[Sovkiller]

 
Quote:

I for one think the amp should be able to drive any headphone you throw at it regardless of music choice or the impedance of the transducer.  The Rudistor amps have appalling damping factor which means no bass control at all. Throw in the quad mono nonsense (the amps drift all over the place but never in in tandem with each other), output capacitor due to the massive DC offset which severely limits power output means these are nothing but boxes full of fail.  No matter what type of amp you'd want (OTL, transformer coupled solid state, transformer coupled tube, DC-coupled SS and the list goes on) you should be getting the best design possible for those operational parameters.  That clearly isn't the case with any Rudistor amps.  When you get better designs from RSA then you know your are dealing with a level of fail which really is hard to comprehend....
 
Ohh and anybody who has had a lot of machining done knows there is no way to spend 300$ on that.  Knobs are a few dollars each, no more.  Now the pure titanium knob I have sitting here on my desk is expensive but that's due to the material and not the machining. 

Rudistor knobs are not a few dollars each, and the ones he uses cost a lot more, sorry...and I personally spent more than $300.00 on my last customized case, between the cost of the case and customization using "Front Panel Design" and nothing Rudistor related...So this last argument is completely wrong, and please stop talking on things you do not know about...as for more knowledge that you believe you have, how can you possibly know what others spend in anything? Sorry but simply you can't...
 
Now despite the fact that you are on my permanent ignore list, and that I try to avoid all direct confrontations, more now that I do not have to defend my coins, just my pride as audiophile, and seeing that you have insisted in posting here, on a thread from a manufacturer that you do not like, and we all know that, and I'm not sure why you keep on bothering on that, but I do would like that you just show us, when you came with something really worth listening ever...Please!!!...Give us that pleasure...(But please open you own thread for that, do not thread crap others, as you used to do very frequent...)
Now being objective, who cares about what you think man? Have you ever realized that? Or you still believe that you have the only truth in your hands, and that others have to follow your criteria, and your ideas blindly, and period...
 
Please give some room for other opinions, and even if you consider them as wrong, they have the right to coexist with your right ones. And let me tell you that as far as I know, there is no such a thing as a wrong opinion and they are all as valid as yours, if they are all based in personal experiences, and they are simply just that, personal opinions...Why not letting the people be the judge, on what is right or wrong using their own ears, and not to your privileged ones? Maybe others listen differently, or maybe simply others are more stupid than you, and will like them, but at least let them be themselves...I prefer to be an stupid dumb ass, rather than a blind follower of any other person, for knowlegeable that this person may be, as I do not believe that there is a person yet that have the last word on anything, let alone regarding audio. Simply there is not such a perfect design yet, otherwise we were all listening it, right? And honestly I would like that you show us, a far better sounding amp design, so we can get it, and stop suffering Rudistor ones, and also, as a way of showing us your intellectual superiority to the rest of the other designers/manufacturers. Have you ever come to something really better sounding, sorry but I would like to hear it yet...!!!
 
Your opinion, as many others, differs from all the many Rudistor satisfied customers (including me) and we are not stupid blind guys, and we are not so few neither, and we have heard a lot of those marvelous good specked numbers, recommended and venerated designs, and that simply had passed on them, because we feel others with worse numbers, parts and worse designs, simply sounded better to our ears...
 
As a side note, I used to have a Class A Marantz amp, it broke (something related to the remote...) They do not offer any Class A anymore, for around that price range or even over, so I asked them, and they told me that they have dropped the Class A in favor of the current feedback some years back, as they found that their new current feedback designs, sounded better than those Class A ones...Of course at that time I did not believe them, how this could be possible??? But given that I did not have too many options left for 4 ohms load, and for my application, I got a good deal on one of them, and I ordered one of their new designs...you know what? They were absolutely right, the new amp sounded noticeably better than the old one. Placebo, ignorance, preference? Call the way you want it, who cares? I enjoy this one better...as a side note, my brother that still has the old one, believe the same I do...
 
    

 

[ford2]

Quote:

And if you think the price of a particular product is on the wrong side of that mythical line (how you would know that is another story for another time), you are entirely free to not buy it.
 
Can we keep the political silliness out of here please?  That why sites like firedoglake exist.

Keep the lectures for your kids.

 

[winzzz]

dear sov...this is an open forum everyone has the rights to states their opinions..you can start blabbering your love with rudistor amp or anything else and why can't others give comments why they think rudistor or certain brand sounds like crap ?..and most people in hf have brains to decide what they wanna believe..why bother ?

 

[Uncle Erik]

Sov, there's no one "right" design. Each circuit does something different and has its own sound.

The difference is that some designs are executed well and some are not. Some have spotty construction, some have incredible profit margins. Unfortunately, a lot of people perceive "quality" based on the price tag, not what's inside.

I haven't popped the hood on a RudiStor amp and I don't think I've heard one at a meet. So I don't have an opinion about them yet.

However, there's a huge difference between taste in circuit design and whether an amp is built correctly, as well as whether the cost of parts and overhead is dwarfed by the price. If something is poorly constructed and/or engineered, that's more objective than opinion. Same with the margin. If something is priced into the stratosphere with inexpensive parts inside, that's much more in the realm of the objective.

 

[Sovkiller]

 
Quote:

dear sov...this is an open forum everyone has the rights to states their opinions..you can start blabbering your love with rudistor amp or anything else and why can't others give comments why they think rudistor or certain brand sounds like crap ?..and most people in hf have brains to decide what they wanna believe..why bother ?

Agreed 100% and I have no objection on that, and if you have any direct experience with any particular amp, just state it and period, that is perfectly understandable, and fine with the spirit of headfi, and fine with me. So are you telling me, see the time I join headfi, I have been here long enough to know that, and to know all the old guys here...

 
But sorry to tell you that there are a few things that are not correct. It was implied that all amps designed by Rudi are following the same pattern and rules, and he is throwing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo electronic jergon from a text book, that for the newbies may sound impresive, but at the end says nothing...and that because of that all of them should sound like crap, what is far from the reality...
Just to mention one of the statements that is 100% wrong, my RPX33 has no caps at the output, want another? The XJ or any other protable amp made by Rudi, not that many BTW, are far from being a Cmoy as I know the chips he used (and he can't) as they are not marked in any place, and they are not chips from a shelf...
As far as I know (and I was the distributor for Rudi for US and Canada for long time) he had never owned or purchased any Rudistor amp (unless used) and Rudi had not posted his designs and parameters of design in any place. All amps, as in any other manufacturer case, are not designed following the same criteria or topology, so it is not fair to judge all of them at once, if all of them are not alike, and the last, even if he is 100% right which is far from that, that is his opinion only, and as valid as any other from any lover or hater...

 

[Sovkiller]

 
Quote:

Sov, there's no one "right" design. Each circuit does something different and has its own sound.

The difference is that some designs are executed well and some are not. Some have spotty construction, some have incredible profit margins. Unfortunately, a lot of people perceive "quality" based on the price tag, not what's inside.

I haven't popped the hood on a RudiStor amp and I don't think I've heard one at a meet. So I don't have an opinion about them yet.

However, there's a huge difference between taste in circuit design and whether an amp is built correctly, as well as whether the cost of parts and overhead is dwarfed by the price. If something is poorly constructed and/or engineered, that's more objective than opinion. Same with the margin. If something is priced into the stratosphere with inexpensive parts inside, that's much more in the realm of the objective.

Erik I agree 100%, one thing I can tell you for sure, is that I'm not deaf, and that I have heard a lot of amps, and Rudistor amps sounded and still sound good to me, indeed they were the first amps I really enjoyed completely, and I still do, and till now I have not heard any that I have not liked yet, or any other that I have enjoyed more, otherwise I would have kept that one instead...Ray Samuels himself once listened the RP1000 in the only meeting it was shown, and his words were: "that is a reference sound"...A very pleasant coment form a very nice manufacturer, and a very nice guy, and BTW, IIRC, the only manufacturer that listened all amps around him, among all other manufacturers in the meeting...a detail of tact and respect, that at least I really appreciate, that set him appart from the rest to me...
Good designs, or bad designs, good parts or bad parts, decent engineering or not, maybe you know a lot more than I do, but honestly, same as the old Duke said once, what sounds good, to me, is good...period....
BTW, and I'm 100% sure that you know that mainly all amps topologies in one way or another, one incarnation or another, and proven designs, have been around for around a century, so in order to design an amp wrong, you have to be really stupid...

 

[Xan7hos]

I'm looking at Rudistors more democratic products, such as their new IEM, the IMD-3 (priced @ $160usd) as well as their new portable amp....and if I'm to understand Rudistor's rhetoric of choosing to go back to basic and creating the best product out there, then quite frankly I'm somewhat disturbed. Aesthetically, it looks like the stuff you see on eBay...honestly as a consumer I'd be more willing to cough up the extra dough for a more pleasing design. Now back to this IMD-3 thing, (which apparently no one has yet to really talk about on head-fi?): It looks like a rebadged Sony MDR-EX700, and while I understand companies do take previous items and add their own little tweaks and touches (NuForce/Ultrasone headphone comes in mind), it doesn't really inspire confidence given that Rudistor is telling us that they're fixing their focus on hi-end. Yet at the other end of the spectrum is their Chroma MD-1, which is a product that adheres moreso to Rudistor's new direction.
 
Suffice to say, I'm a giant ball of confusion.

 

[rosgr63]

spritzer, it's all about the sound and the way music flows and sounds to ones ears.
I have some nice tube amps with some of the best tubes and I can tell you that to my ears the RudiStor is very hard to beat.
Of course your ears, technical knowledge and gear are much better than mine but that's my humble opinion.
I only care about SQ and enjoy the music.

 

[tk3]

So what exactly makes this portable amp worth €500?
I know nothing about amp mechanics, but I recall seeing pictures of the previous version of this amp, and it was pretty much a very sparsely populated PCB and some batteries inside it.
And the case used on this amp I've seen on eBay before as well, on some Chinese made portable amps that were much cheaper.
 
I just can't see or understand why anyone would want to buy this product based on the information given on Rudistor's website, this has to be one of the least informative product pages I've ever seen actual content wise, especially considering how much he is asking for the product.
Seems like he puts most of the merits of the amplifier in the aforementioned case and going on about the battery life, but nothing substantial about the internal design of the amp, such as technical highlights, pictures of the workmanship inside, what chips and opamps are used, etc, which one (I at least) would be more interested in when deciding on possible candidates for a new amp.
Despite this, it is marketed as a "really different amp" and having "great improvements over the previous version" without any explanation or solid information to base these claims on.
Of course, having some sort of secrecy about your designs is not uncommon to prevent copycats, but is a prospective buyer supposed to put down €500 just based on the fluff that is given there?
 
Besides that, the way it is presented is completely unprofessional. I understand that he is not a native English speaker, but there is no excuse for not even proof reading your own advertisement or having a friend or professional translator who is proficient in English go over it at least. The ad pretty much has 1 or more grammatical, spelling or punctuation mistakes in every sentence. In that one page's worth of information, there must be at least 20 different mistakes, simply unsightly.
The information there also contradicts itself, I noticed first it mentions a solid magnesium body case, and later it is changed to aluminum, so which is it?
 
Just based on such lack of care, it gives me a negative view of the manufacturer and puts it behind other possible contenders.

 

[spritzer]

I'm so happy to be on your ignore list, truly made my day.  Now you are wrong in one instance, Rudi has posted the design for the Egmont/Cirolan but it did require a bit of digging to find it.  Not that I hadn't figured out what the amp was from just looking at the tube compliment but it's nice to see just how bad they are from his own hand.  Now this has all been confirmed with detailed internal pics of the amps and confirmed the simple fact that Rudi can't even design a bias supply for these amps and this is the same design as posted on TubeCad in 1999.  Broskie didn't invent it though since it dates back to the late 40's and is the basic differential amp.  Piss poor performance (I've built 3 and I'm finishing the PCB for other people to build) unless you do major mods to the circuitry, the major one being a full feedback loop.  That's something Rudi hasn't done...
 
I've never seen high res pics of the RPX-33 but I'm pretty sure it has a capacitor coupled output.  The RPX-100/300 certainly does and I'm guessing the RB010 is the same crap sold at a higher price.  The need for excessive shielding (though not where it really counts) points to that plus the load resistors for the output stage.  If anybody was unfortunate to buy one of these and wants to confirm it, send me a PM. 
 
As for the XJ-03, it is just a Cmoy regardless of what chip is used.  8pin dual opamp and an AlPS RK097 pot with bog standard rechargeable batteries and an outboard charging circuitry.  Now we laugh a lot at Ray for his overpriced, under performing amps but they are a masterpiece compared to this.  Take a look inside the TTVJ amps or the Pico to see how it should be done...
 
As for there being no bad designs, you are kidding, right?  We have been making cars for 130+ years but your are telling everybody that there are no bad designs out there?  I've rarely laughed as hard as when I saw the new Mustang with what Ford calls "sport suspension".  This speaks volumes about your utter lack of knowledge of the subject matter.  No damping factor, laughable slew rate, high output impedance and a huge DC offset on the output are not something I'd call good engineering practice......
 
Quote:

spritzer, it's all about the sound and the way music flows and sounds to ones ears.
I have some nice tube amps with some of the best tubes and I can tell you that to my ears the RudiStor is very hard to beat.
Of course your ears, technical knowledge and gear are much better than mine but that's my humble opinion.
I only care about SQ and enjoy the music.

Indeed it is but if the Single Power fiasko has taught us anything is that we have to be critical of gear even if it "sounds good".  When I got my ES-1 Single Power amp I was baffled by all the good reviews this unit had gotten over the years since it quite frankly sucked, badly.  Dull, lifeless with no real control over the phones and after a quick root around inside the chassis it was quite clear what was going on. Mikhail had butchered a 1968 Stax design which meant the amp looked impressive but was crippled by the 100VDC offset plus other hidden treats.  Now this is nothing compared to the horrors found in his dynamic amps, probably the worst being the SDS-XLR's. 
 
What we have with Rudistor is the same curse as haunts the majority of the high-end industry, badly designed crap being portrayed as something well designed and special.  These amps aren't high end by any means much the same as for instance Lamm products aren't.  Whether you like what these products output is up to you but they shouldn't be sold as something of equal quality to a Dynalo, M3 or a B22 because they simply aren't.  Now Sovshiller says this is textbook nonsense but audio is no different from any other form of electrical engineering, it has to follow the laws of physics.  The simple fact is that there is a right and a wrong way to design components and sadly, Rudistor does everything wrong.  So instead of trying to come up with better designs he fills his site with technical mumbo jumbo, flat out lies for specs and then prices his under performing gear at the same level as the much better performing competition so that buyers with no technical knowledge would assume they are of equal standing.  Top it all off with "artistic" pictures of the insides to hide the truth for those of us who know what we are looking at. 
 
One final lesson we should take from the Single Power mess is to curtail any MOT who refuses to post high resolution pics of the insides of his gear or tries to hide components by sanding them or masking them with paint.  Take Schit for instance, the first thing they did was to post pics of the insides of their gear and answer any questions about what they were doing.  Now we know exactly what these amps are and for 250$ they perform better than anything Rudistor has ever made...

 

[rosgr63]

spritzer have you ever spent time with, or owned any of the RudiStor amps?

 

[Sovkiller]

So you know guys, all we need is the PICO, or any other Gilmore design, to be happy...here we go again...as you can see it is not so complicated, and will be a lot cheaper...
 
As music is not so important at the end, and all that is important is to have a perfect reading of a meter and impresive figures to listen to, here we will go again...Oh wait, I think that we were there before, right? Sorry but personally do not care too much about how any electronic device measures, or which methodology was usead to get it, or design it, all I care is the sound that gets my ears, and I will no go back to square one, we have all passed this stage of the "audio evolution" already (or maybe involution according to spritmore) and we are all happy here enjoying our poorly designed, implemented and engineered amps...
 
The only reason Rudi designed the first Egmont amp (for his personal use, and with no idea of ever build it for profits) was simply after building and listening the Gilmore ones and not liking them...Now the next argument will be that it was probably poorly implemented, OK, then the V2 I purchased, which implementation was approved personally by Dr. Gilmore, was a perfect implementation, and a master piece of a designed, but with a hum that was unbearable, and that was never fixed, and it seems that it was also never measured by none of the sophisticated instruments used...
 
So we have now output coupled amps with huge DC offsets...And now Ray also took a little of fire as well. Let's see who will be the next to bash in line...And still no design to enjoy from this brilliant, smart, and knowledgeable gentleman yet... 

 

[rosgr63]

If memory serves well Woo also took a bashing not long ago from some of the posters here.
Maybe Woo have a lot to learn as well.
 
I will quote KingStyles' signature here as a reminder:
 
"If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad. If it sounds good and measures bad, you've measured the wrong thing."

 

[spritzer]

The Pico has nothing to do with Kevin, it's all Justin's work.  If you want a cheap portable amp that puts most of the competition to shame look no further than the Mini3.  Hell, put two of them in a box with a simple PSU and you have a nice balanced amp.  Add transformers to do the phase splitting from SE. 
 
I don't know why your Dynalo hummed but that has nothing to do with the circuit design.  My G-lite was totally quiet and the souped up Dynalo I have access to is quiet as a mouse.  Hum is almost always caused by the system and not the individual component.  One has to wonder why Justin has sold hundreds of these if they all supposedly hummed...
 
As for the Egmont, I have all the stuff he originally wrote for the circuit.  The funny bit is that he's criticizing commercial amps as being sub par and then turns around and makes the worst offender...

  Compared to the Egmont the Stax amps are decades ahead in terms of design. 
 
I was hard on Woo for the WES simply because the took the GES circuit and dropped it in a new box and charged 4 times as much.  It's not a bad amp, just not worth the price. 
 
As for Ray, everybody has known from day 1 that his amps were terrible.  The Apache/HR-2 (same thing) is Class B.... B!!! 
Quote:

spritzer have you ever spent time with, or owned any of the RudiStor amps?

Never owned one (probably only will when somebody needing to get one fixed sends it to me) but I've had two of the older models here.  NX-02 or something like that was one of them and I can't remember what the other one was called as this was years ago.  Sounded quite bad on my HD600...

 

[Sovkiller]

Still no hints of any design that we can enjoy from some of the above posters...
What is curious to me is the why, as it is indeed a real shame that a very knowledgeable, intelligent and smart guy, spend his precious time bashing other several manufacturers/designers work, which himself consider as not worth his time, rather than spending it, trying to offer something more enjoyable himself...It is like some kind of reverse logic, why bother in spending time bashing what is not worth my time? Or is that for some reason it is worth it? Maybe for some personal, or other more rewarding reason, God knows, that is part of a human nature, while you do not have the talent to create, at least try to destroy what others had created...LOL...