Quote Originally Posted by Yomanze View Post
Another thing I think is not mentioned enough is craftmanship, especially of the minimal school - the reason some gear sounds good is because of the lack of components, and the talents of the designer to fine-tune and get the most out of very simple circuits, which are much more sensitive to component tuning. All of this takes time and experience! Look inside a 47 Lab component, some LFD gear etc. & price / materials comparison goes out of the window.
Quote Originally Posted by Puffin View Post
With regard to 47 Labs they found that a cheap (around a £fiver)readily available op-amp sounded really good. They teamed it with what was possibly hand-picked components and sold them for a loooot of money. When the secret was out, the hoi polloi were able to build one for themselves for relatively peanuts and so the Gainclone was born. I have made several for around £100 each. Do they sound better or worse than the original?
Yes, I agree that there's a skill in producing a good sounding circuit but it doesn't have to result in an expensive circuit. I too think that 47 Labs just made very conventional op-amp circuits taken straight from the manufacturer's application notes and then added extreme amounts of marketing nonsense to justify incredibly high prices. The early examples weren't even well constructed.