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Hi, In the new Stereophile,September 24,is a review of the Dan D'Agostino Relentless. The cost is 149.500 plus 19.500 for a DSM. I stated this before on other items on review. Why aren't there any pictures of this system's internal construction for that kind of coin? How much money is spent on it's appearance?Take care....Mark Korda
Follow Ups:
after a few published interior photos of equipment showed that an expensive item was literally a cheaper item mounted in an expensive looking enclosure. 2 items come to mind; an expensive universal player that was a mid level OPPO machine in a designer case, and tweaked with "proprietary" software. Several publications accepted the premise of the software "upgrade" until the company was exposed. Other was the TAD McLaren group. They purchased a respected audio company, then pulled their equipment from the market for about 6 mos. Shortly after "new" models appeared, that looked wonderful- great aesthetics and tactile feel, with price points at least 2x those of the previous company. Then an independent reviewer opened up one of the new components, and discovered that it was old stock, connected by ribbon cables to a new control panel, and hard mounted to a heavy new case. Press was flustered, and put out a bunch of circular logic rebuttals- then the equipment was pulled from the market, never to be seen again.If you are restricted from opening up a component, and then prohibited from publishing interior pictures, then who knows what is really inside..... ?
Edits: 11/17/24
Perhaps you guys may actually listen to the amp before you piss all over it. It was made for people wealthy enough to afford it without worrying about the cost. Doubtful that is any of us here.
"I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the
most of us...very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad..."
Only audio mag I've ever subscribed to is S'phile.
And now every time I get one, I'm prepared to be relentlessly entertained. This issue exceeded my expectations. It's an absurd laugh-fest with JVS as the chief comedian.
Fortunately for me in the Hifi world, April Fool's Day comes once a month - in the mail even!
Remember the days of the "Audio" mag? Science plus art.
The funny thing is, most of these elegant amplifiers appear to be made like an old Crown amp (the old ones are bullet proof), that is it could put out what ever it's rating was 24/7/365.
They might be able to put out say 1/2dB more at significant distortion but there was a hard limit to how much Voltage the output stage can swing...set by the power supply voltage.
There is no "peak" that is significantly above the continuous.
Class D, obviously it's very different but it is a breakthrough in another way, most of them are designed around music as a signal. not a sine wave 24/7/365.
An analog rms volt meter like a Simpson 260, or a sound level meter reads the rms or average value integrated over some short time.
So what does music actually look like?
Well dynamically you have a signal that constantly changes, nothing like a sine wave.
The most compressed FM music would usually have a peak value that is about 10 times the average value that one would read with the meters I mentioned. To be clear, these peaks are short, very short and are best seen looking at the microphone or amp voltage on a storage oscilloscope or other to capture the peaks and read the voltage.
Some sound level meters have slow, fast and peak hold as these peaks go to the loudspeaker too.
Good recordings usually have a peak to average ratio of 20 to 30 dB, the short peaks can be 100 to 1000 times larger than the average level.
The weird thing is, "clipping is obvious" and yes it is....BUT only if it lasts long enough and this is how one can have a low power amp that easily handles the average level but is also clipping instantaneous peaks..
You can't hear that...until you A / B with something that isn't clipped, then the un clipped sounds the same except it's more dynamic.
Here is where many class D amps stand out. they are not designed to put out a sine wave 24/7 at rated power, in fact, most can only deliver rated power for some shortish period of time.
What some can also do is put out peaks that much larger than the continuous power rating and are built around the demands of music.
They are not all the same, i am only familiar with the ICE power blocks and a few others.
Tom
Class D amps are too good already and getting better and you don't need dedicated circuits to power them. If you doubt me, check out the PS Audio m700 and m1200 amps. They're cheap and sound great.
Lack of skill dictates economy of style. - Joey Ramone
There is some logic here but you obviously don't understand other audiophiles may think different than you. We once expected CDs to rule and they are gone but records are resurging, admittedly a niche but a significant niche.
From Bones to Kirk, Jim, Liniear is dead
Hi,
Although the CD is sort of "gone," it's not really "gone" in the sense that what happened is that streaming took over, so instead of a disc holding 16/44.1 music files, some storage somewhere in the world does and that's now transfer wirelessly and/or wired through a DAC. So it's still here -- digital audio is -- but in a different way.
But I agree with you on the way audiophiles think. Class-D amps are fantastic today, but there plenty of great class-A and class-AB amps that many people will still gravitate to.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
on an "indefinite loan" basis.
Took me a while to rip the CD collection but the benefits are enormous. Frequently combine local and Qobuz content in same playlists across multiple systems. :)
While the music server resides on a NAS, the entire library (including larger 24 bit downloads) fits on this used every once in a while in the HT system.
As, I'm sure, do many serious music fans. New (and old) titles are still being made and sold, and players will be made as long as people want to hear their collections. That's just market sense. I, for one, have zero interest in streaming/downloading, and I'll bet I'm not the only one.
Just like with vinyl records, which are now enjoying a resurgence of popularity. That fad will fade, but there will still be lots of folks with nice record collections who want nice turntables.
And probably also the "Pareto 95%."
But, there will always be a few who don't care about price.
Were I to win the Lottery, I'd donate darTZeel's biggest amps to a local art museum. As part of a complete system.
I know a guy who is famous in Ferrari circles as a wheeler-dealer.
A guy who failed to get his advice, fell out of love with his new-to-him used car.
My colleague told him, "Best case, to get out of this car, sales price versus sales price, you are out at least $20,000, and perhaps $50,000."
The rich guy snorted and said, "I spend more than that a year on crap I buy on eBay."
A different world.
john
It IS a gorgeously crafted piece of equipment. With the machined aluminum casework, and those cool meters, it looks like something Captain Nemo would have aboard the Nautilus. It measured well, and SVS loved the sound (of course).
At the price, you can be sure it was carefully engineered for best performance, and you can bet it uses the highest available quality parts.
Unlike those recently-reviewed McIntosh speakers, whose pictured crossover was loaded with cheap Bennic capacitors and resistors. At $12K, you would expect at least Mundorf, Audyn, Clarity Cap, and the like.
Hi,
I fully agree with you -- outside to inside. We have two photo studios -- one in the US, the other in Canada. Unless we physically can't get inside a product -- that happened to me recently with two Peachtree products -- we photograph them from every conceivable angle, on the outside right to the inside, with plenty of closeups.
That said, many magaazines today are relying on stock photography mostly -- and that's why you often don't see the photos that you should.
Doug
SoundStage!
Something like this?
Is that a sun dial? Neato!
Edits: 08/10/24
That colander full of linguini made me yearn for the original darTZeel NHB-108, which got the job done with one (IIRC) MOSFET transistor pair, per channel.
Yikes.
Audio for (half-deaf) former headbangers, or what???
Timing errors, anyone?
john
PS: Yeah, of course I have never heard it. Neither have I driven a modern Dodge Challenger. (I did drive one in the early 1970s.)
Spot on John
NHB 108 is a classic
Here is a high tech cat guard.A bent piece of cardboard with an old deflated football on top.My cat Jack has never bothered these or jumped on them. I'm going to try for a patent with my sanding block cable lifter...-.Mark K.
offers its own spaghetti for a mere $65k. Isn't that worth whining about as is common here?
Rzado, thanks for posting that picture.......Mark Korda
Well, you can see where the money went.
Nice chassis!
I like eye candy, as most of us do. However, it is the sound that reigns supreme, IMO. Frankly from what I see the parts do not justify the cost.
If anything a class D amp needs a great power supply even more than a class A or AB amp. It needs an instantaneous change from zero to max output which, of course, is impossible. Otherwise the square wave produced will not be quite square with tilt in the rise which when decoded will not exactly reproduce the input signal. The better the power supply, usually meaning more expensive, the better the class D amp.
Totally agree. My Dolan M~One class D monoblocs has a huge power supply which took some time to come to fruition. Makes a big difference. Unlytics and Mundorf.
The two most expensive parts of an amp are the chassis and the transformer.
Unless you go gen 3 Class D
Hi, after finally giving up my belief in passive preamps I found a nicely built simple preamp for 35 bucks new.I spent another 20 bucks for GE tubes. The build quality is shown in a nice picture.There seems like there's so much less circuitry for the power amp to send it's signal thru than the 3 piece Relentless. I know it's made in China and I would like to buy American but it's a no-brainer.Like the T V ad with a battery on Robert Conrad's shoulder,nothing can knock this off sonically that a non millionaire can afford. Another company that shows all and could compete with the Relentless is Primaluna,all quality parts shown and a drastically lower price than the Relentless.Take care, Mark Korda
Audiophiles almost always under rate the importance of the power supply. You almost can't have too big a power supply so it doesn't vary which will distort the output signal. The power supply is the amp or preamp. The output signal comes directly from the power supply, not from the amplifier circuit. The amplifier circuit merely modulates the electricity from the power supply. That's why great amplifying devices have great power supplies.
I actively learned that lesson by applying Frank Van Alstine's concepts to components I had as a teen. Current power amps have 500 joules of energy. Preamp has 38 which is more than quite a few 100 watt amps.
Even makes a difference with digital endpoints in terms of modulated noise and low impedance drive for optimum dynamics.
Here is my set up.The cable lifter is an old used 3M sanding sponge cut in half (True Grit)...-Mark K.
What speakers are you using? The Dynaco amp is a great little amp but optimistically rated at 17 watts.
Hi Hahax, The Dyna is in my bedroom which is very small.I live in a mobile home. I am using a restored pair of Dynaco A25 Mark 2's. I fixed the dinged corners with Bondo and redid the grills with burlap,it's so porous it's like no grill at all. I painted them black and use Mortite for speaker caulking. When my woofers and tweeter are screwed in the metal frame never touches the wooden cabinet. The original Dyna woofer gasket is paper thin,I have a picture.This Dyna A-25 Mark 2 came out in 1978.The crossover is simpler than the original and uses an L pad instead of fixed resistors as in the original A 25. They were made in Blackwood N.J. and used Seas drivers.It differed from the Dyna A 25 XL by putting the tweeter in line with the woofer on top and not to the right. My original pair I bought new in 78 at at something like 109 bucks.The steal of the century. Let me try a picture...-take care Hahax...-..
The A25 was a great speaker, especially for the money. It's been decades since It was especially good in the bass, not so much how low it went but the quality and control.I heard them but I'd bet they'd sound even better with tons of power.
By the way I used Mortite to seal the drivers on my speakers too.
The biggest difference between the A25 and A25XL was a smaller, improved tweeter that had better dispersion(since it was smaller) and went out a little further.
Hahax...-A25 Mark2
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