What do you like to see next to be developed by a hifi manufacturer?

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NewBuyer

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Ethernet DACs with drivers that can natively host DX and VST plugins.

Using ethernet would allow signal output timing to depend on a local clock in the DAC (what a concept). Ethernet is transformer-coupled too, which is a benefit. Drivers that can host professional digital sound plugins would be the icing on the cake. :)


Srajan Ebaen

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A resistor-loaded direct-heated triode amp followed by a zero voltage-gain transistor power buffer, i.e. a FirstWatt F4 in one chassis with a Yamamoto-style 45 amp - ultra-low output impedance, good damping, plenty of current, a tube driving a totally resistive load, the best of all worlds. It can already be had with one or two F4s taking their input from a SET output but that's two or three boxes, mismatched cosmetics... it would be swell to have it as a single, fully integrated concept.

Dream on, eh? :roll:

John Ashman

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$50K/pr speaker cables because they are twice as good as $25K/pr speaker cables.   :D

Steve Eddy

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A resistor-loaded direct-heated triode amp followed by a zero voltage-gain transistor power buffer, i.e. a FirstWatt F4 in one chassis with a Yamamoto-style 45 amp - ultra-low output impedance, good damping, plenty of current, a tube driving a totally resistive load, the best of all worlds. It can already be had with one or two F4s taking their input from a SET output but that's two or three boxes, mismatched cosmetics... it would be swell to have it as a single, fully integrated concept.

Even better (in my opinion), forget the direct heated triode and get your voltage gain purely passively using transformers. :thumb:

se


Steve Eddy

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$50K/pr speaker cables because they are twice as good as $25K/pr speaker cables.   :D

Oh, I invented a solution for that years ago:

It's the same old story.

You've sacrificed, pinched your pennies and saved up for months. But it's been worth it and the time has finally come. You rush down to your local Radio Shack and moments later emerge the proud owner their best Gold Series interconnects.

You break a dozen traffic laws racing home. You hook 'em up, turn on the power, cue up your favorite recording, and with your hands still dripping with the sweat of anticipation, your heart sinks.

It's like listening to music through a pillow. Big, warm, fuzzy sound. ZERO clarity!

You give Radio Shack a call to see if they can offer some assistance but the guy just started working there and his last job was selling orthopedic shoes.

So you hop on the Internet and start poking around. Eventually you come across a lively discussion group bristling with experienced audiophiles. So you post a message detailing your plight, desparately pleading for help.

Soon you get a reply. It reads:

Until you break the $300 per pair barrier, you probably will still have haze etc... The performance improves dramatically above this price point.

Your heart sinks still lower.

We know.

You'd love nothing more than to own a much higher priced pair of interconnects but let's face it, not all of us have the deep pockets to spend even dozens let alone hundreds of dollars on cables.

And with the uncertainty of war in the Middle East and major corporate scandals breaking every week turning the stock market inside out on top of a looming recession, it's not likely that a pay raise is in your future.

We hear ya, bro.

That's why the dedicated folks at Kludge Research, Inc. have spared no expense and invested countless hours in research and development to bring you what promises to be the most revolutionary audio product of the past century. And bring it to you at a price that even you can afford!

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 The Audiophile Pricetag® will literally transform your cheap or giveaway interconnects into sonic marvels costing thousands of times more!

The Audiophile Pricetag® is no ordinary pricetag. It's hand-crafted from the finest materials available.

The heavy-gauge, 99.9999% pure cotton string utilizes a proprietary twisting method which provides a superior connection to your existing cable.

The manila card stock is made custom to our specifications from virgin stands of Douglas fir from the pacific northwest and is hand cut in our factory using techniques hundreds of years old with the price hand-written by one of our many craftspersons, signed and dated on the back of the tag.

Our patented hole reinforcement technology assures that your Audiophile Pricetag® will last a lifetime, even under continuous use.

Best of all, the Audiophile Pricetag® is being offered at the special introductory price of just $29.95!

Imagine getting the performance of a $5,000 cable for less than pennies on the dollar!

A bit tight on cash? No problem! Kludge Research, Inc. offers zero interest, six month financing. And if you act now, we'll defer your payments until January 2003!

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Each kit comes with a pre-cut tag, hole reinforcer, string and a tube of glue. The 23 page instruction manual is clearly written and includes more than a dozen illustrations walking you step-by-step from preparation to installation.

Let's hear what just one of our many satisfied customers has to say about this revolutionary new technology:

I was skeptical at first. But that ended just a few measures into the first song when I realized that I'd soiled my pants! You should offer a diaper with this thing! It's THAT good! And if you don't believe me, just moments later my wife who has no interest at all in this audiophile stuff telephoned me from the neighbor's house three doors down and asked me if I'd changed something in my system!

You guys are great!

Baskin Ennison
Runamok, South Dakota


It really is THAT good. In our own tests, we've even used the Audiophile Pricetag ® with interconnects made from coat hangers and bailing wire with the same result!

Of course all great innovations have had their detractors and the Audiophile Pricetag ® is no exception. There have been a number of critics who have claimed that any two reasonably well designed pricetags will sound the same.

We disagree. But who are we to say? Try it for yourself risk-free for 30 days. If you don't agree that it transforms even the cheapest interconnect into an interconnect costing $5,000, return it for a full refund.

The Auidiophile Pricetag®: You owe it to yourself.

The Audiophile Pricetag® is a registered trademark of Kludge Research, Inc. Copyright 2002 Kludge Research, Inc., all rights reserved.

This was originally written five years ago. But advances in technology have allowed us to upgrade the pricetag to up to six figures for a modest fee.

se


BrianM

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Heh.

Srajan Ebaen

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Hey Steve:

Audio Consulting in Switzerland is doing exactly that already in a few different amplifier units - the transformer-derived voltage gain isn't much, 6-12dB if I recall correctly so you'll need a higher-eff speaker, but for idiots like me, that's part of the game, naturally.

What's happened with your and Mike's transformer-coupled passive pre? Did it ever make production? It sure looked cute as a dickens from the last audio porn pix you guys posted online  :green:

JoshK

Srajan,

You idea is a good one and one that has been brought up on diy forums before, I am just not sure how large the audience will be.  How many of the die-hard SET crowd is going to let sand into their system after fighting so hard to build a system without it?  On the other side of the coin, how many class A SS amp fans would be willing to turn to old technology?  I think you have a very good idea, I am just not sure it has market viability.  But alas this thread was a pie in the sky thread, so we can dream.

I still want to try to rip the front end out of my UcD400 and replace it with an Aikido gain stage or something similar.  One of these days when I get some time to actually work on projects I'll give it a try.  My contention is that the UcD derives most of its signature from the input opamp, not the amp topology despite what the masses believe.

JC,
I agree with you.  I think the proprietary software/hardware model isn't working for the current players, just like the computer media players didn't really bite until Slim Devices came out with their open source slimserver solution.  I understand the early pioneers wanting to get paid for their R&D but I don't think the solution will really take hold of the market until there is broader adoption of a filter (non-proprietary) software program that can be loaded onto numerous hardware solutions.  Then the software and hardware solutions can be seperated and marketed more appropriately for each. 

The software guys can offer easy to use and slick software solutions based on the core open source code and the hardware guys can keep improving on the SOTA in DSP computing and force the prices down.  Now of course, the owners of said product dont' really see this as a good thing for themselves if there is disinflation in their hardware products, but ultimately it will give them scale.  They will get their scale from the pro audio market not the home market but some consumer companies will bite eventually and offer nice home theater solutions to the higher end of the mid market.

JoshK

Audio Consulting in Switzerland is doing exactly that ...

What, offering the audiophile pricetag?   :lol:

Srajan Ebaen

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It's niche-y as hell fer sure. It'd simply be a killer convergence project now that I've heard what it can do. Does it have market potential? Prolly not. It's just a pie'n'sky notion.

Reference Audio Mods

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A resistor-loaded direct-heated triode amp followed by a zero voltage-gain transistor power buffer, i.e. a FirstWatt F4 in one chassis with a Yamamoto-style 45 amp - ultra-low output impedance, good damping, plenty of current, a tube driving a totally resistive load, the best of all worlds. It can already be had with one or two F4s taking their input from a SET output but that's two or three boxes, mismatched cosmetics... it would be swell to have it as a single, fully integrated concept.

Even better (in my opinion), forget the direct heated triode and get your voltage gain purely passively using transformers. :thumb:

se





Here is a link to the Silver Wire Power Gain Amplifier by Audio Consulting... completely silver wired transformer based and off the mains as well..

http://www.audio-consulting.ch/SWGPA_.htm

Kevin Haskins

$50K/pr speaker cables because they are twice as good as $25K/pr speaker cables.   :D

Let's hear what just one of our many satisfied customers has to say about this revolutionary new technology:

I was skeptical at first. But that ended just a few measures into the first song when I realized that I'd soiled my pants! You should offer a diaper with this thing! It's THAT good! And if you don't believe me, just moments later my wife who has no interest at all in this audiophile stuff telephoned me from the neighbor's house three doors down and asked me if I'd changed something in my system!

You guys are great!

Baskin Ennison
Runamok, South Dakota



 :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:     Thanks for that Steve.   I'll give you a call and place an order for a couple hundred.   They sound like a real value and placed on my Canare cables should make for excellent sonics. 


Steve Eddy

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Audio Consulting in Switzerland is doing exactly that already in a few different amplifier units - the transformer-derived voltage gain isn't much, 6-12dB if I recall correctly so you'll need a higher-eff speaker, but for idiots like me, that's part of the game, naturally.

Yes, I'm familiar with their preamp and power amp. Can't help wondering if they might have got the idea from some of the posts I've made over the years about this concept.

That's ok though. Mine will be better than theirs and won't have such a ridiculousl pricetag (over $58,000 for the preamp and power amp--these are the same folks who gave us the $500 wood knob). Er, or a ridiculous Pricetag® for that matter. :green:

Quote
What's happened with your and Mike's transformer-coupled passive pre? Did it ever make production? It sure looked cute as a dickens from the last audio porn pix you guys posted online  :green:

Well, let's just say that Mike's life became a bit more complicated and he had to put the Ingot on the back burner for a while. Things are finally settling down and he's hoping to be able to get it into production sometime after the first of next year.

se


Steve Eddy

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Here is a link to the Silver Wire Power Gain Amplifier by Audio Consulting... completely silver wired transformer based and off the mains as well..

Thanks. As I said to Srajan, I was already familiar with their units. And of course Electraprint also has a wholly passive preamp (i.e. just a stepup transformer and volume control, no active buffering).

se


Steve Eddy

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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:     Thanks for that Steve.

You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun doing it. I actually did make the pricetag by hand by the way. :lol:

Quote
I'll give you a call and place an order for a couple hundred.   They sound like a real value and placed on my Canare cables should make for excellent sonics.

Great! I'm sure you'll be more than pleased with the performance of the Pricetag® as well as our generous wholesale discounts. :thumb:

se


Kevin Haskins



Great! I'm sure you'll be more than pleased with the performance of the Pricetag® as well as our generous wholesale discounts. :thumb:


I did a comparison, single blind, with a group of audio manufactures at RMAF a couple years ago.     Rosi was wrong, they all picked one cable as the winner.   Two of them had four digit price tags and the $35 Canare won the event hands down.   

Since the only difference that I can see is the price tag, I figure with the updated Pricetag it should sell as good as those other cables.


aerius

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Speaking seriously now, I want to see a high voltage transistor amp for speakers, running at somewhere between 150V-200V and using output transformers.  Tube sound with solidstate convenience.

Steve Eddy

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I did a comparison, single blind, with a group of audio manufactures at RMAF a couple years ago.     Rosi was wrong, they all picked one cable as the winner.   Two of them had four digit price tags and the $35 Canare won the event hands down.

Er, Rosi?

Quote
Since the only difference that I can see is the price tag, I figure with the updated Pricetag it should sell as good as those other cables.

We guarantee it or your money back. :green:

se


Steve Eddy

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Speaking seriously now, I want to see a high voltage transistor amp for speakers, running at somewhere between 150V-200V and using output transformers.  Tube sound with solidstate convenience.

You kind of lost me with that last part there.

How do transistors and transformers equate to tube sound?

se


TONEPUB

Speaking seriously now, I want to see a high voltage transistor amp for speakers, running at somewhere between 150V-200V and using output transformers.  Tube sound with solidstate convenience.

McIntosh has been doing that for years....

I don't want anymore hifi, I'm happy there.  What I do want is a Porsche GT3 for 30 thousand dollars...

And I'd really like to see the Apple iPhone hit 99 bucks!

(And I don't want a Subaru WRX.  Great car but I don't want one of those)