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mcullinan

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #40 on: 15 Aug 2008, 02:26 pm »
Yeah.. 1500 for a cherry...
Or maybe have a Tour amongst the audiophiles and let us be the judge. and jury.
:)
Id check em out.
Mike

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #41 on: 15 Aug 2008, 02:57 pm »
Yeah.. 1500 for a cherry...
Or maybe have a Tour amongst the audiophiles and let us be the judge. and jury.
:)
Id check em out.
Mike

Interesting idea!  Travel can be expensive, though.  On a related note, while searching around (Google), I found this:
http://www.electronics-vault.com/audio-video/13-281053-B001B0VXRW-Cherry_Amp__Ultra_Linear_Stereo_2_Channel_Digital_Power_Amplifier_for_High_Performance_High_End_Music_Studio_and_Reference_Audio_Systems__Beats_Tubes_and_Class_A__1200W.html

Looks like a company that re-formats Amazon listings or something.  Did you ever hear of "electronics-vault"?  We had nothing to do with this site showing our product!  They have the Cherry amp up there too!  Do you know of others like this?  I've seen this kind of thing before but didn't save the info.  Regarding prices, I'll comment in a separate post.

Thanks again for your good posts.  Have a nice weekend!

mfsoa

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #42 on: 15 Aug 2008, 06:50 pm »
Hmmmm...

South Whitehall PA is <1.5H from the October Rave (30 min N of Newhope)

Maybe the NYAR wants to extend an invite?

Have we had a massive amp shootout lately?  (I could get a pr of 802Ds for the day, if we need something to sink power into)

-Mike

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #43 on: 15 Aug 2008, 06:52 pm »
hello

you seem like a guy who knows what he is talking about and seem to be very much a part of this crazy hobby.  if i were you and don't take this the wrong way but i would re-think your price structure. if your and early bird and you can find it on amazon referb and stuff like this people here are not going to take you seriously.  come up with a price that works for you and stick with it.  any other way makes it seem like your not sure of yourself.



I agree . what is the   r e a l   price?  do you get sized up ?  my buddy told me his was 1500 but why is it 3600 on the web site and 2700 (?) on amazon and what the hell is it doing on amazon .  nobody buys serious gear there!!!!!!     why not audiogon



still the product is good like I said before.    just being devils advocate  :)



Let me explain, please.   We had a large material cost increase last year and ate the cost.  We also made some design changes along the way (better chassis design, etc.), so there are old and new versions of the DAC4800A.  We also upgrade the older version and sell it as a refurb.  Early on, we sold a few prototypes really cheap.

How many times have you seen high end equipment with the same price EVERYWHERE?  You don't think dealers have fixed sales prices on similar products, do you?  Well, they don't, and they are the ones sizing up customers, not us.

Regarding Amazon, we wanted to provide an alternate way to buy our products (not just on our site).  It's just that simple.  Nobody has complained about this before, and yes, I know it's a little unusual, but then again, we are unusually flexible.  Notice the prices are the same as on our site.  The refurb version is only on Amazon.  We sell special units to our subscribers like a unit we had with servos removed (AC coupled inputs) because a customer changed their mind and bought one with servos after we did the mod.  Some of the subscriber deals are below cost!

So, we have varying stock of varying age.  I think it's quite reasonable, and in fact welcomed, to have a variety of units available to suit different budgets.  By the way, does Audiogon sell much these days???

Pardon me for being defensive about this issue.  We are doing our best to give customers options.

Thanks for your post.

AmpDesigner333
www.DigitalAmp.com

mfsoa

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #44 on: 15 Aug 2008, 07:04 pm »
My bad - S. Whitehall (if that really is your true location   brewhaaa)
is only 45 min from my house.

-Mike

mcullinan

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #45 on: 15 Aug 2008, 07:17 pm »
My bad - S. Whitehall (if that really is your true location   brewhaaa)
is only 45 min from my house.

-Mike
Yeah that sounds like a good opportunity for some people to make opinions, filtering said power of word of mouth to the throngs of said AC folk thereby contributing the true nature of said Class D amps, there in fact acceleroeating purchases. <<--- I made that word up myself Yeah!!!! Im smott Im smott.
Mike

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #46 on: 15 Aug 2008, 07:18 pm »
My bad - S. Whitehall (if that really is your true location   brewhaaa)
is only 45 min from my house.

-Mike

Send me a private message and we can arrange to meet!  What kind of speakers do you have?  No problem bringing an amp, but not speakers, plus I'm not afraid of ANY speakers with my amps!!!  Do you have a preamp with balanced outs (XLRs)?

I don't use exact names/addresses on the Internet.

Thanks for your post.  Have a great weekend.

TomS

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #47 on: 15 Aug 2008, 07:23 pm »
I'd say lash 'em up to someone's SP Tech's at a Rave and ride 'em hard  :thumb: 

Low distortion should be very (non)evident there, as in easy to hear or not.

mfsoa

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #48 on: 16 Aug 2008, 12:01 am »
Mr. 333,

PM and invitation sent!


-Mike

ecramer

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #49 on: 16 Aug 2008, 05:17 am »
My bad - S. Whitehall (if that really is your true location   brewhaaa)
is only 45 min from my house.

-Mike

He's right between us if whitehall is the place. Close to my favorite steak house Gregory's
ED

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #50 on: 16 Aug 2008, 03:40 pm »
Mr. 333,

PM and invitation sent!


-Mike

Got it.  I'll reply to that ASAP.  Thanks, and have a great weekend!

bruno putzeys

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #51 on: 16 Aug 2008, 10:51 pm »
Tommy pointed me to this thread and asked for comments. I'm not familiar with the particulars of his design, but I wanted to comment on the point about sound vs specs. It's true that there are quite a few amps that really sound nice (not necessarily accurate but certainly nice) in spite of less than stellar numbers. However, "nice sound" aside, what I can say with absolute certainty is that I've never heard a truly accurate and neutral amp that didn't have the numbers to match.

The "good-numbers bad-sound amp" is a myth that's been with us since the 80's when some class AB amps (typically Japanese with lots of lights on a black anodized front) were marketed with spectacular numbers - or so one was led to believe. Invariably it turned out that either the promised performance was only attained at 1kHz/1W or not at all. Nowadays we would describe this as "making misleading claims". When properly tested these amplifiers performed abysmally and indeed sounded the part. Those few amps that truly delivered on their promised performance still sound good by today's standards.
Simply put, the widely held belief that performance and sound are completely disjoint is a result of irresponsible salesmanship, no more no less. The relationship between numbers and sound may not be 1:1, the correlation is much stronger than is generally accepted.

We're seeing something of a rerun of this story in class D. Like Tommy I'm often confronted by people tut-tutting (invariably before trying out my stuff, never afterwards) based on previous experiences with other products. Indeed, many class D amps haven't exactly blazed a trail for the technology. But here too, those products that disappoint in the listening room do likewise on the lab bench. Again the 1kHz/1W figure may look good for many amps but it's the high power / high frequency numbers that show what an amp is made of. Output impedance at 20kHz is another neglected item. Everyone can get super duper "damping factor" at 50Hz. So what? Can they do it at the other end of the spectrum too? So what I want to say is: if you've heard a class D amp with good specs on all counts and you're still not happy - I won't argue. But if you haven't: do take the time to try one out that does measure well. Although I haven't heard or measured Tommy's amps yet, the published numbers (graphs would be appreciated!) make them worthy of anyone's attention.

BTW, I'm aware that there are also some who seem to think that class D is inherently better sounding than other technologies. I'm not one of them. I don't believe class D is either inherently superior or inferior to other technologies. The advantages of class D are all of a practical nature. Good sound can be had from any technology (not always equally easily though), the only thing you definitely can't get from other kinds of amplifiers is a lot of power with hardly any wasted energy. I know several audiophiles consciously moving towards class D simply for environmental reasons, but of course they expect their new amp to sound at least as good as the one it's replacing. This is what good class D is about, not about some "novel magic sound experience" because that's bull. If it sounds that radically different from a really good traditional amp, there's something wrong. The time of making great strides in amplifier sound is over. The time of making great amps, luckily, is not.

While I'm at it I might share my experience about price. I've tried holding my own as a one man audio company in the past and I'm still part of a 4-man endeavour called Grimm Audio. From that experience I can tell you it's a frustrating fact of life that when you're on the wrong side of the economy of scale, making stuff really gets expensive. In the beginning one is often tempted to charge too little but after a while you really find the numbers don't add up if you try to stay in the same ball park with bigger joints. So your prices have to go up. But with a higher price tag customers expect higher quality (rightly so!). And that makes it even more expensive etc. The only stable solution to this equation is at a quality level (sound, build, "exclusivity" etc) that only very few people demand (that's you folks) so that larger companies no longer have a scale advantage and instead are at a disadvantage due to greater overhead. That's where the equation tilts. Add the current price hike in commodities like copper, a weak USD and volatility of the market in general and you get a price increase that would otherwise seem, on the face of it, difficult to explain.

Apologies for excessive verbosity. I am like that.

Cheers,

Bruno (who's now leaving on vacation so unlikely to check back on this thread for the next week)

AmpDesigner333

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #52 on: 17 Aug 2008, 03:51 am »
Tommy pointed me to this thread and asked for comments. I'm not familiar with the particulars of his design, but I wanted to comment on the point about sound vs specs. It's true that there are quite a few amps that really sound nice (not necessarily accurate but certainly nice) in spite of less than stellar numbers. However, "nice sound" aside, what I can say with absolute certainty is that I've never heard a truly accurate and neutral amp that didn't have the numbers to match.

The "good-numbers bad-sound amp" is a myth that's been with us since the 80's when some class AB amps (typically Japanese with lots of lights on a black anodized front) were marketed with spectacular numbers - or so one was led to believe. Invariably it turned out that either the promised performance was only attained at 1kHz/1W or not at all. Nowadays we would describe this as "making misleading claims". When properly tested these amplifiers performed abysmally and indeed sounded the part. Those few amps that truly delivered on their promised performance still sound good by today's standards.
Simply put, the widely held belief that performance and sound are completely disjoint is a result of irresponsible salesmanship, no more no less. The relationship between numbers and sound may not be 1:1, the correlation is much stronger than is generally accepted.

We're seeing something of a rerun of this story in class D. Like Tommy I'm often confronted by people tut-tutting (invariably before trying out my stuff, never afterwards) based on previous experiences with other products. Indeed, many class D amps haven't exactly blazed a trail for the technology. But here too, those products that disappoint in the listening room do likewise on the lab bench. Again the 1kHz/1W figure may look good for many amps but it's the high power / high frequency numbers that show what an amp is made of. Output impedance at 20kHz is another neglected item. Everyone can get super duper "damping factor" at 50Hz. So what? Can they do it at the other end of the spectrum too? So what I want to say is: if you've heard a class D amp with good specs on all counts and you're still not happy - I won't argue. But if you haven't: do take the time to try one out that does measure well. Although I haven't heard or measured Tommy's amps yet, the published numbers (graphs would be appreciated!) make them worthy of anyone's attention.

BTW, I'm aware that there are also some who seem to think that class D is inherently better sounding than other technologies. I'm not one of them. I don't believe class D is either inherently superior or inferior to other technologies. The advantages of class D are all of a practical nature. Good sound can be had from any technology (not always equally easily though), the only thing you definitely can't get from other kinds of amplifiers is a lot of power with hardly any wasted energy. I know several audiophiles consciously moving towards class D simply for environmental reasons, but of course they expect their new amp to sound at least as good as the one it's replacing. This is what good class D is about, not about some "novel magic sound experience" because that's bull. If it sounds that radically different from a really good traditional amp, there's something wrong. The time of making great strides in amplifier sound is over. The time of making great amps, luckily, is not.

While I'm at it I might share my experience about price. I've tried holding my own as a one man audio company in the past and I'm still part of a 4-man endeavour called Grimm Audio. From that experience I can tell you it's a frustrating fact of life that when you're on the wrong side of the economy of scale, making stuff really gets expensive. In the beginning one is often tempted to charge too little but after a while you really find the numbers don't add up if you try to stay in the same ball park with bigger joints. So your prices have to go up. But with a higher price tag customers expect higher quality (rightly so!). And that makes it even more expensive etc. The only stable solution to this equation is at a quality level (sound, build, "exclusivity" etc) that only very few people demand (that's you folks) so that larger companies no longer have a scale advantage and instead are at a disadvantage due to greater overhead. That's where the equation tilts. Add the current price hike in commodities like copper, a weak USD and volatility of the market in general and you get a price increase that would otherwise seem, on the face of it, difficult to explain.

Apologies for excessive verbosity. I am like that.

Cheers,

Bruno (who's now leaving on vacation so unlikely to check back on this thread for the next week)

Thanks, Bruno, for your post.  I also replied to your regular email.  Interesting thought on specs versus sound.  Hope that gets some replies.  Regarding output impedance at 20KHz, I have found that improving this spec in any amp design involves making other sacrifices and the net effect on the sound can be (doesn't have to be) discouraging.  One thing is for sure...  If you have a really good open loop amp to begin with, the reliance on feedback is lessened and the amp can be better overall.  With Class-D amps that use the output filter to modulate, there is technically no open loop to test!  Interesting issue, and I wonder how one deals with this other than simply going for the throat with the output stage design and testing only closed loop.  Of course, if there are multiple loops, you can work from the inside out...  Have a good vacation, and thanks again.

cab

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #53 on: 17 Aug 2008, 04:04 am »
Do you have any graphs of your amp's performance? THD vs freq, THD vs output power, etc?

AmpDesigner333

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #54 on: 17 Aug 2008, 04:16 am »
Do you have any graphs of your amp's performance? THD vs freq, THD vs output power, etc?

Yes...

Cherry Specs:
http://www.digitalamp.com/cherry%20measurements%20v6.pdf

DAC4800A Specs:
http://www.digitalamp.com/DAC4800A%20standard%20measurements%20v3.pdf

Product page for Cherry (list form specifications):
http://www.digitalamp.com/Cherry_amp2.htm

Product page for DAC4800A (list form specifications):
http://www.digitalamp.com/4800a_amp1.htm

Thanks for your post.

AmpDesigner333

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #55 on: 17 Aug 2008, 07:20 am »
Does anyone out there have any impressions of Stereo Times in general?  Just curious.  Thanks.

JEaton

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #56 on: 17 Aug 2008, 07:33 am »
I'm the founder of Digital Amplifier Company (1996).  On our web site, we explain that we don't go to trade shows or pay for standard print or web advertising.  Do you have any thoughts on this?

See below.   Maybe a little bit of marketing would be in order.  Posting to forums like this one might look like marketing, but will also be seen as a little amateurish by many.

Quote
Please let us know if you have heard one of our amps or if you have visited our web site (www.DigitalAmp.com).

Never heard them and have never heard of the company.

How did you come up with a name for an amplifier company with the unfortunate acronym of "DAC"?

bruno putzeys

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Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #57 on: 17 Aug 2008, 08:45 am »
I have found that improving this spec in any amp design involves making other sacrifices(...)
In the past I used to believe that achieving good modulator linearity along with global feedback was impossible. I've had to change my mind because I figured a way how to do it. Two ways actually. Works like a charm, at least if one considers four densely printed pages of formulae "a charm".

denjo

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #58 on: 17 Aug 2008, 10:59 am »

How did you come up with a name for an amplifier company with the unfortunate acronym of "DAC"?

Yes, that was exactly my point a few threads up!


arthurs

Re: Digital Amplifier Company DAC4800A and Cherry amps
« Reply #59 on: 17 Aug 2008, 02:25 pm »
Interesting looking products AmpDesigner333...

Please adjust your signature to meet the guidelines put forward for industry participants here  http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=41871.0

Thanks in advance and have a great rest of your weekend!