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The color of my parachute!

Kevin, I appreciate and respect your thoughts. I am self taught. I did not have the opportunity if going to a high prophile engineering school. I built all of my amplifiers from scratch, not a kit. I've learned much. The most interesting thing I've gleaned from building almost thirty amps to date is the abysimal state of entertainment and consumer electronics in this country. I also know how amps work and if anything I've proved to myself is that school trained engineers are taught not to think outside the box. They are for the most part conformists and pragmatists that have been beaten with the EFFICIENCY STICK. They only copy what has been preciously done. Why I ask is the pretora of amps all using the op amp topology with a diff amp at the head, Class AB, feedback returned to the - input, plenty of lead and lag compensation and a brute force filter on the front door and another on the back door. The reason is that most solid state amps are totally unstable without such appliances. They simply will not work. Most all the amps are variations of the same theme. Few are original and of quality. Why do most transistors that are avaliable to the conumer electronics industry vary by more than 60% in beta and collector to base capacitance? Because american business want to unload their S%$# on the american public. Why are other ideas not tried? A company in America has yet to provide us with a solid state amp that operates PURE Class A without gross stability problems. They are always quasi ClassA. I don't care about the efficiency. I want it operating ClassA. I'm sure that if the space or defense industry wanted or needed such an "instrument" that National and Motorola would do triple back flips trying to get them the transistors they need. But to a lowly amp maker trying to break into the market, then he has to buy barrels full and spend an inordinate amount of time sorting the transistors he needs. I believe that the Swiss, Austrians, and Germans can beat our a%% in spades at anything in engineering and electronics and it's sad. Once Americans built things of quality but that time is past. We are now in the age of quantity, no product backup, and GET RICH AT ANY COST mentalities. When the bean counters and the marketing people and yes the engineers get finished then the product is MEDIOCRE BEYOND BELIEF.
I once too owned a Crown and several other brands of reputable solid state amps and I have tested many and the consensus is that most of them run out of steam quick. Most all of them have a erie solid state glare, euphonuc signature that is fatigueing and music is simply not about being fatigued by the experience. I proved to myself that I can build things much much better than american business ever could. I forgot about buying products on the market and I'm glad I did. The music that is eminating from my system satisfies me. We are in this hobby because we love music and we don't want our music to be reproduced with ANYTHING EXTRA that is electroniclly induced. It is amazing to me how school trained engineers look at audiophiles as part of the "idiot fringe" especially if they are inclined to listen to ""those awful antique vacumn tubes. I wish we could arrive at a common ground. Otherwise one group can't see the forest for the trees and the other can't see the trees for the forest. Respectfully, James

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