think they are.
If you cooked those caps, it isn't a chronic problem. What are you classifying as "junk metal"? Early (non gold) RCA jacks were engineered for the best performance, gold plated connectors have issues some times. Those RCA jacks on Japanese equipment ... well engineered if they are made decently. They can perform better than the Tiffany style easily. Also less expensive to manufacture, but everyone calls them cheap. They are much better than most think they are.
TheSoundMann said:
TheSoundMann said:
That may be the cause.
This is a competent design except for one thing - it has no decoupling capacitors on the supply rails.
The amplifier is sensitive to the rail voltages through C208, C217, and C218.
Replace the main filter capacitors. You may want to add 0.1uF 100V ceramic decoupling capacitors. Don't touch the frequency compensation capacitors.
Ed
Nothing in the end to end signal path is without some coloration, particularly the mic and speakers. Nonlinear processors (such as compressors) used in mastering are also not without coloration. Mic preamps, dacs, etc., are never perfect either.
Also, it has been known since at least 1938 that SINAD as a metric of amplifier performance is meaningless.
Given all the above, why shouldn't the goal of the reproduction system be to make the music sound musical once again?
There's a reasonable theory that in blind testing, all amplifiers sound the same 🙂
But the 1970s and 1980s also saw a wholesale move from paper cones to dull bextrene and polypropylene drivers, simultaneously with the advent of class B bipolar transistor amplifiers, some of which would turn into smoke on switch on, and only the Japanese seemed to be able to tame, especially Sansui, at which point they cleaned the board with their transistor offerings.
There's a theory that the transistor sound prompted a wholesale redesign of many speakers to a duller sound.
Although I do recall finding that big Yamaha transistor amplifiers were the most screechy and awful, especially through some big Magnaplanars (at Lasky's, Watford IIRC), an expensive combo only matched in dreadfully awful sound much later by a pair of giant £19k Chord power amplifiers and some giant expensive speakers, that murdered Pink Floyd's 'Money' in a way I'd hitherto thought impossible !!
Both occasions were accompanied by a proud, beaming salesman, presumably deaf.. 🙂
I remember my dad had an English Armstrong transistor amplifier, and 'upgrade' from the old mono tube amp (which was also Armstrong IIRC), the transistors regularly went 'pop', then was replaced with an awful Goodmans Module 80 with a huge switch-on thump as it's big single rail capacitor charged up, while giving Yoga lessons to the 12" Wharfedale cones, until a Nad 3020 arrived which as least sounded plausible, if not quite matching the What HiFi hype.
But everyone's memory and experience is different 😀
Careful Mark
Classic SINAD isn't completely meaningless firstly. It just isn't definitive or complete.
No. The goal of a music reproduction system is to accurately reproduce the source material without adding distortion of any kind. Systems do this with varying degrees of success. Get a good system with good source material, it absolutely does sound musical. What you can't do is take source material that isn't musical and make it that way, not without adding some forms of distortion. Then you add that to all material. In other words, your system is an effects unit. That fails the goal of a reproduction system.
That is why your goal doesn't work.
Classic SINAD isn't completely meaningless firstly. It just isn't definitive or complete.
No. The goal of a music reproduction system is to accurately reproduce the source material without adding distortion of any kind. Systems do this with varying degrees of success. Get a good system with good source material, it absolutely does sound musical. What you can't do is take source material that isn't musical and make it that way, not without adding some forms of distortion. Then you add that to all material. In other words, your system is an effects unit. That fails the goal of a reproduction system.
That is why your goal doesn't work.
Hi Globulator,
Across the pond here, we went from dull highs to more flat designs as a natural progression. There was no consideration of amplifier type. The better speakers revealed problem designs though! Speaker design has progressed steadily since. Canada then designed an acoustics lab at the NRC, and PSB was among the first to use it and produced some really great speakers. I still use the PSB Stratus Gold (original type).
Transistor sound had zero to do with anything here.
The classic English design, Quasi-comp output stage, capacitor coupled with single supply was merely an inexpensive carryover form earlier days. Tube amps outperformed those easily. Definite step backward.
Early solid state didn't sound good compared to good tube amps. We were still learning about distortion and solid state design compared to a well developed understanding of tube based design. Later as we learned more, solid state got much better. Today, my listening is mostly on solid state equipment, but I still pull out a tube amp occasionally for fun.
NAD product. Terrible crap, but it was pushed because it was "good for the money". Cheap design, iffy performance, awful parts. What can I say? Almost everything else sounded better, but it was more expensive.
Yeah, memories. Stuff sounded great compared to contemporary equipment, that's what went into your memory. Perfectly valid by the way. Compare that to today's better equipment and it doesn't sound so good.
Across the pond here, we went from dull highs to more flat designs as a natural progression. There was no consideration of amplifier type. The better speakers revealed problem designs though! Speaker design has progressed steadily since. Canada then designed an acoustics lab at the NRC, and PSB was among the first to use it and produced some really great speakers. I still use the PSB Stratus Gold (original type).
Transistor sound had zero to do with anything here.
The classic English design, Quasi-comp output stage, capacitor coupled with single supply was merely an inexpensive carryover form earlier days. Tube amps outperformed those easily. Definite step backward.
Early solid state didn't sound good compared to good tube amps. We were still learning about distortion and solid state design compared to a well developed understanding of tube based design. Later as we learned more, solid state got much better. Today, my listening is mostly on solid state equipment, but I still pull out a tube amp occasionally for fun.
NAD product. Terrible crap, but it was pushed because it was "good for the money". Cheap design, iffy performance, awful parts. What can I say? Almost everything else sounded better, but it was more expensive.
Yeah, memories. Stuff sounded great compared to contemporary equipment, that's what went into your memory. Perfectly valid by the way. Compare that to today's better equipment and it doesn't sound so good.
That is a definition often preferred by purists. However, consumers often vote otherwise with their wallets. Just look at some of the stuff going in car sound systems today, every passenger with their own synthetically produced concert hall ambience, etc. You want the concert in an outdoor arena, fine. Just push a button. You prefer to hear it in Royal Albert Hall, fine, push another button.
No Mark, that is the real definition.
Customers do vote with their wallets, and they buy cheap. That is why today, we have warranty by replacement, contract manufacturing, poor quality. We bought ourselves into the land of mediocre performance as long as it was convenient and easy. However, once the equipment breaks out of warranty, we are toast. That is why earlier equipment is so much in demand once people figure out the market.
Car sound is a different animal. I did car audio from the start and gave up when it became "boom - tick". Equipment got cheap, sounded bad but put out high power. Speaker systems stopped being flat. A car system has reduced dynamic range and compression is your friend. I am not kidding. HOwever you show the average person who isn't a kid, and they really appreciate clean systems like I have. They just don't want to pay for them.
I think the market gave up on high quality sound because manufacturers lied to consumers, salesmen were on longer knowledgeable and were part of that big lie. Now they buy cheap because they got taken so many times. The audio industry has a long road to travel to restore confidence. Well deserved.
Customers do vote with their wallets, and they buy cheap. That is why today, we have warranty by replacement, contract manufacturing, poor quality. We bought ourselves into the land of mediocre performance as long as it was convenient and easy. However, once the equipment breaks out of warranty, we are toast. That is why earlier equipment is so much in demand once people figure out the market.
Car sound is a different animal. I did car audio from the start and gave up when it became "boom - tick". Equipment got cheap, sounded bad but put out high power. Speaker systems stopped being flat. A car system has reduced dynamic range and compression is your friend. I am not kidding. HOwever you show the average person who isn't a kid, and they really appreciate clean systems like I have. They just don't want to pay for them.
I think the market gave up on high quality sound because manufacturers lied to consumers, salesmen were on longer knowledgeable and were part of that big lie. Now they buy cheap because they got taken so many times. The audio industry has a long road to travel to restore confidence. Well deserved.
Its not just car audio. Its computer audio too. Its video game audio, room filling 9.1 surround sound, etc., even if the surround effect is synthesized from a stereo recording. Its all for entertainment.
Completely Wrong.
My playback systems one and only job is to sound extremely good according to my personal taste.
What your playback system is ”supposed to do” is fully up to you.
🎺🙂🎸