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Mike Mercer review Cavalli Liquid gold


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3 hours ago, kevin gilmore said:

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when this thing shows up on ebay as made in china kits for say $150, and are a better and more repairable product, the used price is going to fall thru the floor making even more people upset.

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I may be overly sceptical, but I just assumed these were made offshore and then cased up in the US of A. Would make for a very nice profit margin as well as afford the ability to just stick a new board into anything that might be returned for repair.

 

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Which doesn't really mean anything on its own.  So are most of the PCBs for parts inside your cutting edge computer or cell phone.  Just because something is made in China doesn't mean it's low quality, it's more about what you're willing to pay.  In many (most) instances now, China actually has the resources to provide superior manufacturing, you just can't expect rock bottom prices.  The 80s are over.

Edited by n3rdling
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1 minute ago, n3rdling said:

Which doesn't really mean anything on its own.  So are most of the PCBs for parts inside your cutting edge computer or cell phone.  Just because something is made in China doesn't mean it's low quality, it's more about what you're willing to pay.  In many (most) instances now, China actually has the resources to provide superior manufacturing, you just can't expect rock bottom prices.  The 80s are over.

This is certainly true to a large degree. They've gotten very good at producing consumer electronics, but the fact that their military and aerospace industries are still so heavily reliant on Russia to produce reliable machines suggests that they still have a ways to go. Not knocking them one bit, they can produce some high quality stuff, but generally the best stuff coming out of China is coming out of factories that are owned by or are contracted and closely monitored by foreign companies who do the engineering and often provide the tooling used for production. I somehow doubt that Cavalli has the resources to aggressively manage the production of his designs, corners are almost certainly cut.

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This is not aerospace. It is not even a cell phone. It is a crappy little headphone amplifier which is just some standard off the shelf parts soldered to a simple PCB. It is going to be the same whether made in China, Russia, or the U.S. Whether it sounds good depends upon the design and implementation of the circuit, not the quality of the PCB or the manufacturing.

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Oh, I was more thinking about it in terms of reliability rather than sound quality. But that's probably a moot point too since these things apparently explode under what most would consider to be normal operating conditions.

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Perhaps, Cavalli Audio should have a name change to Incendiary Acoustics.......   :P

Do ya think I should pitch it to him over on the other site.....    :)

I fear thay may will get me banned over there before I reach 9000 posts........  :lol:

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My point was not that made in china was crappy, it was that made in china is priced such that made in usa cannot compete.

Audio-GD for example makes ultra high caliber equipment, and at a price that i cannot even buy the parts for. Ksa5 boards now on ebay that are my layout stuffed with parts and assembled and sell for a fair bit less than i can buy the parts for.

 

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You can get great stuff made in China, no doubt about that.  That being said, having reworked some Cavalli PCB's they are the cheapest crap Imagineering offer.  Assembly is clearly done in China and probably testing as well (notice the test header on the PCB) but that is all automated.  The parts chosen and the design matter a whole lot more. 

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I wonder how little they can produce a "Starving Student" for.?

The Altoids tin would be the most expensive component. But I guess they could run up their own tin.

They certainly wouldn't cost a "mint"........    :P

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http://www.us.tdk-lambda.com/ftp/Specs/km.pdf

medical grade, switches at 132 kHz. definitely can fit everything inside the box. This would be the most expensive part at $80

even cheaper if you go for the 15 watt version.

definitely everything fits in the box, and no phase splitter or other crap because its a true differential balanced amplifier.

the quad alpha pot would be the 2nd most expensive part at $30

so say $200 in parts plus about $25 for the box. and it won't blow up even into a 4 ohm load. or a dead short.

Edited by kevin gilmore
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On 6/30/2016 at 1:40 PM, n3rdling said:

Which doesn't really mean anything on its own.  So are most of the PCBs for parts inside your cutting edge computer or cell phone.  Just because something is made in China doesn't mean it's low quality, it's more about what you're willing to pay.  In many (most) instances now, China actually has the resources to provide superior manufacturing, you just can't expect rock bottom prices.  The 80s are over.

True but in this case (or at least the 2 LF's I worked on helping getting it repaired for a friend) the PCB that Cavalli did use for that amplifier was absolutely shit, the layout was completely shit. I have a box full of bare PCB's waiting for assembly that I have accumulated over time for various projects, most of which are from China and some of which are from Mikes GB's here and they are of a different caliber to Cavalli's stuff. Both Made in China. Another thing I've wondered is why the black PCB color which makes PCB repairs and rework hard to do with the black color overlay. 

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The black color is supposed to make it harder to reverse engineer.  Turns out it makes it easier with the appropriate lighting and photoshop.

definitely the black color makes repairs harder, but its really the size of the circuit lands, the 1 oz copper and the diameter of the pads that makes it worse.

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17 hours ago, DefQon said:

..... I have a box full of bare PCB's waiting for assembly that I have accumulated over time for various projects, most of which are from China and some of which are from Mikes GB's here and they are of a different caliber to Cavalli's stuff. Both Made in China....

To my knowledge, the GB boards I ordered from PCBNet are either made in the US or Taiwan, most likely Taiwan.

I did get a few PCBs from China (Seeed Studio and all 1.6mm and 2oz copper IIRC) and the quality is reasonable to me. But once I experienced the PCBNet quality, it was hard to go back.

To the point and in all fairness, I also got one shitty batch of PCBs from a Taiwan factory who I would never do business with again.

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