Does anyone care to ask an amplifier designer a technical question? My door is open.


I closed the cable and fuse thread because the trolls were making a mess of things. I hope they dont find me here.

I design Tube and Solid State power amps and preamps for Music Reference. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, have trained my ears keenly to hear frequency response differences, distortion and pretty good at guessing SPL. Ive spent 40 years doing that as a tech, store owner, and designer.
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Perhaps someone would like to ask a question about how one designs a successfull amplifier? What determines damping factor and what damping factor does besides damping the woofer. There is an entirely different, I feel better way to look at damping and call it Regulation , which is 1/damping.

I like to tell true stories of my experience with others in this industry.

I have started a school which you can visit at http://berkeleyhifischool.com/ There you can see some of my presentations.

On YouTube go to the Music Reference channel to see how to design and build your own tube linestage. The series has over 200,000 views. You have to hit the video tab to see all.

I am not here to advertise for MR. Soon I will be making and posting more videos on YouTube. I don’t make any money off the videos, I just want to share knowledge and I hope others will share knowledge. Asking a good question is actually a display of your knowledge because you know enough to formulate a decent question.

Starting in January I plan to make these videos and post them on the HiFi school site and hosted on a new YouTube channel belonging to the school.


ramtubes

Showing 2 responses by stfoth

Hello, RM!  You mentioned the recent measurements of the Cary SLI100.  Reminds me a bit of one a few years back on the 300SEI.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/cary-audio-design-cad-300sei-integrated-amplifier-page-3

That's something of a sort of classic amp with quite a few fans.

Compound question.

Your thoughts on Dennis Had and legacy Cary gear?

Your thoughts on the disparity between the measurements and folks who say things like that in the subjective review?

Thank you.
RM, thank you for taking the time for this discussion.  It's really, really refreshing.

Turning back to my prior question about your thoughts on Dennis Had and his legacy Cary gear...sorry to bother if you are not familiar (https://www.caryaudio.com/products/).  I suppose items like CAD-805, CAD-211, CAD120S, SLI80 (precursor to the one that was just reviewed), V12r, SLM100, 500MB, CAD1610, etc.  Some links, if interested.

https://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/1200cary/index.html
https://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/601cary/index.html
https://www.stereophile.com/content/cary-audio-design-cad-805-monoblock-power-amplifier-measurements

You asked that I clarify a question about your thoughts on how there can be such glowing subjective professional reviews when the measurements are so objectively bad.  For example, the 300SEI I mentioned measured poorly, but many folks, including professionals, love it.  I suspect some folks will love the SLI100.  I was just curious about your thoughts on how or why something might sound "good" but measure like crap.  Not limited to Cary gear...just using that because we have two examples in the thread.

Thank you.