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Nottagorilla
65
Oct 4, 2020
Locked
Another "drop"-ped ball from the Screwups at THX... Sure, dropping a few *mostly* unnecessary/frivolous features like XLR inputs is fine with me. Somewhat less impressed with the loss of the 4-pin XLR output. I think "drop"-ping the Pre-Out feature/section should have been done instead? I don't have any $5000 headphones with -0db/kW efficiency, & as much as I like Abyss 1266's & HiPriceMan Susvara's & HE1000's I have no intention of ever buying any. My Drop ESP95x/Koss ESP950's clobber them anyway (& at less than 1/10th the price, HAHAHAHA!). But if I did have those cans, I wouldn't be worried about saving $150 over the AAA789 amp anyway! I have 2 big problems with the performance of this model vs. the AAA789, & a single BIG problem with THX themselves... Regarding THX & Drop, I'm REALLY annoyed with this nonsense with the constant "available in 3/4/6 months, send us your money/pre-order now & hurry up & wait!" Sorry guys, this product just isn't THAT special! Maybe THX should try to make more than 1 per day so they can keep up with demand? And then there are the performance issues. Being a TechnoDweeb-driven company, the question for music lovers is: If distortion & noise are reduced to 0.00000000%, will I actually hear better sound? Spending less on a simpler model gives a more economical way to answer that question, IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY BUY ONE!!! Being a TechnoDweeb-driven company, specs are EVERYTHING, right? So whilst I'm glad that THX provides a goodly amount of them, their presentation to us here is a confused MESS. Throw a bunch of point zero zeros at us & hope all the bull**** baffles our brains? And sifting through them...expressing crosstalk in percentage, REALLY??? NOBODY does that! So, WHO CARES. -93db gets the point across better! Distortion specs are thrown at us in such confusing & confused profusion, all seemingly in the service of disguising: 1) Noticeably poorer THD specs than the AAA789, even if the numbers are still otherwise vanishingly low. But I think I'd rather pay the extra $150 for the truly mind-bending numbers of the AAA789... 2) Also noticing the amp stage is quite inferior, & not just the obvious "drop" in power output. The "drop" in power from 32Ω to 16Ω makes this amp far less suitable to driving actual speakers (which application surprised the designer of the 789 when I spoke with him in a chance encounter at my audio store), another reason to avoid this model to save a trivial amount of money...IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY GET ONE. 3) The preamp specs are all for a 600Ω load. Who the heck makes a home audio component with such a ridiculously low input impedance? Does THD "drop" much into more representative i/p Z like 10,000Ω or even 100,000Ω? 4) Here's the elephant in the room: A quoted input impedance for this mess as a shockingly inappropriate 1000Ω!!!! I hope this is a typo! Anything less than 50,000Ω will cause some increase in distortion from the source component trying to develop voltage into an amplifier. AUDIBLE distortion, techo-dweebs! I otherwise suspect that this *was* done quite on purpose: At the end of the day, yer typical dead-eared technodweeb doesn't care what they design actually sounds like. They can't hear, so they buy a $30,000 Audio Precision SYS2722 test set & go off on a pointless numbers race! To get the BULL**** 140+db S/N ratio (based here on the ratio from 10% BRUTAL HARD CLIPPING MAX OUT to a virtually shorted input impedance...ALL HIGHLY UNREALISTIC BORDERING ON FRAUDULENT!), clearly the lowest possible input impedance will lower airborne/ambient EMI & RFI noises. But this comes at the expense of introducing audible distortion from DAC's & other source components which are designed for a bare-minimum of 20kΩ input Z! Default industry standard for solid-state designs is 50kΩ...GET WITH THE PROGRAM, DWEEBS! 5) There is a fix for the ridiculous i/p Z: put a 50,000Ω in series with each channel. Hardly convenient, & unless the resistors are installed right inside the amp noise pickup susceptibility will be HUGELY increased (worse!). But even done properly, just the thermal/"Johnson" noise will knock a good 20?30?40db? off the pretty pretty bogus S/N ratio. At least by alternately quoting the S/N ratio in microvolts (0.95uV with shorted input, volume control set to minimum. Also unrealistic, but at least it's the industry standard, so useful for direct comparison at least...), we can see that the ACTUAL s/n ratio is merely good, but not "great" as is otherwise fraudulently implied. But here's the thing: The gain choices on offer here are CRAP! 12db (x4) maximum??? UTTERLY insufficient except with the most ridiculously sensitive cans fed from a REALLY hot DAC. I have a shitty wooden Grado RA-1 with the same default gain, & it won't go loud enough with my particular Sandisk MP3 player turned up to its' max output. And my other two gain choices are 0db (x1, aka "unity gain") and...wait for it...-12db (minus x4, or 75% attenuation) when I don't even have enough gain at the maximum setting??? Why even include a gain knob at all??? More savings could have been achieved! But the greatest savings here will be from me not buying into ANY of this CRAP at all. I think this amp was deliberately designed to force you to order a AAA789 instead. IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY BUY ONE.
(Edited)
NottagorillaMr. Nottagorilla, what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this discussion is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
(Edited)
Interceptor69
94
Oct 27, 2020
NottagorillaPretty sure one can't have an XLR plug without the amp being balanced.
Nottagorilla
65
Oct 28, 2020
ElectronicVicesYou're voting for Trump, aren't you?
NottagorillaLOL, no and you obviously have never seen Billy Madison.
PoachedToast
44
Nov 3, 2020
ElectronicVicesbro chill i think u killed him
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