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24.25.18.58
In Reply to: Panasonic XR45 vs SimAudio W5/P5 combo posted by hifi@magma.ca on August 17, 2004 at 08:38:04:
in the latest Stereophile they show the insides of a Sim Audio CD player costing $2K. It appears to be a big rip off. Tiny little circuit board with tons empty space all encased with an impressive chassis. Where is the purchaser's money going towards? The chassis it seems....
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Follow Ups:
Dies are shrinking, pin count is way up, BGA's are everywhere. Circuit board sized from yesterday (like only a couple years ago) can be accomodated in just a few small highly integrated parts. I've seen a 10 million gate Altera device with 1152 BGA pins suck in a board that used to take up two full size EISA boards with even more functionality. It's the excellence of the sound resulting from superior design that counts. Often times less parts equals better sound anyway.
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while we are on the subject of semiconductor, I will chime in a little.Yes, gates are shrinking and metal 1 pitch continues to shrink below 200nm mark for 65nm node. But fact of life is except in digital processing, high end audio is about discrete parts and discrete parts take space, lots of it.
You can pack 7.1 into a small receivers like those in Good guys, but you can't even fit a volume control, a dedicate analog board, digital board, display board, separate power supply, dual mono, high storage caps, big transformer, etc (I think you get the point) into a small space.
So you judge a component's sound quality by the size of its circuit boards?I don't know whether the $2K Equinox is any good or not, but the $3K Nova impressed me a lot and it has a pretty basic layout too (see link below).
Dave
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you typically see these empty spaces in mass market stuff, not a $2000 player. A lot of money went into the chassis and very little into the actual components that pass audio signals... 8=)
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What does the size of the board have to do with the quality of the components on it or the quality of the circuit design?Seriously, if audio components were priced according to how much "stuff" was packed inside the case, mass market A/V receivers would be the big ticket items and you'd be able to buy tube amps at Wal-Mart.
Most of the high-end stuff I have modded has lots of empty space inside. It's the Sony's and Panasonics that are packed full.
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