"The" Amplifier Internals thread ...

6 channeling it would require duplication of driver circuitary, additional connectors, fans etc ..by the time youve messed around with that, you may as well have loaded up a pcb design program, solidworks & designed one from scratch ...its just not worth the effort.

most people would be just as well just buy something that isnt a half baked mess in the first place,
Theres some pretty good value amps out there, if you take the time to look. couldnt say this one really qualifys :/

im also a little supprised to see them still using through the hole components, being someone like harman.. youd think with ready access to such machines, it would only make sense to use surface mount components to increase assembly accuracy, minimize labour costs and time. so i can only conclude that they quite litterally repackaged a very old design without updating it at all & relyed on the lowest bidder of chineese/mexican labour to make manual assembly a feaseable proposition for a budget amp


Edited by nineleaves - 24 June 2010 at 1:02pm

nineleaves wrote: it would only make sense to use surface mount components to increase assembly accuracy, minimize labour costs and time.

One of my pet peeves - ALL surface mount component use does is reduce manufacturing costs, and significantly increases repair costs, even to the point of making a repair unviable.  Case in point is the Crown XTi I posted photos of recently - output stage emitter resistors consist of 16 .25W surface mount resistors per output device underneath the heatsink assembly.  Far greater cost to muck around replacing these compared to 10 seconds to replace a through-hole 5W resistor......

As things get more complex and cheaper to manufacture, the long term costs of replacement instead of repair is significant, not to mention all the junk going into land fill - profit from sales is all the manufacturers think about these days.....

repairing surface mount is a pice of piss; provided 1206 to 805 size packages are the smallest generally used, tweezers and a soldering iron are good friends & make fast work of repairs.
I use them all the time now for designing and making things, first assembly is done entirely by hand & its not all that bad to do frankly.
I used to be a right leaded component fanboy, til i was actually talked into giving it a go; and to be honest, in the end ive found them to be far easier to work with, no fiddling around with wires and cropping them.. just tap, tap with the soldering iron :) ..into the bargain you can also reduce the size of your boards by 1/5th to 1/10th typically :)

The Crown XTI is just badly designed ..certainly from a mechanical engineering point of view. Its simply that their design does not allow easy access to components under any circumstances. however i do suspect that crown would rather you bought another one, than repaired it now.

Frankly though, we need to universally switch over to smt for almost everything, as aside of manufacturing benefits, its the only way the electronics industry is going to reduce its dependance on questionable, cheap labour pools for manual board assembly.

There are some machines for electronic assembly of leaded components, however they really arent designed with this in mind. in the past ive seen resistors & standard shaped ic packages loaded this way, but it all really goes out the window when you look at how many different variations in package shape and size there is for leaded capacitors. just a nightmare to deal with on setup alone.
Yes, some of the manual work can be taken out this way, but youd still probably find that most of the components would still have to be manually loaded out of practicality. Its an obselete & antiquated stopgap approach.


Edited by nineleaves - 24 June 2010 at 3:38pm

being someone like harman.. youd think with ready access to such machines

The XLS are a re-hashed C-Audio product hence the bizarre (though sound) design.
Of course the same board is used throughout the XLS size range, this was another C-Audio touch...remember the SR range that people used to upgrade themselves?

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