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I am sticking with the old stuff.A Technics SU-G75 crossed my bench today. It was deemed not worth repair because it has some sort of preamp fault. It is built in a pan, which means the bottom access is very limited. You could change the output ICs but those are bound to be $100 or more from my experience. The cheap one for the surround is an SVI which mean big bucks. The big one for the front channels has an unrecognizable number on it which is even worse.
Anyway, on the front it has a sticker that clearly says "120 WATTS X 4". Well I got the service manual from the engine and that is not what it says. It says 120 WPC in the front and 50 watts for surround and center.
Many years ago before they started with those SVI IC outputs I used to recommend them. I liked them better than Sony even though I worked for a Sony Signature dealer, which means we could get the high end models the big box stores could not. You could walk out of the place twenty grand light. And the stuff was not bad, I just thought Technics gave you more bang for the buck.
I bought Technics stuff, a couple of cassette decks, buddy of mine had the BIG analog tuned receiver, I forgot the model but it was excellent. I had an excellent three head cassette with HX and adjustable bias, lost it gambling, but in my defense I was playing against something really good, IIRC it was a gun.
They let me down in later years. I heard that "new class A" and it sounded no better to me. And at that point they had crappy tone controls as well. Could not bring up the low end without the boominess, too high of a turnover and not that much range. Rooms kill that bottom octave, if these things are so powerful...
Remember folks, a few things.
Number one, in home audio the FTC/IHF ratings only apply to the front two channels. They can lie their ass off about the rest with impunity, and in almost every case once I get the cover off and get the print, they do. I think a couple of manufacturers don't, but those are going to be expensive.
Number two, if it says "professional" on it the rules do not apply. I have seen "pro" amps claim to be 500 WPC and I get into them, look up the chip they use and it is rated at like maybe 70 WPC. More than once. I work for factory service for one of those manufacturers which I will not name, but they lie out the (_|_). Certain brands, QSC for example, and Crown makes pro equipment, they do not lie. In fact when some people get their hands on those after having the cheap ones they blow speakers. I know one guy who actually set a speaker on fire because he had a REAL 1,300 watts RMS for a change. Thought the speaker could handle it, nope.
Number three, car audio. The FTC/IHF rules do not apply to car audio. In the good countries people know basic electronics from school. Here, you have an amp rated 1,000 watts that has a 10 amp fuse. At 100 % efficiency it can only put out 120 watts total. For 1,000 watts at 100 % efficiency it would have to pull a hair over 83 amps. These days when you buy a new alternator for your car it comes with a warning not to use it with a dead battery, charge the battery first. We used to just go and jump start it and let it run for an hour. Can't do that anymore because it will fry the new alternator. And 83 amps is more than almost any car takes to run the starter. Now back in the day with a 400HP high compression V8 it was different. Not no mo.
I used to build car amps. With a center tapped output choke I was able to get about 35 real WPC. Yes, RMS. These things blew 10 amp fuses about once a month mainly because there was no filtering I think, none was necessary with that topology. People were blowing speakers all the time. So was I, I kept a bunch of 6X9s in stock and didn't even mount them. I put studs in where you would normally mount them and just layed them down on those. I did not use coax speakers, I had horn tweeters. But still, I had to keep on changing woofers and fuses.
Now I wonder how else they lie. I have seen ads about cellphone companies not telling you that once you reach a certain amount of data your rate is cut back, or you have to pay. Even in the old days, I saw computers built so cheap I wouldn't hit a dog in the ass with them. Now I wonder about these "4K" TVs.
It is looking like there is almost zero consumer protection in this country.
Even with the power ratings, even if they don't lie usually the thing chokes on four ohms. Sometime in the 1980s they started making speakers with less radical impedance curves so they wouldn't fry out the cheap amps of the time. With it went that bottom octave but they fixed that by changing the way speaker response is measured.
At one time it was as swept frequency. Then they changed it to 1/3 octave bands of pink noise. Also, for bass they switched to close miced measurements of the woofer and the port or passive radiator and summed them. That does not yield an accurate result because those are out of phase. And with the pink noise they could be at say 50 Hz and the speaker could put out 100 Hz, 150 Hz and it is all counted in the output. That is not valid.
Some manufacturers do a good job with passives, like Polk. Not sure how but I bet their passive have more mass to shift the phase and reduce the cancellation. Even so, I have heard that some of their bigger models sound muddy. I have heard good things about KEF but have never heard them. I can say this though, the best sounding speakers I have heard all my life have been sealed systems. They might be a bit less efficient but instead of having to boost the bottom octave 17 dB maybe 5 dB would do it and they sounded excellent.
I wonder what other lies they are getting away with. Technics ? TECHNICS ? With the SU-G75 they just spent their reputation as far as I am concerned. Pioneer too, buddy has one that the book actually rates it at 100 WPC all five channels. I open it up and I see two ICs, one bigger and one smaller. Are they trying to tell me that the smaller IC puts out 100 WPC into three channels and the bigger IC puts out 100 WPC into only two ? Gimme a break.
I got this elcheapo pair of "Sonic" brand speakers. I either had a pair of these in the 1970s or someone I know did. Took them apart and they are the cheapest thing I had seen. And I thought they sounded like shit. Compared to everything else out there they did. After the years of conditioning I guess, with all the junk they have put out I think they sound alright. Back then I wouldn't have them, but look what's in the stores now. Somewhere between five and eight speakers with paper thin cabinets and a one note subwoofer. And that ain't worth shit. I'll SHOW you a subwoofer, I got a JBL PSW-D112. They are claiming these little shitboxes are 500 watts when they got a bunch of 4" speakers and a 10" sub ? And it only has a 4 amp fuse ? Boy that is efficient, with a 4 amp fuse the most you can pull is 480 watts, and they put out 500. Well I think that is marvelous. (sarcasm of course)
Rant over. I am here to tell you not to trust anything they say these days except for certain companies. You are NOT getting a 500 watt stereo for $279 including speakers. The old stuff, with used prices and obviously no warranty, at least you get honest ratings.
New cars are all junk too but I won't rant about that here. I'll have to see if there is an appropriate forum for that. But if I had a million dollars I would never consider buying a new car. When I find that place I will tell you why.
Edits: 07/07/16Follow Ups:
But I tell you this, man, I tell you this
I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but I wanna have
My kicks before the whole shit house goes up in flames
-Jim Morrison
But doesnt class d sound better?o i see,i just havent heard em all.Sarcastic.Me
"But doesnt class d sound better?"
I think it way the world is going, one of these days all there will be is class D. Seriously. That or separate woofer amps in class D and high range amps of conventional design for high fidelity. The putsch is on for efficiency. They almost outlawed plasma TVs in Europe for pulling too much power. Over here being "Energy Star Compliant" is used as a selling point.
Thing is, I can't see how they get a good damping factor out of class D without alot of feedback. However it can be simply matched to a certain woofer/cabinet and I think whatever problems can be pounded out.
I have a JBL PSW-D112 which is a 12" with a 250 watt class D amp. It says in the manual that it is 103 % efficient. The amp is fried in mine so I use it as passive and I got enough power for it, but I still wonder how they arrived at that figure. Especially since it uses standard iron for the power, rather than an SMPS like an Icepower.
So now I just remembered another lie I had forgotten to mention. Great, ain't it ?
Well Many rave over Class-D for bass, never heard one with any balls for proper Bass, Class-A/ AB does bass best , period and no way Class-D can sustain the RMS power necessary to sound proper, pro or domestic.
Edits: 07/12/16
Sorry, but that's how it comes across.
+1
"I just hate everything so now I'll inflict myself on everybody else".
What a waste of time :-(
"I just hate everything so now I'll inflict myself on everybody else".
Not really hate. Disdain might be a better word, extreme dislike. Hate implies emotion and I don't have it. It is more like "Look at this shit".
And BTW, nobody is forcing anyone to read this thread. I ranted, and then I had to again because someone said I made a statement based solely on the fact that we can't trust the ratings. I did not.
Another thing is they keep on discontinuing everything I like. My Mother used to get these stuffed chicken breasts from an outfit call Market Day which was run my where her boss's kid went to school. She gave me a couple of them and they were fantastic. Stuffed with broccoli and cheese. Nice thick cheese, big chunks of broccoli. I used to reimburse her for a couple of boxes when she went. They were over a buck apiece too and you could not just nuke them. you want the good you need a toaster oven at least.
Well one day I look at the box and it says "new and improved". Damn. The cheese sauce did not have the same flavor at all, it almost didn't taste like cheese. And the broccoli was those little eentsy pieces like the dried things you get in a package of macaroni and cheese, or one of those rice side dishes.
So many things, "we don't have that anymore". And don't even get me started on software. Seems like every damn "upgrade" they make takes away, or hides some features or controls/settings I used to like.
So y'all, instead of bitching about my bitching, why don't you join in ? There has to be something you don't like about this brave new world now that the REAL 1984 has happened.
Maybe some of you should be forced to go to Bestbuy. Test drive a new Chevy economy car. Or best yet, let someone else have the remote and be forced to watch some new TV shows or movies.
I probably have not read all of this carefully enough but I do get the sentiment.
It has been clear to me for some time that many many corporations in all arenas of consumer life as well as in much more important arenas (political, finance etc.) have simply become bullies and LIARS. Don't like it?...talk to my on hold music or my falsely polite and unhelpful human robots.
Sadly what I'm also seeing is that individuals and small businesses are becoming the same way...incompetent, lazy, unresponsive or worse cheaters and rip off artists.
I had an SOB on another audio site sell me a TT with a bent tail on the arm. I had purchased it as a gift for a friend. It was packed well and in no way was any shipping damage evident nor could the arm have been damaged in this way by shipping. Even after sending pics etc...this SOB wouldn't take it back and insisted I "contact the Post Office"...This lying cheat is still active on that board and acts like the voice of wisdom...he is exemplary of what I see going on.
Sadly this pathetic cheat did all of this to make $175 bucks on a Phillips "novelty" TT... I didn't want to start a fight on the BB so I ended up eating the loss...
I could so on and on and you may disagree but this is my 2 cents...I think it has some validity as does the OPs basic sentiment. The only antidote for this I feel is to make sure I never do this garbage to others...be fair, be honest, be empathetic and give back instead of just taking all the time..
Just needs a few punchlines inserted :-)But seriously, there are some things where newer is better. I just had a flight on a Boeing 787. Don't tell me the 707 was better!
Well OK, maybe the seats had more room and the food was better. I'll give you that.
Edits: 07/10/16
OK, then you tell me what is better about a 787 than a 707.Less space they cram youse sardines into. Noted.
Worse food. Noted.
What else is better ?
This brings up a recall of sorts of memory. I come from a time when there were no microwaves, at least in people's houses. (born in 1960) I read somewhere that microwave ovens were invented for airplanes so they didn't need to have flames to cook, or even electric elements. Makes sense, either would require resources fighting the air conditioning or requiring more ventilation, whichever - costs money. And they are in business to make money.
The olman was pretty sharp, dumb at the same time but also quite smart. He said the reason they do not arm pilots and just let people have their guns on planes is because they care about the planes more.
Another good one he came up with I would have never thought of happened after I had some dizzy chick shack up with me. We had a double house and with only two people we shared the phone line. Well this bitch was calling those 900 numbers and ran the phone bill up to over $300.
I called the phone company and the agreed to just take their part of the bill, but warned that those people would be wanting to collect. Like to sue. Well the olman got the call from them and simply said "Hey, that girl is under 18". You simply cannot do much better than that. He had a knack with a couple of different things like that. In this case to sue us they would be admitting to pandering obscenities to a minor.
But so much for that. Old memories.
I used to be car people. I had the carb of more than once a week at times. I did learn how to make a Quadrajet really jump though. No manuals. What I found is that there are only two things that tune a Quadrajet to different displacements, like where you would buy a different CFM Holley. There is a bent piece of stiff wire that runs the secondaries. After 1970 almost none of them would allow for the secondaries to fully open. So you can bend them. And then, the biggest change was the float level. You set a lower float level for a bigger engine and a higher one for smaller. People used to think it was the other way around. Others screwed with the idle adjustment which did very little. You could make it so there is more gas in the mixture ad get a small rusk of power, but if you wanted real power you raised the float level. not knowing those details is what made people call the "quadrajunk".
Screw around these days like that and the EPA will send a SWAT team with a ray gun to disintegrate your license plate.
The changes I've seen, people used to fix their own TVs by going down to the drugstore and testing the tubes. Many were literate enough to understand that if you got no color, check the color tubes or if you got no sound, check the sound tubes. But many of them just took them all in. They also changed their own spark plugs etc. Oil too, back then there was no Quickielube for twenty bucks which is what the oil would cost you today by itself. People knew how to do things.
And you could trust big business. Now, the phone co came out with this 1-900 shit and that is only the means to a scam. There were sex lines for a long time before that but you needed a credit card. After that, anyone using your phone could call these fucks. It was a line on a scam. Quite frankly, I have known plenty of people, quite a few dead, but never ever have I known anyone to call one of those sex lines. I mean I have known hundreds of people, and I mean well, not just business acquaintances. A newer scam like that was in another country, I think it was a US protectorate or something because IIRC they had an area code like 809 or something. (no country code) People got sick of getting screwed on 900 and 976 numbers so they moved to one of those island banana republics and it started all over. And NOW this is legitimate long distance charges of a buck a minute or whatever and you DO have to pay.
And now, we got on-demand cable. Your kid could accidentally hit some buttons on the remote and you just ordered a $39.95 pay per view.
I have no love for Billy Joel, style whatever, and taking that ambulance to the concert rather than being a few minutes late. Fuck him. But that one song comes to mind, if this is moving up then I'm moving out. I forgot the name but I am sure you can find it. Mister can't drive because of broken back, at least he can polish the fenders. What song is that ?
If what we got today is called progress, Webster better get on to changing the definition. We got people who think they can have a $300,000 house for $500 a month. Can't balance a checkbook. Can't change a flat tire. Don't know what to eat at all, and if they THINK they do they think you should eat all fat free, not knowing some nutrients are fat soluble, not water.
So education is another thing we are getting ripped off on. And even if you send your kids to good schools and they do really well, remember they are going to be on the same planet coexisting with those who got 20 points on a test for spelling their own name correctly.
I don't really want to wreck anyone's mood, but things need to be said for there to ever be any change. We have to, somehow, stop putting up with this shit. This government works for us, but of course they forgot that. I think when an amp says it is 200 WPC that should mean measured the old way, and that putting the word "Professional" on it doesn't get you out of it. Plus none of this shit is built here.
And I don't care if a new Jeep can fly, if it runs Windows I will never buy one. I don't care how much money I have. We got new amps with bluetooth. Whatever happened to plugging things on to each other ? Oh, people are too stupid to do that now.
They blew it.
Edits: 07/10/16
Jet size & metering rods will affect performance more than float adj. Float adj. simply allows for enough fuel to keep engine from starving under full acceleration, plus of course overloading the chamber w/fuel.
As for best thing to do, that is dictated by application. I found removing the throttle plate to expose the jet well plugs, then sealing them (correctly) prevented leakage of raw fuel into the intake. This is a problem with most of these carbs and it is often misdiagnosed.
Then there's shaft bushings. And different tension springs for the power piston & accelerator pump. There are so many variations of the Quadrajet you need a Rochester service manual to simply keep up with the different models.
I heard of a new thingy they put out for that , i think they said EFI ...
Can't change a flat tire - I've seen that too. And I do remember when you could take your TV tubes into the drugstore to test them. Now you throw out the TV and buy another one.
But, to answer your question about what's better about the 787 compared to the 707, it can carry more people a longer distance, in less time than the 707 did, and burn less fuel doing it. I've flown on both planes and from a passenger's perspective the 787 was a much nicer experience!
The longest-range 707, the 707-320B, had a range of 3735 nmi with max payload. The 787-9, which I flew on, has a range of 7,635 nmi, more than double the range of the 707.
Guns N Roses "Lies".
I started to read your post. Then, I briefly scanned the rest. May I just say:
GET TO THE POINT!
:)
Cheap shit is cheap shit.
It's a pretty big stretch to claim there is no consumer protection in this country because some electronics manufacturers like to inflate their power ratings. None of it would be at all important if deaf idiots weren't so obsessed with watts. Nobody needs a thousand watts, for ANYTHING.
Jeez, calm down. Find something important to get that upset about.
Peace,
Tom E
berate is 8 and benign is 9
"It's a pretty big stretch to claim there is no consumer protection in this country because some electronics manufacturers like to inflate their power ratings."That claim is not just based on this. Look at drugs. They advertise drugs on TV for people to "Ask your doctor if killyastine is right for you" and then they go get a scrip for it. And then they get screwed up from it or give birth to kids with birth defects or something and then there is a class action lawsuit. Class action lawsuits are a way for companies to shield themselves from excessive losses by making you take less money, and in a monthly stipend which means you never really get a real settlement. You could have just gone on welfare. What it means is for a guaranteed amount you give up your right to sue individually. And the way law works here that is probably a good idea because they will spend much more to win a case than to settle it if certain points are brought up, like having the court declare they were CRIMINALLY negligent, which they frequently are but never judged on it.
Drug prices in this country are twice what they are in other countries and they want you to think that is because of all the testing they have to do. That is a bunch of bullshit. If that were true, how could these "new miracle breakthrough" drugs exist ? They don't do the testing. And if they do, they got their own people to do it. There are lawyers and accountants who have access to the REAL data of these tests who determine if the costs they have to pay out will exceed the profits they will make by selling their new version of killyastine.
And food ? The milk industry tried to get milk reclassified as a soft drink so that they could put aspartame in it. They could always put aspartame in it but they did not want to disclose it on the back label. Get this straight now, they did not want to tell you they added this SHIT to your kids' milk. If classified as a soft drink, the formula is secret.
Monsanto got the Monsanto protection act passed, look that up. Another cool thing they went after was to make it illegal to say, in advertising, that the food you are selling in NOT genetically modified. Oh yeah, they already do not have to label their frankenfood as such, now if you got real stuff they don't want you to be able to label it as "NON GMO".
I do not make statements such as "There is no consumer protection in this country" based on one thing, ESPECIALLY the power output of a stereo. There is alot more to it.
It has been open season on the American consumer for a long long time. It was a free country but no more, but it is still open season and people are stupider than ever. Well not really. In the 1970s they would buy a power booster for their car stereo claiming 100 watts but have a 4 amp fuse. No other country's school system is so lame that people would fall for that one. You know, their kids know how to read and write, do math, use a ruler, fractions, all kinds of cool shit. Over here you pay the teachers $100,000 a year and you get a yearbook entitled "This Is Are Story".
Consumer protection ? Shit, nobody CAN do it, nobody has the brains to do it. I can show you on schematics and in pictures how electronics is PURPOSELY made to fail.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29948706/mitsdpps.jpg
You tell me the purpose of R9088 and C9087. I'll tell you, it is to make the voltage float and purposely screw up the software. And that was common on these units.
Now I hear there was another death, this time in a self drive Tesla car down in Florida. So I look into it a bit with some interest, not alot but some. Now I find out when in autodrive you are supposed to watch and keep yous hands on the wheel. That means the thing is as useless as tits on a submarine, or is that a screendoor on a bullfrog ? Automatic driving means I can go to sleep and wake up at home, not that I have to watch the thing. FAIL ! Automatic driving means I can get totally snooked at the bar and just tell the car. I see no progress here and that guy in Florida surely paid over a hundred grand to die.
But they got 130 million miles under their belt now and can say all kinds of shit like it hardly ever happens, but why did you pay over twenty grand for an auto driving system when you still have to hold the wheel and watch the road ? Good for nothing is what it is. More total junk to extract wealth from what is left of the middle class.
There is no protection for the consumer. I have seen, buddy of mine, bought a new TV. Was a DLP which was the state of the art de jure. The ballast went out and Samsung (I believe) told him it was not longer available. IT WAS STILL UNDER FACTORY WARRANTY. The state attorney general office told him not to do anything as there might be a class action lawsuit, so if he tried to sue he would be locked out of that.
Someone got electrocuted downtown many years ago and it was the fault of the local power company. They advertised their ass off on all the local TV stations and there was very little coverage of the fact that there is a person dead because of their negligence.
Want more ? I got alot more just gimme a little time to rememhber it, there is so much. And I can prove most of it. This government is supposed to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic, and they do neither.
Every foreign attack on this country has been successful. Even now with dracoian laws and constant surveilence they don't defend against shit. They are defending themselves against us pretty well though. But Muslims slip through the cracks and might rape your eight year old daughter. And they got room in prison for a guy who sells a pound of weed but not one who killed someone. (OK, that is too far but you get the idea)
And banks can just take your money. Whoever said you can trust them ? And if you won't give it to them they'll cause a crash and get more TARP funds. Yeah, those are not enemies. Well then if I come in your house in the middle of the night and steal your stereo I am not an enemy either, so don't shoot me. I guess you are just supposed to let me take it because I might have underlying mental problems that make me need a good stereo. Maybe my Daddy was a drunk, maybe my family doesn't get along well. Maybe I could not get the money for a good education to make me an ultraliberal who wants to take all the guns away. I might be disadvantaged like that and we have to change the whole of society to accommodate me. Bullshit.
But there is nowhere to go. I am not giving up my guns and most countries probably wouldn't take me. Because unlike this shithole they have requirements. You have to either have a shit ton of money or a sponsor with a job for you to get into most good countries. Most places don't let just anybody in.
And I suspect they got better stereos in Europe than here. Can't say for sure, but after some correspondence it seems quite possible. This shit is not strictly American and never was. Some of the ignorant people in the US think we invented everything but nothing could be farther from the truth. What's more, many of the inventors and innovators here were either off the boat of first generation born here, to Parents who were off the boat.
Years ago I got the garbage out of my mind. This is nowhere near the best country in the world by any metric. We do not even have better weapons, we just have more of them. Russia came out with a missile that goes twice as fast ad twice as far as anything we got. There's your half a fucking trillion dollar "defense" budget that has not once defended us.
Open season. We had productivity, we made most of our own stuff, imported little, exported some wheat which helped. What is our trade deficit now ?
What is the unemployment rate ? Well once you stop collecting unemployment and go live with family or whatever you are no longer counted. Many others are counted. Only one third of the people in this coutry even file taxes, let alone pay anything significant. Some even get more in their refund than they paid in because of earned income credit, and the number of those people is going to grow because of the ACA (aka Obamacare or Romneycare) because your local pizza place cannot afford this shit so everyone is down to 28 hours a week. And Walmart is not going to put up with it either, go in one and ask the employees if they are full time. And all this shit just makes more money for the insurance companies. They probably wet their pants when it passed. And they wrote it, they musta because they are the ones who benefit.
I got plenty more but this is long enough. It is not just amps that they lie about, it is everything. Anything to make that almighty buck. They care nothing else.
Less is more, ignorance is bliss. Freedom is slavery.
And that last part, people used to pay cash for a house or new car after saving up the money because they did not want to become slaves. If stopping working means you lose all your stuff, THAT IS SLAVERY. We moved from a cash based to a credit based society when I was too young to know about it. Easy credit caused the housing bubble. My family lost hundreds of thousands of dollars over that shit and I ain't forgetting it.
Yes, and I got more but this is enough.
If I won the lottery for alot of money and wanted a new car, which I don't but just suppose. I would not ask them how much horsepower it has. I would take and have it weighed and then to the track and punch it to get its maximum acceleration rate. My math dude can figure it out from there. A stereo, I will put it on a scope and measure how much peak to peak it can put out and calculate from there, that I can do myself.
I trust noone. But the thing about the new car is bullshit, if I hit the lottery I would buy a car that is 46 years old. The only one ever classified as both a luxury car and a muscle car at the same time. And I'll blow the doors off your SHO Mustang. If you ain't got a bigblock just stay out of the way because you might get run over.
I want more old stuff. With the one exception of PCs, thought this one is eight years old, with most things I really do believe older is better.
Edits: 07/10/16
I have a new Porsche with a very expensive Burmeister sound system. The specs are out of this world, but the sound ...just ain't.
You should get a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I was stunned last fall when I tuned in XM on the system of the car I had just bought. Sound stage, depth, detail and bass that thumped me.
That driver's seat is big comfy leather club chair right in the midst.
why FTC power ratings tell a little about the capacity of the amplifier to survive a burn it period and then perform "warmed up" - the old specks of half power bandwidth and peak "power" at 50Hz, 500Hz and 5000Hz into a specified loads would be plenty to address how a product might perform in person.
Quoted "power" b/c it is really a peak voltage that might limit the amplifier and the power value is calculated from Vē/R.
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
That'll teach ya to open yer yap!!!
"why FTC power ratings tell a little about the capacity of the amplifier to survive a burn it period and then perform "warmed up" "Oh that's the other thing, most new amps cannot withstand that warmup. It is one third rated power into rated impedance of a constant sine wave. Almost everything on the market will go into thermal shutdown, and this has been true for quite some time.
Bunch of wimps.
I DO realize if they built things like in the old days it would all cost a few grand. But I did not cause the inflation.
Actually there is no such thing as inflation, it really is the devaluation of the money. I read an ad, I think in 2000 that claimed that the same amount of gold that would buy a new car in 1900 would buy one in 2000. Now gold values are depressed because they are selling paper gold certificates which makes it look like there is more gold on the market than there is. But the US was holding Germany's gold and they asked for it back and the US can't come up with it for a few years. Venezuela asked for theirs back and got it right away. Now there will be problems in Mali, with a joint French and US venture to "help" them. Guess why. They have gold. That is how they are going to pay Germany. They lie too, first they said it was there but, some bullshit. Then they said it was "leased" out. Leased out means they stole it.
This is why stuff costs so much. When I was a kid, people paid cash for new cars and even houses. Now they don't even pay cash for gasoline.
I know some of y'all in here have money or make really super good money, but the schmuck making fifty grand a year is suffering. It is not even middle class anymore if you got a couple of kids.
If you wanted an amp of the build of say a Phase Linear 400/2, today of course it would include a speaker relay and protection which costs all of about ten bucks. But what would the whole amp cost ? I'm thinking around three grand.
Even if the ratings are true, you ain't getting what you used to get. The craftsmanship involved, it simply does not exist anymore. There is nothing better than an old analog tuner and a big antenna trying to get distant stations. And you could tweak it and it would exceed its specs by quite a bit. Remember the specs on everything back then were the guaranteed minimum.
I got that Pioneer SX-850 out in the garage. It had a fried channel and burnt up the bias pot so I jumped that out, so at very low levels you can tell just a bit. I have no top or bottom cover for it. The phono preamp has a fault, the front glass is broken and the tuning shaft is bent.
It is not for sale. It is rated 65 WPC but I am sure it puts out about 90. It puts out more than some of those amps at work that are rated, believe it or not, 3,500 watts. I'll tell you now, the brand Technical Pro is about the worst of them. Basically 55 volt rails that can do, IF the transformer can handle it, possibly 400 WPC into 4 ohms. (at 10 % distortion) It is a toroid BTW.
Now about those toroid power transformers, they are making them out of scrap metal. I have the transformer from my JVC JR-S600 (kinda rare) and it is of fine quality, totally hermetically sealed and all that. These new things just have clear plastic on them. No shielding at all. They are not in the same class at all.
I do have to admit they come up with some cool circuits. The QSC has a split supply and take the speaker output from the junction of the two main filters. The collectors of the outputs are grounded, eliminating the need for insulators. However it does require a separate, well isolated secondary for each channel. But as a result it cannot put out DC but does not suffer as much from phase shift and loss of power bandwidth as the old SESAPP capacitor coupled circuits. And requires no protection relay because it is incapable of putting out DC, even under ant fault condition. A power transformer secondary would have to short to chassis ground for that to happen and the odds, well Slim left town.
Crown has a pretty unique circuit they call a grounded bridge. It also requires a separate secondary for each channel but actually NOT a split supply. And it CAN put out DC. Info is online for those technically inclined.
I have been told that some Behringer amps are like the QSC. Supposedly the Crown grounded bridge patent still applies so it is unlikely anyone else will be building them until that expires. As far as I know, Behringer does not lie. In fact Yamaha's pro equipment does not lie as far as I know.
Now when you are talking good quality pro equipment, it CAN survive the old preconditioning at 1/3 power for an hour. But most of it uses fans. Many units do have fan speed control so that if you use it at home to listen to Mozart you will not be bothered by the noise. Cheaper units just hook the fan to the 12 volts and be done with it. That causes fan failures, and sometimes subsequent amp failures.
Another thing, sometime in the 1970s, they changed how they measured the horsepower of a car. Before it was on a dyno, engine all alone. Later it was measured at the drive wheels. People who are into math and engineering can see that this makes the numbers better. See you have torque and horsepower. Both measure torque but the horsepower measurement includes the RPMs, while the torque does not.
What that means is two engines of the same torque and horsepower rating could perform vastly differently. I remember two Vette engines, one a regular Chevy and the other made by Mercury Marine. I do not remember the exact specs so these numbers are strictly illustrative : (sp)
1. 350 ft/lb at 2,000 RPM, 350 HP at 4,200 RPM
2. 350 ft/lb at 1,700 RPM, 350 HP at 6,200 RPM.Which engine is faster ? And to someone who can do the math, he can draw the torque curve from those numbers, at least fairly accurately. My math tutor probably can. I am teaching him electronics and he is teaching me math. He has become enthralled with test equipment and scopes and I want better math skills so I can design better. And we party while we do it. Whoever talks that day, talks. We do have arguments, especially about interruptions. He is talking about isomorphisms and I interject to ask if the reactance formulae are isomorphisms. They are, it is the same for inductors and capacitors but the capacitors are an inverse function - of the same thing.
Anyway, I have known for a long time how numbers can lie. It is just a matter of excluding the factors you do not like. While I do not deny global warming, I doubt what they say that it is all manmade. There is such a thing as the Malinkovich cycle, which has been worming this globe for a long time and has just passed its peak of doing so. And I do not deny that burning all this stuff warms the place up, that would be stupid. What I dispute is the extent of how much is anthropogenic and also, what the hell we can do about it. We cannot just scrap all the cars and pay a hundred grand for an electric car and build hundreds of nuclear power plants overnight to charge them. In other words, in current technology there is not viable solution. And all the government knows how to do is tax, ignoring the fact that China and other countries are going to spew CO2 just like always, just on the other side of our fishbowl. Carbon credits, they should be shot.
That is why I like to save older equipment. Alot of work and effort went into those things and unless they are really wasted they do not belong in a landfill. And in fact, even if they are really wasted they have good parts for units that aren't.
I am no longer into restoring old TVs, but that is because I see no good use for them. But audio is a different story. It started almost the same time as electronics period. "Watson, come here I need you". Television was a wonderful thing but they wasted it. I remember we had five channels and had to discuss what to watch, now we got 500 channels and there is nothing to watch.
I better just stop now. I would like to be in 1975 right now, but I know that time travel is impossible. And I hope it stays that way because the potential for abuse is just too great. Like Einstein said he would have never helped the US get the bomb unless he was sure Germany would have. In fact, I think after that he held back a few things. For the technically inclined who like fiction, check out a book called "The Final Theory". It is about him getting to the end of the equation and through his findings a weapon based on a cyclotron could cause an explosion anywhere in the universe without firing a single projectile. Of course some decent intrigue followed. I read it and really wished they would make a movie out of it. And it would not even take too much special effects. I can't f... stand special effects. Nothing has any damn plot these days.
And, my last bitch, with all this total garbage they charge you like $70 a month for cable ! At that rate there should be no commercials on ANY channel. I heard in some parts of Canada cable is strictly pay as you go. The technology reports what channel you watch, like HBO or Showtime or whatever and you only get charged for the time you watched it. Here, you pay for 500 channels but you can only watch one at a time.
Don't wonder why I am half nuts, wonder why I am only half nuts. This shit SUCKS.
Edits: 07/07/16 07/07/16
Never met a crown that was listenable , QSC was more acceptable ....
...whew, that was a long one.
I remember seeing that tune on Where the Action is as a little kid. Maybe seven years old. They were atop a building in a western setting.
ET
I hear you. But you don't have to stick with old stuff. There is plenty of modern gear with accurate ratings. Mass marketed gear always does that crap. HT power ratings have always been BS. Even by somewhat respected brands like Denon and NAD. None of them have the PS to drive all the channels to the rated power. Car stereo is even worse. I was in that biz too from the late 80's into the early 90's. We had Butler tube drivers and HiFonics and Fosgate which were good and didn't lie at least back then.
My rant is how bad 15A IECs are. Audiophile gear should only use the 20A. Not because of the current but because they stay seated and have more than double the contact surface area.
ET
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