Originally Posted by Audiofiler
Uhh No. Not what I said or meant, but was a joke nonetheless!!
sorry then
unfortunately text is a poor medium for expressing tones
Originally Posted by Zanth
I think you and I are on the same page flecom, it comes down to simply that if the use of a particular opamp was the key and that key really had a magic with the company phones...then broadcasting would enable anyone to go out and build it for themselves.
No one was using this opamp before the RA-1 was dissected. Interesting now isn't it, considering the avid DIY community at Headwize at the time? Yet, so many claimed the RA-1 sounded better than the CMOY's being built at the time. Why?
Must be the opamp if everything else is the same!
So, if sales started to drop off because some guy opened up the RA-1, figured out the lucky ticket was the opamp used...and subsequently started building amps around that opamp, then yeah...why wouldn't someone be miffed about that? Grado was the one that figured out that this opamp worked wonders with their phones. Now someone else can indeed, build an amp using this basic circuit (and for those that believe more complex = better, they have another thing coming, many MANY folks believe that less is more in audio) but using the up til this point, undiscovered opamp.
I agree that simple is good, but even the build quality of the RA-1 is ok at best... have you seen photos of the PCB and such? anyhow... i stand by the opinion that i had when the whole hornet drama was going on, similar to the RA-1 drama... does it sound good? yes? does it sound like it would be worth $x? then who cares what is in it?
but still, he cant claim anyone really copied him... i am sure some other manufacturer put that opamp in an audio path or headphone section of some integrated amp before he started using it... and that was my whole point... if he really wanted a truly unique design then he should have either
1) designed his own op-amp IC
2) made a discrete amp of his own design
or at the very least sanded off the top of the IC similar to what ray does...