Starke Sound AD4.320 Amp Review (Sample 2)

[beantownT]

Please all - one request - post your feedback on the two RAVE reviews from two 'reputable' youtube reviewers

1) Jay's rave review of Stark ad4
2) Home Theater Fanatic - - sadly i bought the AD4 and the A8 based on his reviews

 

[audio_lover]

I'd like to see some measurements of the Starke Sound A2.640. It's already been noted in another review that despite Starke's claims the first 65 Watts are in Class A, the amplifier only consumes 64-69 Watts at idle. So we know that claim is also most likely BS.

And 640 Watts @4R per channel?

In comparison, my Parasound JC1’s consume 250W in idle with ‘only’ 25W in class A, each, as these are mono amps.

 

[whazzup]

Please all - one request - post your feedback on the two RAVE reviews from two 'reputable' youtube reviewers

1) Jay's rave review of Stark ad4
2) Home Theater Fanatic - - sadly i bought the AD4 and the A8 based on his reviews

I suppose they do not know Starke Sound has removed the AD4 product page and from their store?

 

[Rottmannash]

It was not always like that. In the heyday of hi-fi, you could get both cursory fact and (a little) opinion from Stereo Review and High Fidelity. Audio was quite in-depth in their tear-downs, and it was a sad day when they tanked. I think these in the mainstream press tended to keep manufacturers more honest than not. But once they left the building, it was pretty much over.

In England you had Hi Fi News. But they were outliers, and seldom seen or read, in the US.

The 'undergrounds' were never very helpful. Peter Moncrieff's IAR was certainly more technically oriented than whatever Gordon Holt or Harry Pearson was doing, but IAR didn't last long. With Peter Aczel's reincarnation, you had David Rich (and a few others) poking around, usually to the embarrassment of manufacturers. Rich occasionally still has something interesting and valuable to say over at the Hi-Fi Secrets site, but his work is scarce and, strangely, often focuses on outlier stuff, like phono cartridges, and refurbing open reel tape recorders. John Atkinson makes Stereophile important.

Today, as you say, no one does it like ASR, at least with any frequency and consistency. If ASR was not here, things would be very bad, in audioland.

Agree wholeheartedly. ASR gave me the confidence to purchase DAC's, amps, HP's and speakers w/o worry and stress, knowing their performance would be on an acceptable level. Spending money on audio has always been a stressful endeavor for me and Amir's reviews assured me I wouldn't plop down several thousand dollars for some speakers that wouldn't perform or satisfy.

 

[Dj7675]

I don’t understand what Stark is thinking here... it is like a blueprint of how not to do things..
-Provide inaccurate specs
-Provide bogus reasons for the issue
-Attempt to call into question the bench test, methods, and reviewer
-Not contact Amir to discuss the issues found
-Not correct the product description/specs and continue to sell under spec units
I do not know, but based on their actions so far, I would guess they are not contacting customers about their amps. The specs would suggest that they would be appropriate to use for mains ... but their actual performance would indicate that in many cases would not provide the needed power that the customer is expecting.
Don’t they understand that this calls into question their higher model specs? Don’t they understand that this can affect their other products?
If there ever was an example of why you shouldn’t trust subjective reviews, press releases/previews/ or even manufacturer specs with no bench tests to support their claims, this is it.

 

[nstzya]

Please all - one request - post your feedback on the two RAVE reviews from two 'reputable' youtube reviewers

1) Jay's rave review of Stark ad4
2) Home Theater Fanatic - - sadly i bought the AD4 and the A8 based on his reviews

@beantownT, I don’t remember - have you returned your AD4 for a refund? And if not, do you know that you are able to? Does any other dissatisfied owner know that Starke has stated a policy that they will refund any dissatisfied owner regardless of purchase date. I believe this covers return shipping as well. You may be able to plead a case to return the A8 as well.

 

[Chrispy]

Please all - one request - post your feedback on the two RAVE reviews from two 'reputable' youtube reviewers

1) Jay's rave review of Stark ad4
2) Home Theater Fanatic - - sadly i bought the AD4 and the A8 based on his reviews

LOL reputable.

 

[beantownT]

@beantownT, I don’t remember - have you returned your AD4 for a refund? And if not, do you know that you are able to? Does any other dissatisfied owner know that Starke has stated a policy that they will refund any dissatisfied owner regardless of purchase date. I believe this covers return shipping as well. You may be able to plead a case to return the A8 as well.

i haven not hear from them in a few weeks. I've shared the latest ASR report and all i have gotten are crickets!

 

[amirm]

I wonder what Audioholics is doing. They said they were to receive "fixed" version of this amp for measurement.

 

[nstzya]

From what I read there, they (AH) have not received a second unit and say Starke has gone silent. I imagine they (Starke) are circling wagons while they figure out how to proceed. To their credit, at least they have pulled the unit from further sale in the meantime.

 

[ROOSKIE]

Please all - one request - post your feedback on the two RAVE reviews from two 'reputable' youtube reviewers

1) Jay's rave review of Stark ad4
2) Home Theater Fanatic - - sadly i bought the AD4 and the A8 based on his reviews

While it is a bummer that they liked the sound and did not notice the power issues and stayed focused on marketing the product, this has nothing to do with them.
Watch YouTube reviews for fun only. If you buy based on a YouTube review or a What Hifi review or anything similar than that is on you.
No need or benefit in prosecuting those Tubers, maybe politely educate them?

I am sure the amp sounds perfectly fine and maybe even excellent and in many(most) cases the power difference with not be noticed. Obviously.

100% an issue with Starke due to false or clueless marketing and no one else.

 

[levimax]

I don’t understand what Stark is thinking here...

Saving money...

 

[nstzya]

While it is a bummer that they liked the sound and did not notice the power issues and stayed focused on marketing the product, this has nothing to do with them.
Watch YouTube reviews for fun only. If you buy based on a YouTube review or a What Hifi review or anything similar than that is on you.
No need or benefit in prosecuting those Tubers, maybe politely educate them?

I am sure the amp sounds perfectly fine and maybe even excellent and in many(most) cases the power difference with not be noticed. Obviously.

100% an issue with Starke due to false or clueless marketing and no one else.

I wouldn’t be so sure that these you-tubers are as blameless as you would allow them. Their subjective assessments of the amp‘s performance may be completely legit (regardless, how can you really argue with subjective opinions anyway??). But when I attempted to post a simple link to these reviews/measurements, the posts were all removed. Further, when others asked about ASR results, the responses were all variations of “so what, I still think it sounded great, and it got as loud as I wanted.” No disclaimers. And certainly no interruption of revenue producing links. Certainly don’t have their viewers best interests at heart. Not blameless.

But this site, https://www.audioarkitekts.com/

may be particularly worthy of your comments. He wrote in response to a post from @David Rojas expressing concern:

“ I bet most of those trolls on ASR wear tinfoil hats too lmao I have pushed that amp hard and it has never dissapointed. From a subjective standpoint it was a great experience. Once I see measurements from an actual professional mesurement company then and only then will I acknowledge the results. Amir is a joke dude.”

Get your tin hats, shields, and swords! Them‘s fightin’ werds!

(***Edit: One must click on sort “newest” to see many of these most recent posts. The default prioritizing of “top posts” tends to bury or push many of these most recent posts down the page. I see no rhyme or reason to what constitutes “top post” priority. Does anyone know?)

 

[voodooless]

“Amir is a joke dude.”

Yeah, Starke found this so funny that they totally removed every reference to the product from their site.

These people are just evil. It shows exactly that they do not care for the consumer. The consumer is not the customer here, the brands are.

 

[Chrispy]

I wonder what Audioholics is doing. They said they were to receive "fixed" version of this amp for measurement.

Gene mentioned they hadn't further on the amp from them, but did have a Starke speaker review that should be out soon.

 

[ROOSKIE]

I wouldn’t be so sure that these you-tubers are as blameless as you would allow them. Their subjective assessments of the amp‘s performance may be completely legit (regardless, how can you really argue with subjective opinions anyway??). But when I attempted to post a simple link to these reviews/measurements, the posts were all removed. Further, when others asked about ASR results, the responses were all variations of “so what, I still think it sounded great, and it got as loud as I wanted.” No disclaimers. And certainly no interruption of revenue producing links. Certainly don’t have their viewers best interests at heart. Not blameless.

But this site:

may be particularly worthy of your comments. He wrote in response to a post from @David Rojas expressing concern:

“ I bet most of those trolls on ASR wear tinfoil hats too lmao I have pushed that amp hard and it has never dissapointed. From a subjective standpoint it was a great experience. Once I see measurements from an actual professional mesurement company then and only then will I acknowledge the results. Amir is a joke dude.”

Get your tin hats, shields, and swords! Them‘s fightin’ werds!

(***Edit: also interesting is that one must click on sort “newest” to have any hope of seeing these posts. The default prioritizing - which one must assume is within the control of the reviewer - pushes all these most recent posts far down the page)

Yah, I feel yah but you are also proving my point.
Only a fool buys an amp based on a subjective YouTube review.
We have all been fooled in life and it sucks. If you got fooled once in audio, then don't get fooled twice. Youtubers have zero responsibility for anything about the product. They can straight up lie if they want, there is nothing fraudulent about it, it is completely entertainment.
Not that I appreciate that dude's comments, he sucks but that is part of his gig. He is an entertainer, like a comedian, or a actor or a magician or a newscaster.
In summary don't buy based of of YouTube reviews.
Wait for the ASR testing (and the few others who present some amount of quality measurements)

Now it is different if the company misrepresents their product - especially knowingly, that is fraud. However I see this all the fricken time. Even my beloved budget kings, the JBL 530's claim a 40k hrz frequency response right on the box. Ridiculous.

 

[Spocko]

I reviewed and measured the Starke Sound AD4.320 multichannel amplifier a few months ago. This is the measurements of a second sample kindly sent in by a member.
View attachment 180360

The first sample missed its power by a factor of two. Company disputed this and promised their own measurements that would show otherwise. This did not materialize. We did find out that the review sample received by Audioholics had similar power shortfall to my (new) sample. Explanation given through Audioholics was that a few samples had miswired power supplies rated for 240 instead of 120. This was puzzling as the unit has a switch for such selection internally. I have not heard of any new results by Audioholics but a member sent me his unit for measurement so let's see how it does.

Starke Sound AD4.320 Measurements (Sample #2)
I am only going to post abbreviated measurements to verify whether this sample is any different. Let's start with our dashboard:

View attachment 180362

While the nature of power supply noise and to small extend distortion spectrum is different, overall SINAD matches the same as the last unit. So at 5 watts into 4 ohm, the two units match. Key though is to see how much power we have. Let's start with 4 ohm:

View attachment 180363
Well, we have the same results and massive shortfall relative to 320 watt spec as I have copied into the graph from their website. Allowing for 1% distortion again produces similar results to sample 1:

View attachment 180364

Same story with 8 ohm:

View attachment 180365
64 watts vs specifications of 225 watts and I am only driving two channels instead of four they claim.

I decided to test just one channel to rule out power supply capacity issue:

View attachment 180366

We get a bit more power but still less than half of the company spec. So supply capacity is not an issue.

As to demystify power measurements, here is our dashboard again, this time measuring the unit with 160 watts out:
View attachment 180368

We easily see that the sinewave is clipping so the amplifier is beyond its capability.

Conclusions
As I think all of us predicted, this amplifier simply cannot produce its rated power. Somewhere from inception to what they are shipping, the design has changed to produce far less power. Customers sadly though, have been buying these amps thinking this amplifier produces 4 times 320 watts which it can't remotely do. Company needs to step up and be transparent about the issue here. Owners and I should not be saddled with continuing to spend money and resources to test their products. It only makes things worse for them.

I can't recommend buying this amplifier or any product from Starke Sound. You can't promise people one gallon of milk but put half as much in the jug....

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Seriously, this is an FTC complaint waiting to be filed and Starke needs to either fire its marketing department or its production team which failed to manufacture this amp to spec.

 

[Spocko]

I wouldn’t be so sure that these you-tubers are as blameless as you would allow them. Their subjective assessments of the amp‘s performance may be completely legit (regardless, how can you really argue with subjective opinions anyway??). But when I attempted to post a simple link to these reviews/measurements, the posts were all removed. Further, when others asked about ASR results, the responses were all variations of “so what, I still think it sounded great, and it got as loud as I wanted.” No disclaimers. And certainly no interruption of revenue producing links. Certainly don’t have their viewers best interests at heart. Not blameless.

But this site:

may be particularly worthy of your comments. He wrote in response to a post from @David Rojas expressing concern:

“ I bet most of those trolls on ASR wear tinfoil hats too lmao I have pushed that amp hard and it has never dissapointed. From a subjective standpoint it was a great experience. Once I see measurements from an actual professional mesurement company then and only then will I acknowledge the results. Amir is a joke dude.”

Get your tin hats, shields, and swords! Them‘s fightin’ werds!

(***Edit: One must click on sort “newest” to see many of these most recent posts. The default prioritizing of “top posts” tends to bury or push many of these most recent posts down the page. I see no rhyme or reason to what constitutes “top post” priority. Does anyone know?)

That response is unprofessional and sadly is an indictment against the rest of the YouTube review community, making us appear either like ignorant shills or patronizing snobs. On the other hand, the reality about reviewers is this - the number one reason why reviewers don't take measurements? It's time consuming and people question your competency if it doesn't line up with their expectations. After pouring one's heart and soul into taking measurements, analyzing and concluding, we then spend way too much time defending our measurements, and then second guessed when ANOTHER reviewer has different measurements - suddenly you have channel fans attacking each other. So a third reviewer throws up his hands and buys a Klippel only to be told: "you're not an actual professional measurement company - send it to the the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council ".

Since clearly one can't win as an objective reviewer, might as well save time and become a subjective reviewer. Either way you face the same attacks, but with the latter, you never have to "retake measurements", then compare it with the other reviewer, then double check to see if you have a faulty product, call the manufacturer, get a replacement, and DO IT F*!@#$ ALL OVER AGAIN, etc.

With subjective reviews, you simply respond: "You do you dude, I'm glad you like the sound! Sadly, my $10,000 professionally treated room just isn't a match for these speaker characteristics, but there's no wrong answer here since you love the sound." Or alternatively, "I can't believe you don't like the sound! But it's all good, I'm getting old and likely unable to hear the distortion in those measurements, but regardless, I'm just sharing my use case for those who may benefit from this insight." No measurements, no weekends wasted - why do you think I sent my Perlisten speakers to @hardisj and my Genelecs to @amirm for measurements? I can do my subjective review and defer all complaints to Erin or Amir! Same for TV reviews - I interview professional calibrators with experience measuring the TVs I'm reviewing, we talk about their opinions, pros & cons, and then afterwards I share my subjective reviews and explaining when I disagree with the measurements.

Have you seen Erin's recent rant about something similar?

 

[francisg]

I canceled my order around the holidays within a day of ordering it but only after I saw the test. Still lost $100 for their order cancellation which they would not refund. I'd stay away from Starke - even if they fixed this issue.

 

[KxDx]

I canceled my order around the holidays within a day of ordering it but only after I saw the test. Still lost $100 for their order cancellation which they would not refund. I'd stay away from Starke - even if they fixed this issue.

There’s no issue to fix. If they post honest specs (power per channel instead of “4 channel power”) then everyone who bought one based on misleading power specs will demand a refund.

If they just quietly discontinue the thing and pretend it never existed, those who are happy with it and believe in the promoters reviewers will continue to live with their head in the sand.