OP
- Thread Starter
- #221
Not sure how anyone can get that data without spending time and effort collecting it.
I can only speak to my own personal experience and what I anecdotally see others share.
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After the hype of Chinese HiFi brands, what is the jury?
- Thread starter CleanSound
- Start date
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Not sure how anyone can get that data without spending time and effort collecting it.
I can only speak to my own personal experience and what I anecdotally see others share.
Freeway
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2021
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Might depend on how much you would charge to fix it. How much do you charge per hour? Do you make house calls?
Throwing out a $200.00 dac/amp or even 10 over a period time is rather insignificant.
How many repaired dacs would it take to make it audible?
With due respect.
Not disputing either, but there are online complaints about each and every audio brand. One effect of the online community stuff is that dissatisfied customers often dominate discussion/reviews. Oddly enough, my personal experience is that I never, not once, had an audio component fail in the late 80s/90s/early 2000s. Every component failure to me happened in the post 2010 era. Odd.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #224
To be fair, electronics got more complicated over the decades.
With newer amps they updated with volume ICs sometimes integrated with DSP tone controls and more protection relays sometimes too. CDs and other discs have tapered off I think and DACs are more integrated than ever so they should be less expensive and they are. Things like desktop computers and other more serious calculation devices are more sophisticated I think but they are less expensive. So I'm not so sure your statement holds water.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #226
Not sure if I understand. I guess my point is more complex has more failure points.
That's what I was driving at. Integration has sometimes reduced the amount of electronic parts by using the increasing sophistication/densification of chips/ICs. So in some ways there is less to go wrong and the designers can better integrate at levels that make for the improved accuracy that we presently have. So I don't see that things have increased in complexity and therefore reliability. If anything they have improved as is indicated by the inexpensive stuff we have in great quantity although the longevity seems to be reduced if customer testimonials are indicative of the situation.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #228
I see what you are saying. Yes, it's true IC can serve many functions in one chip. But if you open up a modern electronic, it's exponentially complex, even with ICs, there is still a lot more parts in there. Now I am referring to 70's and 80's compared to 2000's and up.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #229
Also, ICs does not do well with heat, causing higher failure rate.
Digital fundamentals was all done with discreet ICs so there was many of them in a device and they failed often that I saw. Now they are all done on one IC or maybe a couple but not across a entire PCB with dozens or more ICs. Discreet transistor circuitry was used for many applications and that has been integrated into ICs so there are less parts in many devices there too. I see less in most cases rather than more.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #231
I'm not necessarily saying it has to be the reason, but rather as a possibility. But for sure QA and QC is key.
Everything electronic does not do well with heat. It's the way they all are. The thermal runaway threshold does seem to have increased in some IC devices. Like PCs 85C was the limit, then 95C and now I read of 105C devices for thermal protection to engage. I've worked a lot with qualifying PICs (ICs) in a oven as they where tested dynamically for operation and failure and the best of them spec'd to a calibrated ~177C for resale and use in downhole tools.
I don't understand your comment.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #234
I'm saying my suggestion of complexity is an suggestion as to why newer electronics fail as per suggested by another member. I can't say for 100% that is the reason why.
But poor QA and QC is 100% a factor.
QA and QC used to be indicated by issues like bad soldering, bad grounds, bad parts selection for voltage amp/drivers, poor quality plastics etc but now those seem to have gone away and we have cheap parts to blame. Plastics seems to not really be a issue anymore like it once was. Not going to mention any names of victims but intellectual property theft is another issue that is occurring.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
The whole thing is a balancing act. I don't see why electronics should go to landfill, ever, though. The repair industry may need to catch up with manufacturing changes, In some cases recycling and re manufacturing may be a better option than repairing obsolescent technology. The same may apply where the device consists largely of those monolithic chips and that is what fails.
There are two big obstacles to overcome though. The first is that, for Western countries at least, the labour cost of repairing or locally recycling is massively higher than the labour component in making a replacement in an Asian factory. Energy costs are also hitting recycling hard at the moment, and in most countries the recycling industry is not fully up to the job.
The second is that companies don't consider repair of products, or consider it bad for different reasons. The Apple battery business is an example of that. Consider how it would be if a few dozen iPhones suddenly caught fire because third party cheap batteries had been fitted. By the time the media had finished, Apple's reputation would be much more tarnished than if they blocked the cheap batteries from being used. Apple did that calculation and it overrode all the other considerations, it seems.
Designing a device isn't enough any more. Devices have to come with lifecycle management: what happens when they break, what happens if firmware or software fails or needs updating, the likely "safe" length of use (so batteries, software security and privacy requirements, life of the technologies involved would need consideration): environmental cost of repair vs replacement. None of this should be the consumer's concern and it should be as easy for us as possible: if it's much harder than throwing it in the bin, then we know what will happen.
Environmental activism? Well, scientists are telling us about everything from climate change to pollution to waste of natural resources to the economic costs and more. If anyone wants to deny science on this forum, go ahead.
Repairing was the recycling and remanufacturing. Now the balance act considers repairs to be a liability and they are treated as such.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #238
Here, Topping PA5 2.
Amie's disclaimer on it's reliability. Granted he is saying amps in general. But I was about to get this as a replacement due to store credit. I no longer feel comfortable getting this.
Maybe it's not fair to feel this way, but this disclaimer does not give me confidence.
Amie's disclaimer on it's reliability. Granted he is saying amps in general. But I was about to get this as a replacement due to store credit. I no longer feel comfortable getting this.
Maybe it's not fair to feel this way, but this disclaimer does not give me confidence.
Amps in general are prone to faults. It's the nature of the heat producing beast and class D will not escape that because the designers are apparently minimizing heatsink clamping through cheapness of assembly. @amirm's comment was real and factual for the present climate.
Gentleman. Please try to remain civil and avoid bickering about topics that will drive this conversation into Political opinion and arguments. We all make/create posts that we later look back upon and wonder why we said something a certain way or just regret the post altogether. Hell, I seem to do this on a regular basis 
. We are all human (except possibly Amir, Restorer John and Brad) and we are going to put our proverbial “foot in mouth” sooner or later. Demonstrate some empathy and respect to your fellow ASR family members and give them the space and accommodation to walk back their past comments without the public “dragging though the mud”. This just sets up the Payback mentality and we get caught in the never ending cycle of “Get evenship” that rarely works out for all involved.
This topic was always going to be a “Tight Rope” conversation. So far, we have managed to make it close to 13 pages without the Pitchforks and Fire Brigade assistance. Can we please try to keep the conversation civil and respectful? We are all here for many reasons that bring us together and we all share the same values of what ASR is about. Remember we are probably more alike than we give credit. These side conversations are very educational and can be very constructive. We want to continue to encourage these types of discussions. We must all work together to avoid pulling the conversation into the black hole of Politics. The third rail of civil discourse.
Have your lively conversation and debate. But do so in a manner that permits the graceful retraction now and then and stay the heck away from the High Voltage Rail. We don’t want to have to come in here and try to decide who started it and who perpetrated it. Contrary to popular opinion, we your humble Moderation Team do not enjoy conflict and confrontation with our valued members. Dealing with runaway threads like this is possibly the worst part of our jobs. So do your resident Moderator a solid and use your deescalation skills and/or just don’t reply to a dig or a got ya comment. Rise above the fray and just let some stuff slide by without retort.
I’m done and I have a great amount of respect for the highly intelligent members participating in this conversation. I don’t want conflict or confrontation anymore than you do. Thank you for sticking with me through this overly long request. Let’s all work to keep the Moderators on the sidelines and free to play “Whack A Mole” with the daily influx of Spammers and Scammers.
….
. We are all human (except possibly Amir, Restorer John and Brad) and we are going to put our proverbial “foot in mouth” sooner or later. Demonstrate some empathy and respect to your fellow ASR family members and give them the space and accommodation to walk back their past comments without the public “dragging though the mud”. This just sets up the Payback mentality and we get caught in the never ending cycle of “Get evenship” that rarely works out for all involved.This topic was always going to be a “Tight Rope” conversation. So far, we have managed to make it close to 13 pages without the Pitchforks and Fire Brigade assistance. Can we please try to keep the conversation civil and respectful? We are all here for many reasons that bring us together and we all share the same values of what ASR is about. Remember we are probably more alike than we give credit. These side conversations are very educational and can be very constructive. We want to continue to encourage these types of discussions. We must all work together to avoid pulling the conversation into the black hole of Politics. The third rail of civil discourse.
Have your lively conversation and debate. But do so in a manner that permits the graceful retraction now and then and stay the heck away from the High Voltage Rail. We don’t want to have to come in here and try to decide who started it and who perpetrated it. Contrary to popular opinion, we your humble Moderation Team do not enjoy conflict and confrontation with our valued members. Dealing with runaway threads like this is possibly the worst part of our jobs. So do your resident Moderator a solid and use your deescalation skills and/or just don’t reply to a dig or a got ya comment. Rise above the fray and just let some stuff slide by without retort.
I’m done and I have a great amount of respect for the highly intelligent members participating in this conversation. I don’t want conflict or confrontation anymore than you do. Thank you for sticking with me through this overly long request. Let’s all work to keep the Moderators on the sidelines and free to play “Whack A Mole” with the daily influx of Spammers and Scammers.
….- Status
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