SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A few weeks ago it was really nice weather, so I sat outside on the porch with the door open and the stereo cranked. It wasn’t loud enough. I missed the old Kenwood 200 watt stereo I used to have decades ago that could wake up folks in the next block. It died, but I’m still using the three way JBL speakers.
It wasn’t nearly loud enough, so I went inside, unplugged the little Dell I bought last year (I have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and use the TV as a monitor, only not when I’m doing commerce) and went to Amazon for a new two hundred watt amplifier.
I had been at war with Sony since they vandalized my computer with XCP when my then teenaged daughter played a CD she had bought from the record store she worked at, until I bought a Sony TV by accident. Then bought a PS4 on purpose, and when I saw that the TV remote worked the Playstation, I was happy to find a Sony receiver advertised at 100 watts per channel RMS, like the old Kenwood.
I unboxed it, plugged it up, read the owner’s manual, and turned it on. It came with a 75 ohm antenna of sorts, with a type of plug I’d never seen before. I expected the jack to be screw on, like a television, since FM radio’s spectrum is right between TV channels six and seven.
I have the little Dell laptop plugged into the TV, and put it on the KSHE stream. I was impressed with the sound, very crisp and clean, as good as the old Kenwood. I also liked that it had a remote control, the first stereo I ever owned that had one, even though they’ve been around since at least the eighties.
You can pretune up to thirty stations, with the first three having dedicated recall buttons, like in a car radio.
And it has Bluetooth, which I thought would be a good replacement for the old HP laptop’s faulty sound output jack. Unfortunately, the old laptop has an old Bluetooth chip and drivers which are incompatible with the Bluetooth on the new receiver. I’ve been running that old HP all weekend and yesterday, recording KSHE’s “no repeat weekend” and restoring all my Star Trek movies and TV shows from backup. I shut it off this morning and am letting it cool to see if I can get Linux to run from the DVD, but I’m not hopeful I can get Bluetooth running on Linux any more than I could in Windows. That is, if the DVD itself isn’t bad.
It was a nice day, so I thought I’d sit on the front porch and listen to KSHE.
Sony is a collection of lying bastards. Two hundred watts RMS, my ass. The decibel meter on m y phone tells me it tops out at eighty decibels. It’s not much louder than the old stereo; not loud at all on the porch, in fact traffic is louder. The old Kenwood that really did have 200 watts RMS had people down the street calling the cops on me. Nobody will be calling the cops on me for this one, because there’s no way anybody but me will hear it.
I didn’t have an antenna with the stereo it replaced, which had screw-in 300 ohm antenna leads, and the radio was even a bigger disappointment than the wattage. I can’t pick up WQNA at all with it, but the shitty little car stereo picks it up fine. WCVS and a few other stations have static. WYMG doesn’t have any static, but it doesn’t have the sound quality I get from plugging the Dell into it.
I cannot recommend this to anyone. The amplifier has great sound quality but is pitifully under-powered. The receiver’s quality is practically nonexistent. If I had bought it locally rather than online I’d have returned it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @06:24PM (2 children)
Pioneer has some OK quality cheaper receivers, Sony has OK TVs, but their audio hardware is questionable (I do like their head units though).
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday May 14 2020, @05:35PM (1 child)
I have a Pioneer VSX-1020-K [cnet.com] and it works nicely. It's rated for 110 Watts/channel (I haven't tested, but it's plenty loud).
Unfortunately, it's been discontinued, but newer [amazon.com] versions are available. [amazon.com]
I've been very happy with my 1020-K and have had it for eight or nine years without issue.
I've generally found (although my 5-DVD changer -- which I never use any more, having ripped all my DVDs. Mythtv [mythtv.org] FTW! -- is a Sony) that Sony's products are both overpriced and/or lack features of competitive products.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 17 2020, @07:03PM
My sister had a Pioneer decades ago. It was an excellent receiver. Her Pioneer turntable was pretty crappy, though.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday May 13 2020, @08:33PM (4 children)
Do you have a true-RMS multimeter and some sort of resistor bank or small heating element to use as an 8-ohm dummy load?
If so, generate some tones and noise and do the measurements.....
Is it actually even rated at 100 watts RMS per channel?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @09:40PM (2 children)
I personally use a 150W lightbulb to do those measurements. Just be aware that the mesure won't be that accurate as the filament resistance increase with it's temperature and it's inductance is negligeable compared to a speaker.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Thursday May 14 2020, @08:08AM (1 child)
A 150 watt bulb is only a little under 100 ohm load. That doesn't help test anything.
8 ohms is a full 1875 watt, 15A load at 120V.
Something like a 1500W, 120V heating element is probably more appropriate.
I use a simple electric kettle. By its' nature the resistance does not change significantly while in use due to the liquid cooling of the submerged element in the water compared to most styles of heading element. Even when testing a large PA amplifier at full load, if I run it for long enough to actually get the water hot, it is easy enough to just replenish with cold water.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:41PM
Really good points and suggestions. I haven't used large heating elements for audio dummy loads, but I haven't been doing much large amp work / repair in a long time. But it's a great suggestion, and I use such loads for other power testing. Often such things, including incandescent bulbs, are great as a current-limiter. You wire in series with something you're working on, but are worried about a failure drawing huge lines currents.
BTW, be careful of load inductance when using a heating element as a dummy load for an audio amp. You could trigger some oscillations that could fry the amp, besides clobbering your measurements. An o'scope is your friend. Large wire-wound resistors are often inductive. Some are non-inductive- specially wound with a reverse-direction winding that pretty much cancels out the inductance. Every 5 turns or so there's a "U-turn" in the winding and they reverse the winding direction. It's not always obvious, but some are made such that you can see the reverses (under the outer coating).
But also, a properly working power amp, and we hope a new one works properly, will be a constant AC voltage source within the rated load range. So big load might not be necessary.
And of course, if the voltage changes much between load and no-load, then amp has problem.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 17 2020, @07:07PM
Haven't had a good multimeter since back in the analog days, but 200 watts RMS should be much louder than 80db at six feet.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:16PM (2 children)
I had a look at the manual : https://pdf.crutchfieldonline.com/ImageBank/v20180406112200/Manuals/158/158STDH190.PDF [crutchfieldonline.com] and it should output a minimum of 80w RMS per channel in A mode (one pair of speakers) in AB mode it's unspecified but I guess it's 40W for AL, AR, BL and BR. According to the manual it should output 100W in the special stereo mode, however the manual doesn't explain how to enable that mode so it might as well be nonexistent.
Also check the impedance setting and make sure that it matches your speakers.
And most importantly, you are right, Sony is lying, 80W is not 100W.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @03:31AM
Sony used to make nice stuff, I'm still very happy with my AIWA AXR-005 receiver (a Sony alternate brand) from c.1990. I didn't really need 120W/channel into 8 ohms and the lower model (-004) was a little cheaper. Looking through the specs the -005 had a more sensitive FM radio section--and it does a great job of getting stations from the next city over, I've never regretted the extra $50 or whatever the price increment was.
It also helps that my speakers are called 6 ohms and this receiver is rated for 4 ohm operation (250w "dynamic power output" per channel). The heat sink is interesting, thin aluminum sheet folded into zig-zag fins, soldered to a heavy plate where the power devices are mounted--gets hot but has never shut down on me.
Looks like they are available used. The remote has buttons for all kinds of things I've never used. It has a cool internal motor that rotates the volume knob (encoder, not scratchy like an old pot) with remote volume setting. Also has a nice "mute" button that drops the volume 20dB instantly. As well as plenty of phono plug inputs on the back, there is a pair on the front that makes it easy to temporarily connect up another source like a laptop, without pulling it out for access to the back panel.
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Thursday May 14 2020, @07:43AM
That's an error in the manual.
It shouldn't even talk about a 2-channel stereo mode, it only has 2-channel stereo mode.
That would apply if it were a surround-sound amplifier instead of 2-channel, but this is a stereo-only model. There is no dedicated 2-channel mode to put this model into. :)
Many of the surround-sound amps will bridge two channels for L and two channels for R when you drop from surround to 2-channel mode to compensate for not having a center channel, etc. when running just two main speakers as L & R.
The rating is supposedly 90 watts RMS, full 20-20,000 Hz bandwidth with max 0.09% THD with both channels driven into an 8 ohm load.
The bogus 100W is a single 1 KHz tone at 1% THD, so there is obviously no headroom above the (probably 40v?) supply rails that gets you just to the 90 watts RMS.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:06AM (2 children)
You want to sit on the porch, and listen to the stereo.
https://www.lifewire.com/best-outdoor-and-backyard-speakers-to-buy-4062144 [lifewire.com]
Without actually comparing the speaker qualities, I'm kinda partial to Niles RS8Si Granite Pro Weatherproof Rock Loudspeakers. They look like stupid rocks, so no one is likely to mess with them sitting on the porch. Some of the others, you could mount up under the roof/ceiling, and no one would ever even notice them.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:56PM
That's a great suggestion. The article shows Klipsch AW-650 in a die-cast enclosure, but Klipsch website shows them as rocks. Maybe it's optional.
Generally Klipsch speakers are known for efficiency, and the AW-650s are rated 94 dB, and the Niles at 88 dB. It all depends on your ears, but OP wants LOUD, so he might like the Klipsch, esp. with his inadequate amp. I like Klipsch for their incredible dynamics, but the highs can be a bit bright (almost harsh) compared to less sensitive speakers. Again, depends on what the listener is looking for. Buy a pair of KlipschHorns and be done with it. :)
Although I always preferred home HiFi speakers for smoothness, I work in the PA world a bit so I've gotten used to how PA speakers sound. And some of the very new ones have much smoother sounding tweeters, so if OP wants neighbors' complaints, he could buy a nice pair of powered PA speakers, like JBL EON or similar. :)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday May 17 2020, @07:10PM
I'm not looking to spend hundreds of dollars, which is what high fidelity speakers cost.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:47PM (1 child)
Good. You are not the only person in the universe. The rest of the world has no interest in listening to whatever you want to listen to. If you want to sit outside and listen to music or the radio, get some damn headphones you selfish self-centered prick.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday May 14 2020, @05:03PM
Unnecessary ad-hominem attack aside, I agree with you regarding sound annoyances, and I could apply that to a wide-range of things like excessively noisy equipment / power tools / vacuum cleaners, etc.
All that said, a large percentage of "hearing" - the brain's perception of sound- comes through the skin. Obviously mostly lower frequencies, impulses, etc. Headphones / ear buds don't give people that "feel". In fact, much hearing damage is caused by headphones played too loud, where the wearer is trying to get that "feel" but can't.
But again, I do agree regarding objectionable noise from neighbors. And helicopters.