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RE: I'm tired of people running down Audio Note (UK)

Dear SV-572, again,

Sorry about delay replying to your post, much to do here, here is Andy Grove's response to your post.

Hi,

One thing should be made clear when we have such discussions: We are not working in an open-source environment. Audio Note has to pay for its R&D and engineering costs and, although we like to disseminate knowledge to further the general cause, our families will starve to if we go too far down that road. We aren't principally here to do R&D and then hand that information to hobbyists, or competitors for that matter.

With that in mind it's not unreasonable to expect that we would have trade names for materials we've developed and/or sourced. This is quite normal in any industry. In any case, what does a series of code digits mean to a customer whose main interest is in music?

Metaphorically speaking, it's easy to read a Haynes manual, and use your new-found knowledge of car design to criticize Ferrari and Lamborghini for being too expensive. However, it might just be possible that Ferrari know some things about car design that you don't.

And , just possibly, those cars are expensive because the materials are expensive, there is a lot of R&D behind them, and they are put together by skilled workers on expensive machinery.

You make statements about transformer design, and core materials, which are extremely general and come from the transformer section of the RDH...

Even the best Japanese HiB material turns over at 1.8T or so in use, in a C Core, not 2T. I know that because I've measured all these materials, I'm not taking the Epstein square test data off an online dictionary page and then using it as a weapon on a forum.

The saturation of pure iron is, what, under ideal circumstances 2.15T, and we have 3-4% silicon in HiB, so straight away the 2T figure is off isn't it surely?

Furthermore, not all HiB is the same, nor M6, M4 or whatever else. Even materials which are grouped within those specs can be quite different, magnetically AND sonically.

Round loop annealed 55% material doesn't saturate at 1.5T, in fact, it's a very hard material to use, and I wouldn't recommend it for high power use unless the core is very large indeed. And, speaking of which, I designed a 15k ohm SE 211 transformer with it which used a 8 square inch CSA core just recently. That one had other features you've never heard of too.

When it comes to inter-stage and pre-amp output transformers you CAN use the same cores with the same number of turns on the winding. That's because there is a minimum feasible gap, and with that gap the relatively small current can be supported, it's just that more current can be supported with HiB cores, but you can't make the gap any smaller.

Yes, sometimes we use the same core size for SE as PSE, sometimes not, it depends on the target customer, physical constraints, budget constraints and a whole bunch of other stuff we have to think of as a functioning manufacturing company.

Furthermore, when someone emails me about an expensive transformer, I will discuss it with them, and quite often will make a bespoke design for them.

Finally, and I find myself repeating this so often: If your audio value system is based on abstract figures and specs then there is only one way to go, and that is MOSFETS. They will do everything you want, low distortion, wide bandwidth, everything, in ways that no valve or transformer can achieve.

Otherwise, you have to accept that some things have a sound, and, in audio, some things work even though, at first glance, it appears they shouldn't.

Andy

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