Thanks for the reply, It was an interesting read.
From what I gather if you are looking for receiver you want to find out what size caps it uses, then how big a Power supply it has. This is for the power amp side of the AVR.
For the Pre amp side it becomes harder to tell because they use smaller caps.
ok... So what Do I look for when narrowing down the search? What things do you look at when evaluating what receivers or Even Separate power Amps.
Thanks
Superfly
Hey, Good Morning Superfly.
I got some great mags at home, but the articles on them are not free from the Internet.
The writer's name is Richard Hardesty, and his articles on amplifiers and preamplifiers (Stereo or Surround Processors), covers many pages from a series of magazines. And you will find anything you need to know from these. The mag is called "Widescreen Review". It is one of the very best articles on these subjects, with various reviews of all type of components.
But, you can easily Google any type of words like "Power Amplifiers Technical Aspects", and "Surround Processors Internals and Explications"; or something similar to that, and you'll get all type of good info to give you a good education on what to really look for.
How's that? Fair enough?
*** Multichannel Power Amplifier:
1. Check the weight, heavy is good. Heavier is better.
2. Look for at least 250 or even 300 cubic inches of heat sinks per channel.
3. Look foir at least 20,000uF per channel. More is better.
4. Look for an extra oversized main power transformer, or two, or more. Look for at least 1KVA, or 1.5KVA. More is better. Toroidal (donuts shape) are best.
5. Look for neat cablings, short paths, lots of smaller caps, at least two per channel. More is better.
6. Look for good quality power transistors, more is better, 4, 6, or even 8 per channel. Good Op-Amps...
*** Surround Processor (or Mutichannel Preamplifier):
1. Look for a good power supply, with a good size transformer. Toroidals are best.
2. Look for good processing power: DSP chips (more is better), Dacs (best grades with Dual Differential Balanced mode are best, more is also better), neat cabling with the shortest signal paths, high grade resistors, high grade circuit boards, switches, relays, gold, silver, high purity copper, etc., etc., etc.
3. Look for all the type of connections you need, and good ergonomics.
These are the most basic aspects for what to look for.
Enjoy your day,
Bob
Psstt: If you have the chance, at night, very late at night, go to an airport, or to an airplane's cemetery, and climb inside the cockpit of a big airplane. Then, start dismantling the steel covers (don't forget to bring a good flashlight) that are parts of the instrumentation display panels (bring some tools with you), and look behind to see what kind of very nice parts they used. That'll give you a good idea for what to look for in an audio component. But don't tell anyone that I told you that. OK?
