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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Like these. Indeed. posted by RJM on May 21, 2002 at 19:54:46:
I'm happy to see that K.T. took it very maturely. In any event, if you study the circuit board carefully, you will find that it really is a very well thought out design, with minimum length sigal paths and intelligent positioning of components.Uh, that should describe ANY reasonably competent layout.
The longer you look at it, the more you find yourself respecting it.
I respect it in its being a competent layout. However I don't see anything particularly clever about it that warrants any more respect than any other competent layout. Unless one is totally incompetent, one whould have to intentionally try to come up with a less compact layout.
The only people who laugh in derision at the carbon resistors etc. are those who have heard neither Gaincard nor Gainclone. Their loss.
For the record, I didn't laugh in derision at the carbon film resistors. The smiley face was a reflection of my amusement at how the status quo pendulum swings in this hobby. Yesterday's bog standard parts become today's high quality parts. Everyone goes chasing after parts of the highest objective quality and then someone comes along and says "Hey, try these. They're not bad." And suddenly everyone's chasing after what they were previously running away from.
Personally I've never found any consistent correlation between the objective specs of a particular part or component and what I ultimately prefer to listen to. To that end I give everything a fair chance and just go with what works for me in the end regardless of what the prevailing status quo may have to say. And that's why you won't see me laughing derisively at someone else's choice of parts.
Build one. Try metal film resistors, try every other resistor, then try carbon film. Say: "oh."
Been there, done that, and got the t-shirt over 10 years ago. Wound up using Caddocks in the end.
Simon Yorke was once admonished by MF for using a plywood armboard on a very expensive turntable. He replied that plywood sounded best, and that he'd tried everything else. Would you then claim the table wasn't worth the money because it uses a plywood armboard? Au contraire!
Spare hair is fair.
In fact, hair can be rare.
Fred Astaire got no hair.
Nor a chair.
Nor a chocolate eclair.
And where is the hair on a pear?
Nowhere, mon frere!.Oops. Sorry. Your au contraire caused me to momentarily lapse into a George Carlin flashback. I knew I should have left those mushrooms on the cow pat. :)
Anyway, I think perhaps you misunderstood my intent with regard to pricing. All I'm saying is that if you use a piece of plywood, it should be factored into the retail price as a piece of plywood. Not as something vastly more expensive than a piece of plywood. So, if you're using 2¢ resistors, they should factor in as 2¢ resistors, not $5 resistors.
While I'm very much a capitalist and believe manufacturers have every right to put whatever price tag they want on their products, I also have the right to decide whether or not I think the price is worth it. And one of the primary deciding factors for me is whether the product's price bears what I think is a reasonable relationship to the cost of producing it.
And when I look at the Gaincard, I see a $1,500 product, tops. So to me, I don't consider the Gaincard's $3,300 price tag to bear a reasonable relationship to its cost. But that's just my personal outlook on things. I don't expect it to be anyone else's. I only offer it for consideration.
The "brilliantly simple" is deserved because, like all great ideas, it is something that anyone could have thought of but nobody did.
Not to brag, but I thought of it and did it over 10 years ago. I was looking to design a power amplifier to mate with a buffered attenuator "preamp" I was manufacturing at the time:
I wanted the amplifier to fit in the same size chassis as the preamp which was rather atypically small at the time at 12" x 12". So I started experimenting with monolithic power opamps and found that they didn't sound as bad as one would be led to believe.
However about the same time the recession hit and I got hosed by a major part supplier and decided to terminate the business so I never got 'round to producing a commercial version, but my personal amps have been based on simple power opamp circuits ever since except that I've been using hybrids rather than monolithics.
And I don't consider this bragging because I don't consider the idea to be particularly brilliant. In fact I consider it to be rather a no-brainer, just as the idea to strap a PMI BUF-03 on the output of an attenuator and create a buffered "passive" preamp (the gizmo above) even though that hadn't been done before to my knowledge.
Now, what I DO admire Kimura for is his balls. The balls to offer a commercial product that thumbed its nose at the status quo which had for some time declared that such things as integrated circuits, opamps, negative feedback, carbon film resistors, lack of bypass caps, etc. were all bad and should be avoided at all costs.
And I admire those didn't let prejudice get the best of them and gave the Gaincard a fair chance in spite of the direction the winds of the prevailing status quo were blowing.
So I'm not without some admiration. I just don't see the Gaincard as being particularly innovative (though I do think the OTA cabling system's pretty clever), I think it's quite overpriced, and I think their marketing is a bit misleading.
Price vs. value, price vs. performance is something best left to those who propose to hear and see it for themselves.
Nonsense. My criteria of a reasonable relationship to cost of production is no less valid than the criteria of sonic performance. It's an individual choice and therefore best left to each individual to determine for themselves. I don't see why I should keep my opinions to myself regarding price vs. value just because my criteria differs from yours or those of others.
se
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Follow Ups
- Re: Like these. Indeed. - Steve Eddy 22:58:23 05/21/02 (0)
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