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But the entry level Sony was never designed for professional testing "under stress". I am not saying that testing it here was a bad decision, we want to know how good is a product that a major electronics firm can produce with cheap components, it tells us what the limits of the $199 AVR...

Sure the extra money can be spent on other items, but once the kids are out of the house and the obligatory spending on groceries goes down, the same consumers would be looking at replacing the cheap audio gear with something with more advance engineering (maybe a Wiim amp) or a class A or class...

But that is the point that @restorer-john made. Since they are so cheap and unserviceable, they are not worth the cost of shipping them back to China plus parts for >100% of the original cost, which means they'll end up at a landfill at the country of sale after ~2 years of use. He is for...

Probably because the sales were going down, that is how Schiit has been operating for ~10 years. In their last youtube posting they mentioned a possible replacement for the Saga S. I don't know whether it would feature any options.

The problem is that the great measuring, powerful class D amplifiers that you allude, that are also reliable and yield good measuring results (including IMD) across the board are in the price range of the Vidar, not the Aiyima, Fosi, SMSL types.

That would be ~38 years from now, at which point class D might have passed class A/B in in terms of reliability. But that is not of any use for someone making a purchase in 2024. There are ways to stress test products that does not involve asking customers on a forum with the passage of time...

Thanks, I stand corrected. But as far as I know the first NCore Amplifier was the Audio Alchemy DPA-1M monoblock from Hypex Electronics back in 2016. Class A/B is far more established, going back ~50 years.

Stereophile does conduct testing, although with different methodologies.

My guess is that it depends on the level of commitment in terms of dollars that an audiophile is willing to make. A highly committed one would not mind a 2 year warranty for a ~$1K amplifier. The $500 per annum is justified in a world where the technology continues to improve, it gives you an...

I noticed with several of the Schiit amps that whenever they are tested by ASR they tend to show higher harmonic intensities on the dashboard than what Schiit's own testing would show. However, the THD+N vs power plots on ASR tend to show better performance than Schiit's measurements. Like...

Maybe that most of the high-performing class D modules have only been around for ~5 years?

At this level of distortion I think the main consideration for a user with normal middle-age hearing is the number of watts per dollar. The Vidar2 sells for $4 /W, the March P262 sells for ~$4.64 /W and the Buckeye Amps for $2.52 /W, all at 4 ohms. The price on the Vidar2 is reasonable for a...

Looking at Amir's results the THD+N plots are much worse than than Schiit's (page 41). But his last plot is strange in that the distortion is quite high, in tube mode, at all powers. The Schiit results go from -80 dB to ~-100dB and finally up to -60 dB at 4Vrms, which is closer to what I would...

Well Schiit does not post the input sensitivity on any of its products, I think. But I would gather the company would be worried their products are not being recommended based on a setting which diminish the quality of the performance. They tested the tube more at 0.265 Vrms and got a...

Hi, you quoted me without reading my comment : feeds the preamp at full amplitude voltage (2V for RCA and 4V for XLR). Of course in between tracks there is no voltage, but for the purpose of testing one has to assume the worse case at full voltage, because that is where the maximum distortion...

I stand corrected, thanks, yet I still don't get the input sensitivity issue. Normally a phono preamp, CD player, DAC, feeds the preamp at full amplitude voltage (2V for RCA and 4V for XLR). The volume pot of the preamp is an attenuator in this instance. In the case of the Freya+ the pot can...

The inputs at 2V / 4V are the standard for RCA and XLR output / inputs respectively. Those are the ranges, not the sensitivities. The figure that I attached from their website appeared to have been tested with balanced XLR at 1.000 Vrms. The tests from Amir are at full XLR (4V) levels. That...

The tube performance is much better in their reports than what Amir got here. Who knows? It could be they used different tubes during the testing. The picture of the review here appears to have the stock NOS tubes:

My house was built at around the same time, the furnace is in the basement and the duct works can be reached relatively easily (I think). However I do not see the gradients in temperature that you have, except for one room which was an addition done before I moved in but after the original...

I agree. I considered a heat pump about 10 years ago, but I live in the borderline region where we can have Winter highs around 10oF for 2 weeks in a row. Most people I know many in my town would not even consider a heat pump for that reason, but reducing your consumption of natural gas is the...