Apollon Hypex NC2K Amplifier Teardown

[andreasmaaan]

Is it normal for electronics manufacturers to publish this kind of data?

I have seen it of course for things like caps, resistors, etc etc. But for whole amplifiers? Which other amplifier manufacturers publish these data?

EDIT: not saying others shouldn't btw. It would be great if more did.

 

[DS23MAN]

It isn't, these these test are confidential and ordered by a client.

 

[amirm]

Is it normal for electronics manufacturers to publish this kind of data?

I have seen it of course for things like caps, resistors, etc etc. But for whole amplifiers? Which other amplifier manufacturers publish these data?

EDIT: not saying others shouldn't btw.

It is not common but then it won't help answer our concerns here.

 

[Billy Budapest]

I have to add something. Looking at the Apollon Purifi Mini stereo amps, and especially the March stereo Purifi amp, the prices are barely higher than a DIY Purify build. This is beyond commendable and makes DIY not worth it for me.

So the point is that with the Apollon amps, you are getting a ton of added value for a little bit of money. These could be the best audio bargains around—top flight performance for just a little increase over BOM. It’s not somewhere I would have anticipated the audio industry going just a few years ago.

 

[amirm]

A little story....

When I worked for Sony we were building high end workstations. Went to Sony power supply division and asked them to build us a power supply. They studied it and came back with an internal cost of $250. I explained to them that I could buy the same supply for $50 at Fry's in US (large computer store chain). They got disgusted and said they had no interest in building such low cost/quality power supplies.

The procurement person at Sony sympathized with me that we could not be competitive paying $250 for a power supply. So they referred us to a major PS company in Taiwan to source them. That company came back and said we could build you that power supply for $40. I said great, we are done. They said no, Sony will not accept them. They said the version that Sony would accept would be $60 but that they make the same power supply for IBM for $50. I asked what was the difference. He said Sony required that all power supplies go through 24 hour burn-in and failures taken out. IBM did not.

Question here is what standard we want to see. The $40, $50 or $60. Not asking for $250 version. But personally I like to see the $60 option.

 

[John1959]

The Apollon amp is great.

Hypex have been around a lot longer than 10years, the UCD rage of class D amps have been around for 15 years and its the ncore that have been around for 10 years. Thing is its not really niche, they have been used by many major manufacturers in many products, and of course us smaller ones.

I even have here in my living room a DIY subwoofer with a Hypex HS200 180W/8ohm plate amp (around year 2000 or so). That was before the UcD era so probably class AB. Don't know the brand of the caps but the amp is still in good working condition. I use it for the subwoofer for my digital piano these days.

 

[Jinjuku]

We are not worried about reliability during warranty period. We are worried about the period after that. If Hypex had some accelerated life testing, we would have something to chew on. I suspect they are not nearly big enough to conduct such tests.

When I was at Sony, they would take random products out of assembly line and put them in room with elevated temps to find failure rates. And failure points. Without such measures, they are hoping the devices last but have no way of knowing.

I've a friend at Samsung>Harman> that oversees the Xray line. All PCB's with their serial # get scanned and then X-Ray photographed. prior to assembly. If there is an in warranty return this is one of the pieces of information they can potentially use to trouble shoot the fault.

 

[Jinjuku]

By your standard consumer could never talk about any potential reliability issues in any products.

I was shopping a few years ago for a cargo van for work. Looked at Ford Transit. Did some research and saw people raising concerns about a flexible coupler used to reduce engine vibration transmission to the chassis. Posters contented that this would be a failure point. Some protested like you saying the same was used in BMW cars and there were no issues with them.

Fast forward a few days later and I am at the dealer looking at their new Transits. I see this odd sticker on a bunch of these saying "not to be sold." I go and do some research and find this:

View attachment 89382

As a result, Ford had instructed their dealers to not sell any new products on the lot until they had fixed this. And due to shortage of parts, they could not do this repair quickly.

Bottom line, we have the wisdom of repair and engineering community on what could be weak points in a design. Absence of any reliability data from the manufacturer available to us, this is all we have to go by. Company should be aware that in this day and age, such analysis will occur. And some sales lost as a result of it. They can either use better quality parts, or present us hard data to show the current parts are fine. Better yet, provide a warranty that this part will not be a failure point for a much longer period than the standard warranty. Emission control devices in cars in US have such extended warranty for example (by law I believe).

In no way is it proper to ask for such discussions to not occur. We as a forum are a consumer protection entity, not manufacturer. Any beef you have with us in this regard, is a beef you have with our entire mission.

Personally I remember being shocked the first time I did a teardown on Hypex amp (NC400) and finding these lower grade caps. I consider these amps the best of the best in technical performance. I like to see best of the best in part selection. While it is easy for us to see choices made in capacitors, what have they done in selection of others?

What consumer audio companies do this. Is there some sort of directory one can look at?

 

[Jinjuku]

It is not common but then it won't help answer our concerns here.

So we don't have to dwell on a single product right?

 

[DonH56]

Reminds me of decades ago when the store I worked had a run of bad products in for repair and the owner asked me to look into the longevity of some of the brands we carried or might carry (a long list). I sent out letters, natch, and got responses back in varying degrees. I do not remember them all, and probably misremember some, but as I recall for amplifiers and speakers ARC did not, B&W did (extensively -- a "book" with data for the drivers, crossovers, and cabinets individually and then as a system), Crown did, don't remember Krell, Infinity did, Mark Levinson did not, I think Phase Linear actually did but it was a single plot, Quad did, etc. The ones who did not provide any sort of MTBF or lifetime data invariably sent a form letter touting their reliability and pointing to their warranty and reputation. Some of them had a much better view of their reputation for reliability than I did from my own experience and hearing from fellow techs...

 

[March Audio]

The wider market has no interest in these types of products and at these prices. So let's not get into that.

No you have taken that comment out of context. You have already seen people in this thread say how expensive they think the Apollon is.

Do you think people looking at Hypex based designs want to pay 5 times the price to offer a 20 year warranty like Bryston products shown above?

Hypex based amps are actually at the lower/lowest end of the price range for the performance offered.

 

[March Audio]

By your standard consumer could never talk about any potential reliability issues in any products.

I was shopping a few years ago for a cargo van for work. Looked at Ford Transit. Did some research and saw people raising concerns about a flexible coupler used to reduce engine vibration transmission to the chassis. Posters contented that this would be a failure point. Some protested like you saying the same was used in BMW cars and there were no issues with them.

Fast forward a few days later and I am at the dealer looking at their new Transits. I see this odd sticker on a bunch of these saying "not to be sold." I go and do some research and find this:

View attachment 89382

As a result, Ford had instructed their dealers to not sell any new products on the lot until they had fixed this. And due to shortage of parts, they could not do this repair quickly.

Bottom line, we have the wisdom of repair and engineering community on what could be weak points in a design. Absence of any reliability data from the manufacturer available to us, this is all we have to go by. Company should be aware that in this day and age, such analysis will occur. And some sales lost as a result of it. They can either use better quality parts, or present us hard data to show the current parts are fine. Better yet, provide a warranty that this part will not be a failure point for a much longer period than the standard warranty. Emission control devices in cars in US have such extended warranty for example (by law I believe).

In no way is it proper to ask for such discussions to not occur. We as a forum are a consumer protection entity, not manufacturer. Any beef you have with us in this regard, is a beef you have with our entire mission.

Personally I remember being shocked the first time I did a teardown on Hypex amp (NC400) and finding these lower grade caps. I consider these amps the best of the best in technical performance. I like to see best of the best in part selection. While it is easy for us to see choices made in capacitors, what have they done in selection of others?

Not at all Amir. That's a misrepresentation and I am extremely surprised at you.

I suggest you re read my comments throughout the thread. My point all along is that I want John to show us the alleged reliability problems. To show what the consumers have been saying. To show us where there been complaints. I repeatedly asked him to do so.

Of course there would be issues appearing and noted in the public domain if there was some kind of fundamental problem by now. Especially so considering the nature of the product where it ends up in diy implementations with a large community of "technical" users on the net. You bet they would be complaining if they saw problems. Equally the non technical users are very often forum users/contributors. So its not really credible to think that any issues would remain hidden.

It should have been abundantly clear to you all along that I have not wanted this topic or John censored. Quite the contrary. I just want him to be held to the same standard of evidence that this forum expects from any other poster on any other topic.

Thomas has on a number of occasions stopped unproductive posters where the individual has offered no evidence yet kept repeating claims.

So the worst that can be said is these caps might not last quite as long as the far more expensive premium brands, based on the available product performance data. You have no data to draw any further conclusion.

Yes or no?

Instead John has been trying his level best to say there's a fundamental reliability and longevity issue. Without one shred of evidence to support it.

You bet I object to that, from a business point of view, but also very much from the perspective of this forums clear intent and objectives.

As an aside, earlier did you not show your extremely expensive Mark Levinson dac with a blown premium brand cap. From that are we now going to conclude that Mark Levinson make unreliable products? Its actually 100% more evidence than has been provided by John on this subject regarding Hypex.

Yes or no?

 

[March Audio]

.

Bottom line, we have the wisdom of repair and engineering community on what could be weak points in a design. Absence of any reliability data from the manufacturer available to us, this is all we have to go by. Company should be aware that in this day and age, such analysis will occur. And some sales lost as a result of it. others?

Ok, let's discuss the wisdom of the repair community. Here are the comments of one of them from earlier in the thread.

As a veteran of the audio repair business, I feel qualified to remind everyone involved in the endless cap quality debate that repair folks see only a small fraction of the gear in use, and for every significant failure due to a cap or caps going bad, there may well be hundreds or even thousands of the same model that provide decades of trouble-free service with exactly the same cap or caps.

I'm reminded of the American TV shrink, "Doctor Drew," who sees dire danger in marijuana use -- which make sense from his point of view, because as a specialist in treating folks with substance-related problems, he sees a vastly disproportionate number of people for whom marijuana use is seriously problematic even if for the most part folks who so indulge are probably no more dysfunctional than their counterparts who drink a beer or a martini when they get home from work.

Moreover, the repair tech generally doesn't know how the gear s/he rescues has been (ab)used -- e.g. whether it's been left powered up 24/7/365 and/or tightly stacked with other gear resulting in significantly higher operating temperatures.

Is this in any way contentious? Do you disagree with the points made?

Yes or no?

We have a situation here where John has extrapolated his extremely limited experience of different caps in different products in different designs operating under different conditions to categorically indicate there is a problem with reliability and longevity in the Hypex design.

That's nonsense and you know it.

Out of the quantity of various products out in the field (literally millions, probably 100s of millions) what percentage of them has John serviced? Do you think that number is of any statistical significance?

Yes or no?

Another simple question for you. Do you believe Johns opinion based on the above tells us the MTBF of the Hypex products?

Yes or no?

 

[restorer-john]

Alan, the problem as I see it is the following. You are vigorously defending a position where one of your suppliers (Hypex) is using third tier components from a low cost manufacturer in a range of products touted as "State of the Art", premium, exceptional etc.

There is a fundamental discord between what they say, and what they do:

The purposes of these teardown threads is to hold manufacturers, and by extension, their suppliers, to account by exposing any, and all sins, for the readership to view and comment upon.

You cannot convince anyone here with a knowledge and experience with SMPSs or amplifiers that inexpensive, third tier capacitors, are anything other than a bad choice for long term reliability. Be that mains side rectification or secondary side filtering.

Perhaps our friends at Su'scon have improved their processes and quality. They have been in business for around 40 years and I have written to their head office in Taiwan to ascertain exactly what they have done to address their reliability issues, particularly in HV mains rectification/SMPS applications where I would see huge numbers of failures in the recent past. Their aluminium electrolytic capacitor production is now coming out of China, Dong Guan City.

Hopefully they will reply with something other than a standard response and I'll happily post their response or the lack thereof, in this thread.

 

[amirm]

Do you think people looking at Hypex based designs want to pay 5 times the price to offer a 20 year warranty like Bryston products shown above?

Bryston doesn't sell direct. It goes through dealers and possibly distributors. Customer direct pricing would be less than half I would imagine. And they don't just give you 20 year warranty. They will repair and refurbish any of their products, no questions asked.

That aside, I didn't ask you to provide extended warranty. I asked that products be built with better material if it is us that has to take the risk of long term reliability. To the extent you show us the hand, then I ask that you/Hypex stand by that assertion and give us extended warranty for any failures related to the capacitors. If it is true that these work reliably for 10+ years, then the cost to them is minimal.

 

[amirm]

Ok, let's discuss the wisdom of the repair community. Here are the comments of one of them from earlier in the thread.

As a veteran of the audio repair business, I feel qualified to remind everyone involved in the endless cap quality debate that repair folks see only a small fraction of the gear in use, and for every significant failure due to a cap or caps going bad, there may well be hundreds or even thousands of the same model that provide decades of trouble-free service with exactly the same cap or caps.

I'm reminded of the American TV shrink, "Doctor Drew," who sees dire danger in marijuana use -- which make sense from his point of view, because as a specialist in treating folks with substance-related problems, he sees a vastly disproportionate number of people for whom marijuana use is seriously problematic even if for the most part folks who so indulge are probably no more dysfunctional than their counterparts who drink a beer or a martini when they get home from work.

Moreover, the repair tech generally doesn't know how the gear s/he rescues has been (ab)used -- e.g. whether it's been left powered up 24/7/365 and/or tightly stacked with other gear resulting in significantly higher operating temperatures.

Is this in any way contentious? Do you disagree with the points made?

Yes or no?

He expresses truisms but doesn't deal with the situation at hand. I used to repair electronics myself while going to college. I repaired hundreds if not thousands of products. Amplifier repair was my main specialty. With some products I could tell you the failure point before even taking the top off. Same faulty part would go bad in all of them. This had nothing to do with how the product was used. Some percentage of these parts would just go bad and clearly this was due to faulty selection of part. No way would I blame this on the customer or how he used it. I am sure the poster above had run into this. And we had Apollon express certain failures in some MP hypex modules.

Even if the customer abuses a product, you want it to last and not fail during warranty period because then it becomes your problem. With you selling products out of Australia, cost of warranty for out of country must be huge. Can't tell how how common it is for people to put gear in hot cabinets or stack them up and cook them. So the ambient temp is not what you are dealing with.

 

[stunta]

For reference from https://www.hypex.nl/p/warranty-and-repair/

(Bolding mine)

Hypex Electronics warrants devices for a period of two years (B2C) after the original date of purchase against defects due to faulty workmanship or materials arising from normal use of the device. Business to business warranty is limited to one year (B2B). The warranty covers working parts that affect the function of the device.
It does NOT cover cosmetic deterioration caused by fair wear and tear, or damage caused by accident, misuse
or neglect. Any attempt to modify or take apart the device (or its accessories) will void the warranty.

In addition, repair service can be requested for products out of warranty period and not older than 5 years,
provided that the product is still in our product range. Repair costs must be paid before the repaired product
is returned. To request repair service for a legacy product, please contact [email protected].

 

[amirm]

We have a situation here where John has extrapolated his extremely limited experience of different caps in different products in different designs operating under different conditions to categorically indicate there is a problem with reliability and longevity in the Hypex design.

That's nonsense and you know it.

Oh on the contrary. He not only has broad, relevant experience with it, so do I. Remember my power supply story while at Sony? We evaluated a bunch of brands and my senior design engineers who qualified them, would always, always look at the capacitor quality and how close they were to heat source. And manufacturer would always agree with us and offer higher priced units with better designs.

It is not like these caps are some unique part that only Hypex uses them. They are common components in countless other products and failures there, read on potential reliability in this application.

Can we predict that these power supplies fail in 8.25 years? No. Our data is far more general than that. We just know that sleep less easy when the part quality is not what we like to see.

 

[amirm]

For reference from https://www.hypex.nl/p/warranty-and-repair/

(Bolding mine)

Wow! They only stand behind the product for 5 years???

 

[March Audio]

Bryston doesn't sell direct. It goes through dealers and possibly distributors. Customer direct pricing would be less than half I would imagine. And they don't just give you 20 year warranty. They will repair and refurbish any of their products, no questions asked.

That aside, I didn't ask you to provide extended warranty. I asked that products be built with better material if it is us that has to take the risk of long term reliability. To the extent you show us the hand, then I ask that you/Hypex stand by that assertion and give us extended warranty for any failures related to the capacitors. If it is true that these work reliably for 10+ years, then the cost to them is minimal.

You dont know that Amir, thats wild speculation. Come on, you are better than that They would absolutely try to maintain the highest possible margin.

You havent demonstrated what the risks are.

Apart from Bryston, who charge a massive premium, who else does this?