Originally Posted by Zanth
Agreed. It comes down to parts selection etc. If John and John (the engineer) sat down for 10 days, 8 hours a day to listen to various parts to figure out what sounded best and to meet a certain price point, and their hourly rate is say...$100/hour? Does that sound fair? Maybe higher maybe lower, but for argument's sake, let's say 100 (the time is also likely far lower so it can even out but whatever) then that would be 160 man hours x 100, or $16k worth of R&D. Now, that may seem large for some, tiny for others, but it is still $16k that went into finding what worked best. If someone wants to invest their own time to figure it all out and then produce an amp then fine, but cloning for profit (and cloning a product so many crap on) was and is heinous. I don't blame him one bit for being po'd. Now then, we have Ray Samuels who disguises his opamp numbers and or removes the numbers outright so that this same thing can't happen. Other folks pot their designs like the RA-1 etc. Manufacturers need to protect their work, even if the circuit is well known, obviously parts selection comes into play.
Look at the Ear HP4. This amp retails for 4k thereabouts. $4k!!! Now, opening up the amp one sees excellent workmanship, superb layout, an excellent circuit implemented to near perfection with a hand-made transformer, specifically designed for the application..BUT the rest of the parts are plain jane. Yet, this amp is often said to be among the best in the world. Obviously with budget parts inside and the capacity to sound incredible against amps with premium parts, one pays a hefty sum for the circuit (in this case which was novel), the transformer (which is custom made) and the expertise of the designer, for (in this case) Tim's excellent ear. The same goes for John who in the end voices his gear with his ear.
Cloning for profit just plain sucks and I hate when I see it. It is policy here on Head-fi to delete threads promoting cloning for profit, a policy I wish did not have to exist because people would do their own leg work and discover somethign for themselves.
I dont agree, no matter what, its still about $20~$30 worth of parts in a wood box... what he charges for it is totally his decision, and if people pay it, then hey, more power to him... good for him... that is not my problem... and i know that many manufacturers go to great lengths to obfuscate their product designs... i remember the drama when gilmore called ray's hornet nothing better than a cmoy etc... I know the hornet sounds good, and i know the RA-1 sounds allright... but that is not what i was argueing... and i agree that there are MANY audio products out there which are grossly overpriced... which is why I build all my own AMPs and such... anyhow that also is not part of my problem with the interview statements...
my problem is he is claiming that he is offended that people have stolen "his" "design" which is the same is the same "design" that is almost exactly the same as every single op-amp data sheet from every single manufacturer... and every analog circuit design text-book since op-amps came into existance... so i dont see how he can take claim to the "RA-1" design when if you look at the design it is EXACTLY (and i dont mean close, i mean exactly) the same topology as one from Chu Moy's original article on headwise?
I do agree that selling an amp as an "RA-1 Clone" is wrong, and probably illegal, since you are infringing on the Grado copyright... but claiming that people "cloning" the RA-1 for personal use or whatever is so horrible is just wrong becuase anyone that build a cmoy has "cloned" the RA-1, just not called it an RA-1...