Reading a manufacturer's description of a loudspeaker yesterday, it read that the 'bullet' pole phase plugs, made of copper, were gold plated to dampen them.
They were between 20 and 30 mm in diameter, and the plating is unlikely to be very thick.
The hardness of copper and gold is not only similar, but nearly identical.
Foo?
They were between 20 and 30 mm in diameter, and the plating is unlikely to be very thick.
The hardness of copper and gold is not only similar, but nearly identical.
Foo?
One big difference with something like a Koenigsegg hyper car is there is no doubt that the car is capable of all it claims to be. Where as there are so many wild claims in audiophile circles as to the amazing improvements gained by xxx and it is only going to cost you xxx thousands of dollars it begs to question, are audiophiles really audiofools? I don't know of any other industry where this type of snake oil is so readily apparent and profitable.
There are actually two categories here that may need some distinction and that is on one hand you have great high end gear that just seems to be overly high in it's pricing to a point you are left thinking, what the hell are these people smoking?
Then on the other hand there are the myriad of products out there that should be taken off the market for false advertising because they are obviously put out there to take advantage of peoples gullibility promising all kinds of magic fairy dust to "greatly improve sound quality" and of course these products are always astronomically expensive. I guess if you are going to sucker somebody into giving you their money it should be a lot of money, right?
At least here there are to many real engineers and intelligent folks to let these idiots go unchecked when they start rambling on about the virtues of $1000 speaker wire and what not. One can learn a lot here in this DIY community but it doesn't suffer fools.
There are actually two categories here that may need some distinction and that is on one hand you have great high end gear that just seems to be overly high in it's pricing to a point you are left thinking, what the hell are these people smoking?
Then on the other hand there are the myriad of products out there that should be taken off the market for false advertising because they are obviously put out there to take advantage of peoples gullibility promising all kinds of magic fairy dust to "greatly improve sound quality" and of course these products are always astronomically expensive. I guess if you are going to sucker somebody into giving you their money it should be a lot of money, right?
At least here there are to many real engineers and intelligent folks to let these idiots go unchecked when they start rambling on about the virtues of $1000 speaker wire and what not. One can learn a lot here in this DIY community but it doesn't suffer fools.
There are plenty, some with billions of dollars spent on useless stuff. The food / health / muscle building / sexual enhancing supplement industry pops into my head right away. As with audiophoolery, there are some useful products, but at least half the stuff sold is completely worthless at best, and sometimes harmful.
How about all the magic energy saving gizmos sold on the internet. Tell me how it is possible to plug something into an outlet that will lower your electric bill......or run your car on water?
Meanwhile I have started work on my "junkyard dog" amp. Zero money spent for a lot of bark and maximum bite! I'm just wiring stuff together as I find it, and have already blown up a few parts.
There are many examples elsewhere of misleading crap spoken about products.
What about cigarettes being sold for years to calm people down? A lady doctor who used to live next door to me stated that her doctor advocated smoking to help her lungs and throat.
There is often a conflict with products between the direct scientific effect they may have, and that they are imagined to have, in the latter case they are actually harmful, but the imagination has overridden that; placebo functioning.
How many sellers must love placebophilia.
What about cigarettes being sold for years to calm people down? A lady doctor who used to live next door to me stated that her doctor advocated smoking to help her lungs and throat.
There is often a conflict with products between the direct scientific effect they may have, and that they are imagined to have, in the latter case they are actually harmful, but the imagination has overridden that; placebo functioning.
How many sellers must love placebophilia.
Yea I guess there are other industries that suffer from over pricing. It just dawned on me here in the US we have companies that contract with the government with markups of 10,000% and more. So yea, I guess they kind of dwarf the HiFi industry when Uncle Sam is buying jet fighters for 100 million a pop.
"junkyard dog" tube or solid state?
You're a guitar player
so my guess would be tube.........😀
I was a good guitar player maybe 50 years ago. Fortunately a few events in my younger days convinced me to give up my rock star dreams. Seing Jimi Hendrix live was one of them. Now I just annoy the neighbors.
I worked as an electrical engineer at Motorola for 41 years. I learned how to pick the right part for the job, whatever it may be. All of my "tube" amps, HiFi and guitar, have some silicon in the signal path including the guitar amp that I use most often.
So far the "dog" is just a (for now, dead) power amp with 4 tube and 4 mosfets. I haven't decided yet whether it will be a guitar amp or HiFi amp, or both ( two different amps). It's currently on hold while I chase down another wild idea.
I like to keep Fact from Fiction in their proper places.
No one's 100 percent perfect of course, however since I've got an extensive background in selling and servicing consumer equipment, backed by HS and post HS schooling, I'm confident that I have an edge to determine what is real and what is bs.
Yet, I sometimes get into heated discussions sometimes with individuals (mostly younger) who insist they know better than me.
If you're going to insist that a certain product or feature is providing something worth the cost involved, back up your mouth, or shut up.
Don't hand me that lame spew that somethings got magical powers, when I know it doesn't.
No one's 100 percent perfect of course, however since I've got an extensive background in selling and servicing consumer equipment, backed by HS and post HS schooling, I'm confident that I have an edge to determine what is real and what is bs.
Yet, I sometimes get into heated discussions sometimes with individuals (mostly younger) who insist they know better than me.
If you're going to insist that a certain product or feature is providing something worth the cost involved, back up your mouth, or shut up.
Don't hand me that lame spew that somethings got magical powers, when I know it doesn't.
Certain top end products with out-of-this-world prices may not even target the audiophile market. I've seen this kind of big and insanely priced Hi-Fi 2 channel systems only once in a real people home. The owner was a businessman who often invited potential investors to private meetings. The house is a over-the-top experience with pools, helicopter pad, etc. The purpose was obviously to impress the guests with a feel of luxury. The speakers had been installed in a church-like room with high ceiling, glass walls, bare concrete pavement, and no acoustic treatment. The only sound adsorbing item was a big chandelier entirely made of bird feathers by a well-known artist. The price tag was probably the same as the Hi-Fi. This was before the streaming services era and I only saw less than 10 discs next to the system. I wonder if it was ever turned on. I was there to service a device in the nearby home theatre room. The projector was a well known expensive device. But the concealed AV rack was a poor thing equipped with cheap-ish consumer devices. Definitely not something that someone with the Hi-Fi hobby would ever do.
Maybe 15 years ago I wired together a pair of little 6AQ5 tubes and a pair of 6AU6 tubes on a piece of perf board to make a little push pull amp with most of its circuitry lifted from a 1956 RCA tube manual (RC-18). It was long lost in my collection of junk until the virus lockdown got me digging through boxes than have not been opened in 6 years and two moves of over 1200 miles.
I played with it for a while and eventually melted a few 6AQ5's trying to squeeze way too much power out of them on over 400 volts. This tinkering, and some of this thread's discussion of uber expensive things including audio led me to the quest......What does it cost to make a decent quality tube amp, or, can you make any USABLE tube amp for $50, or $100 or whatever.
I have enough goodies in my collection to make something really good without spending a dime, but what can be made for minimum buck, and reproduced for minimum buck.....hence the "junkyard dog."
Last night, and much of this morning was spent making and measuring an amp aimed at the $50 price point. Well, you CAN build a working tube amp for $50. The trick is in finding workable OPT's that fit in the budget. Last night I managed to squeeze 7 watts through a $3 transformer, but I wouldn't call it HiFi. You must get the driving impedance that feeds the cheap OPT down to a low value to dodge the lack of primary inductance and other shortcommings.
Dukane 710-3092-09 4 Watt 25V / 70V Speaker Line Matching Transformer
After ditching the 6AQ5's and 6AU6's for some $1 each tubes that made more power for less money, and applying the same tricks that I used in my UNSET design I managed to hit 20+ watts at 1KHz from that little transformer before letting the smoke (and flames) out of it. In the process I discovered the magic bullet that I have needed for a previous (2018) low buck experiment, 50 WPC for a couple hundred bucks, so the (dead again) junkyard dog amp is on hold so that I can work on the Corona Board!
The simulations point to unreal numbers, but that is often the case. I am now in the process of hacking up the old 2018 board to test out the new circuit mods. Success, or failure, either way I'll make a new thread in the "tubes" forum to discuss it and the junkyard dog. Both use circuit topology that has never been seen before.
Maximum bark for the bite junkyard dog? This true junkyard dog amp will annoy the neighbors for sure. All parts out of the stash - including case, heat sinks, an old 80V 8A Triad EI core, and three 7800uF/250V soup cans that I re-formed. It's the AC300A, an experiment in how big of an AC coupled sold state amp can I build with what I have. It did take a while to build, manged to finish it during the lockdown.
Attachments
#494-495-496 are off topic, and should really be posted in the appropriate thread(s).
I stated this thread to voice my, and others complaints about overpriced products, and the blatent greed that drives it.
Like a $14,000 turntable made from a hunk of kitchen cutting board, a mass produced $15 motor powered from a "wall wart", and a "plastic" platter....
Oh, and the belt to drive that thing was made from some alien planet material, and hand polished by young virgins.
Silly me, that only leaves a piddling mere $1300 profit margin.
I stated this thread to voice my, and others complaints about overpriced products, and the blatent greed that drives it.
Like a $14,000 turntable made from a hunk of kitchen cutting board, a mass produced $15 motor powered from a "wall wart", and a "plastic" platter....
Oh, and the belt to drive that thing was made from some alien planet material, and hand polished by young virgins.
Silly me, that only leaves a piddling mere $1300 profit margin.
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So I guess discussing DIY alternatives for low bucks is off topic. I thought this was diyAudio, not complainAboutAudioPrices, and I choose to build all of my own audio stuff, others are free to build, or buy whatever they choose, and they spend big bucks, it's up to them. I have nothing to further to contribute to this thread.
I have been working on the "dog" off and on for 4 days, interspersed with BUILDING music synthesizer modules. The dog is now undergoing a complete rebuild, and I will start a thread in the "tubes" forum to discuss it once this version is finished.
Ya gotta love how some people "off topic" a thread, and when called on it, they get all upset, insist that they're not in the wrong in some way and try to justify it, like a little child, denying that they broke something when they get scolded.
People are ALLOWED to be "greedy" and "stupid" and many other things. If you don't like the price,
DON'T BUY IT. Most of that stuff it to be laughed at unless you HAVE the money and BELIEVE it's
great. So what? Have a nice life. Dang, you're turning ME into a grumpy old fart - not that it was too
difficult.
Personally I think it's more fun to get more bang for the bucks rather than more bucks for the bang.
G²
Back to the original topic, I subscribe the Wiseoldtech complaint about the appalling poor quality of some higly priced Hi-Fi items. For that kind of money I would expect a serviceable product made with good materials; spare parts with guaranteed availability for several years; and a real service manual. This was common in the past, and still is on other electronic markets such as industrial automation. Mind you: the servo motor control board I repaired last month does come with a freely downloadable service manual and there is a scheduled maintenance section with a list of capacitors that must be replaced every 10 years. This board is mounted inside a multimilion euro industrial machine that is expected to remain in service for 20 years or more. People expect this level of quality when they see the sticker price; this is industry standard. I am not an expert of the high-end Hi-Fi market. From what I see, there are many products that looks beautiful and sounds good, but under the hood there is the exact same consumer quality building standard of mass produced items. This is one of the reasons why I personally am not attracted to this type of products and I rather turn my attention to quality vintage. I can understand that some top end products maybe are aiming to the "aspirational" market and are meant to be thrown in the garbage can when they become old an do not fullfill the "status symbol" purpose anymore. But I am a bit perplexed about why we don't value the build quality anymore. I have yet to find a modern product review that ever mention things such as warranty lenght. But I freely admit that my world vision is skewed by the fact that when something fails, it often lands on my workbench and then it is a though proposition to explain to the owner that maybe the quality of its purchase is not what it thinks is it.
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Sometimes there are exceptions. Take Nelson Pass for instance. His commercial offerings are of the highest quality and build. They are pure class A amps that are amazing in every way and for a 100 watt mono block it will set you back 40 or 50 thousand dollars and you will need two of them.
But at the same time he is giving away his designs for anyone to build and he's glad to help you with it. Really, who does that? Nelson Pass that's who.
Personally I would love to have a pair of his mono blocks powering my system but I'm never going to spend that kind of money on any amplifier no matter how good it is.On the other hand if somebody was to will me a pair or should I find a pair at some estate sale some where and the person selling them has no idea what they are worth and will take a couple thousand dollars for them I would jump on it. But that is wishful thinking.
It's much more likely that one day I might just try building one of his amps and see how it goes. I've never built an amp before but I might. My thing is building speakers and high end car audio systems. So I have built lots of cross overs and etch my own PCB's. So with a good set of instructions I'm sure I could pull it off.
There is one set of speakers that I would love to build but the cost of the drivers has kept me from building them. If I find myself one of these days with some disposable income I would probably spend the money. The plan calls for a three way floor standing speaker with two 7" Eaton woofers one 4" Eaton mid and one SB Satori 1" beryllium dome tweeter per side. About $4,000 total for all of the drivers. I've never spent that much on any speaker project much less on drivers alone but I really want to build these speakers. The boxes are going to be out of this world if everything comes together. They are going to be nothing like anyone has ever seen before. But they will be expensive to build as well and they will take along time to make.
But at the same time he is giving away his designs for anyone to build and he's glad to help you with it. Really, who does that? Nelson Pass that's who.
Personally I would love to have a pair of his mono blocks powering my system but I'm never going to spend that kind of money on any amplifier no matter how good it is.On the other hand if somebody was to will me a pair or should I find a pair at some estate sale some where and the person selling them has no idea what they are worth and will take a couple thousand dollars for them I would jump on it. But that is wishful thinking.
It's much more likely that one day I might just try building one of his amps and see how it goes. I've never built an amp before but I might. My thing is building speakers and high end car audio systems. So I have built lots of cross overs and etch my own PCB's. So with a good set of instructions I'm sure I could pull it off.
There is one set of speakers that I would love to build but the cost of the drivers has kept me from building them. If I find myself one of these days with some disposable income I would probably spend the money. The plan calls for a three way floor standing speaker with two 7" Eaton woofers one 4" Eaton mid and one SB Satori 1" beryllium dome tweeter per side. About $4,000 total for all of the drivers. I've never spent that much on any speaker project much less on drivers alone but I really want to build these speakers. The boxes are going to be out of this world if everything comes together. They are going to be nothing like anyone has ever seen before. But they will be expensive to build as well and they will take along time to make.
In response to pcan's post #501:
In general, consumers never see inside of the products themselves.
They purchase the product, use it, and that's that.
And purchase is ultimately based on superficial things like looks/appearance, and perhaps even reviews that they read or heard.
And their minds are often programmed to believe "expensive is better".
And that may well be....... to a point.
But since I've been a service tech for decades, I've had the "luxury" of seeing thousands of consumer video and audio products.
And I've noted the changes through the years.
Some good, plenty bad.
People can argue with me over anything they want, opinions are plentiful, and at times, it amuses me, I try not to let it bother me.
The continual increase in products prices in part is due to inflation, in part greed, and also marketing hype.
It's a "magic show" designed to keep the consumer baffled and hypnotized, and control their way of determining reality.
It's been the "new way" of selling things now for a while, and I've seen the progression soar into a nonsensical stratosphere where the air is thin and the weaknesses are more prone.
Judging from some feedback, both online, and with customers in person, I can tell who's been duped, brainwashed, and fed hype, and who has their head on straight, reasonable, feet on the ground.
So yes, if you want to spend a substantial amount on something that you "believe" is worth your money, fine, go ahead, you've got that freedom.
If that $14,000 turntable makes you happy, I'm glad.
But I'm also quietly laughing at you.
In general, consumers never see inside of the products themselves.
They purchase the product, use it, and that's that.
And purchase is ultimately based on superficial things like looks/appearance, and perhaps even reviews that they read or heard.
And their minds are often programmed to believe "expensive is better".
And that may well be....... to a point.
But since I've been a service tech for decades, I've had the "luxury" of seeing thousands of consumer video and audio products.
And I've noted the changes through the years.
Some good, plenty bad.
People can argue with me over anything they want, opinions are plentiful, and at times, it amuses me, I try not to let it bother me.
The continual increase in products prices in part is due to inflation, in part greed, and also marketing hype.
It's a "magic show" designed to keep the consumer baffled and hypnotized, and control their way of determining reality.
It's been the "new way" of selling things now for a while, and I've seen the progression soar into a nonsensical stratosphere where the air is thin and the weaknesses are more prone.
Judging from some feedback, both online, and with customers in person, I can tell who's been duped, brainwashed, and fed hype, and who has their head on straight, reasonable, feet on the ground.
So yes, if you want to spend a substantial amount on something that you "believe" is worth your money, fine, go ahead, you've got that freedom.
If that $14,000 turntable makes you happy, I'm glad.
But I'm also quietly laughing at you.
I am really interested in your expensive design which you may undertake in the future when finances allow.
This is because my newly acquired speakers use Eton drivers, and there is very little spoken about them, or data available, and I worry about their quality because of that. They seem like an oddball anomaly.
Do you have any info on them, maybe in the design to which you refer?