Wish I had this kind of money ...

[BusinessEvolution]

It's not the first time I've seen something like this, either. Someone else might have links to one of the previous funtime Head-Fi overpriced overhauls.

you must be thinking of singlepower

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=70321.0

That's the one. Oh, what sitcom hilarity that was. IRRC, the pushback on that showed what a shill factory that place had descended to. Just as well that the two builders involved weren't sponsors, otherwise the members' ban stick would have copped a pasting.

Yeah textbook electrically compromised rats nest design. I seriously think that boutique and amateur sound equipment manufacturers who are proponents of point to point wiring designs are just trying to cheap out on costs. I am an amateur and I know how dodgy that kind of design is. Not very professional to use it outside of prototyping, as access to quality pcb production is not that difficult to find. You can produce the boards yourself at home with the right setup *cough* and improper disposal of etchant */cough*.

Got to love that audiophile sound:





EDIT: Reading more about the Single power amps, their simpler designs worked well. Which as I said before, the problem is when designs get complicated and people still use wire to wire designs.

[dingostolemyipod]

Yeah textbook electrically compromised rats nest design. I seriously think that boutique and amateur sound equipment manufacturers who are proponents of point to point wiring designs are just trying to cheap out on costs. I am an amateur and I know how dodgy that kind of design is. Not very professional to use it outside of prototyping, as access to quality pcb production is not that difficult to find. You can produce the boards yourself at home with the right setup *cough* and improper disposal of etchant */cough*.

There's nothing wrong with PTP wired circuits.
The problem with an messy dodged up point to point job is the dickhead who put it together.

[BusinessEvolution]

There's nothing wrong with PTP wired circuits.
The problem with an messy dodged up point to point job is the dickhead who put it together.

Optimally designed PTP wired circuits are far harder to deal with as designs get more complicated than optimally designed PCB circuits. On the plus side, PTP can be easier to fix.

In simpler designs, PTP can be fantastic, but maintaining wire separation, length minimization, and reducing contact points gets difficult. To maximise the effectiveness, you try to avoid running touching cables in parallel and you have capacitors and other components in series, you have to think about the design very well. If you look how they cleaned up the wires, they have longer segments running together in parallel adding phantom capacitance which would exceed that of PCB, but is much neater and no longer a fire hazard.

It would almost be art to properly optimise and layout a PTP complicated AMP/DAC design. XD. If the case was a material that didn't conduct you can glue components in place to maintain wire arrangement, and you could use insulated wire separators to keep wires at right angles if they had to cross. Though ultimately I am not sure what the point would be as its easier to achieve economies of scale with a good pcb design.

[BusinessEvolution]

Hmmm reading up on optimising PTP audio designs. The maths involved starts to get very difficult, though if you had the brains and the time you could in fact do it. Also looked at optimising PCB design in audio, its easier to do but it goes against my own design principles. You have to avoid the urge to minimise the board design and avoid basing the layout on easy of construction alone, somewhat the opposite of what you'd try to do with a pcb design.

>.> bit depressing but reading the theory and maths, I pretty much doubt most PTP and PCB designs for audio equipment are optimised at the level that PTP would make a difference compared to PCB. 100% optimised PTP will beat 100% optimized PCB, the complexity to achieve that is very difficult in remotely complex designs. It would also make production very expensive/slow unless you were very smart or had enough time on your hands.

Basically most PTP layouts suck to the extent that good PCB designs are superior. I think PTP in most audio equipment is the most dangerous kind of snake oil, eg based on actual measurable differences but implemented terribly/lazily to make money

Etchant story:
Colleagues: We tipped the etchant out safely, cause it was too expensive to dispose of otherwise
Me: How do you tip out concentrated ammonia peroxide safely?
Colleagues: We tipped it out over the fence so it would neutralize before contaminating the ground
Me: LoL; that will just etch the fence, probably better for the grass though

[grev]

I like where this is going - time to start spreading the buzz about the all-new [url]Headphonic[/url] DAC/amp ! Designed in-house by a team of craftsmen with combined experience spanning over 50 years ! Unmeasurable jitter from this ''black box' system !

More like 200 years, armirite?

BTW, looked at those hilarious photos, I'm still laughing.

[dc]

wow, very much like another singlepower story!