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Banished

Paul's Posts — 02 January 2012

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Banished

In my post about protection vs. performance I recounted the early 1980′s story of the 200C amplifier and its propensity to detonate if the user didn’t follow the warning label on the back of the amp.  One person that didn’t pay attention to that warning was none other than reviewer Tony Cordesman – and it cost the both us dearly.

One of the double edge swords for reviewers and manufacturers is the desire to review and have reviewed new products as soon as they are released.  Such was the case when we delivered a new 200C out of the first production batch to Tony Cordesman at his home in Virginia.  I personally delivered the amplifier and Tony and I spent a delightful evening playing music on his system into the wee hours of the night sitting in his living room.  His wife was amazingly tolerant of the two audio nuts playing music while she attempted to sleep.

About a week after my visit I got a phone call from Tony who was less than pleased with me.

Turns out he and his wife were listening to the system one evening when he made an AB between the 200C and his reference amp of the time – only he forgot to turn off the 200C before making the switch.  Instantly a crackling sound was heard, a puff of smoke and a small fireball erupted from the perforated metal top of the amp – much to the surprise of Tony and the horror of his wife.

“Thanks to your amplifier I have been banished from the living room and relegated to the porch outside for all electronics – the porch now complete with a fire extinguisher.”

Yikes.  Couldn’t be a worse situation.  We had already figured out how to fix the problem and sent Tony a new version that wouldn’t explode, but the damage was done – the banishment complete.

Gentleman that Tony is, we got a rave review on the amp’s sound but with a footnote warning: “Like all PS Audio products, the 200C had some early teething problems. If you have a lower serial number than mine, you should have been contacted; if you haven’t been, call PS to see if any adjustment to your amp is needed.—AHC.”  If you’re curious about this review from 1985, you can read it here.  And now you know what the footnote referred to.

Tony eventually moved everything back to the living room but I think the fire extinguisher remained a fixture in the Cordesman living room decor.

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About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(6) Readers Comments

  1. Soundminded

    January 2, 2012 at 9:53 am

    Two postings in three days about something that happened over 25 years ago. That must have been a stinging life lesson and disappointment. It’s a classic example for providers of products and services, don’t introduce a product to your market until you’re absolutely sure it’s ready to survive the rough and tumble of real world use. And don’t ignore warnings from your engineers, when they worry there’s usually a good reason for it. It was a classic mistake and one that happens to large companies as well as small, the pressure to get product into distribution as quickly as possible due to the need for meeting a business plan, paying bills, getting brand name recognition. I had a friend at Pilot radio who told me that when they introduced their first solid state stereo console radio phonograph one amplifier channel invariably blew up after 8 hours of use. At one point they were coming back faster than they were going out which begs the question why they were still going out at all.

    When this happens the only thing you can do if you want to stay in business is repair it cheerfully and at no cost to the buyer. The fix should be well enough thought out so that it won’t fail again. Also design products with the expectation that sooner or later in their life they will need to be repaired by someone. Many products are unfixable except by extreme measures. To replace failed capacitors in my early production KLH model 6 speakers KLH had to remove the woofer cone, make repairs working through the basket, and then recone the woofer. This could only be done at the factory and they paid for the boxes and shipping even though they were not under warranty and I wasn’t the original buyer. The original design changed with later versions of the same model making them field repairable.

    Other examples are my Lincoln automobile that costs $800 to repair a headlight when it fails (there’s an inherent design flaw and they only guarantee the repair for one year.) There are no aftermarket substitutes for that particular light assembly. And then there’s my Hewlett Packard computer which is a story all by itself. A defective audio output jack wasn’t discovered until software for which there were no source discs available was installed. To repair the jack the entire motherboard had to be replaced which involved remapping the hard drive wiping out the software. That was deferred until several months later when the hard drive failed but to get that repaired took 6 months by which time the power supply had failed several times. Finally the entire computer was replaced but you don’t get to talk to anyone except in India, start over again each time you talk to them, and then when it’s escalated you talk to Canada. Although it’s got 12 times the storage capacity and is 6 times faster than the laptop I’m using, has a good UPS backing it up (1000 VA Eaton) I can’t bring myself to use it. (no it’s not for sale.) I’ll never buy or recommend a Hewlett Packard anything again as long as I live. Bullet proof designs, ISO9000 compliant manufacturing and QC, and excellent after market service are crucial to business success. Customers have come to expect nothing less.

    BTW, the Stereophile review had no measurements in it at all. It far more resembled an opinion on the blogosphere than a documented report. The three major hobbyist magazines of the prior era, High Fidelity Magazine, Stereo Review, and Audio Magazine all had detailed measurements by real laboratories for every product they reviewed. For that reason I’ve always thought little of that magazine and even today when it does provide measurements, I don’t trust anything it says about any products it reviews. Its prior shortcomings reflect what I consider an unacceptable editorial philosophy of what is of value to its readers.

    • January 2, 2012 at 6:31 pm

      I agree that Stereophile and TAS provide a different experience and opinion – I surely don’t miss Stereo Review and Hi Fidelity (whose reviews could be bought by advertisers), but I do miss Gene Pitt’s Audio magazine. I think that was a good blend of both opinion and measurement.

      Measurements can’t, unfortunately, tell you how something’s going to sound. Measurements are valuable to make sure the thing isn’t a POS or that it can connect up properly to other gear (input impedance, output impedance, wattage, noise, etc.).

      We can’t measure people’s reactions when they engender emotional responses – like trying to measure how good or bad a movie might be – or how something will taste. Heck, think about trying to measure the differences in pianos or musical horns. One could endeavor to quantify all the various harmonic and amplitude details of a particular trumpet but using that as a standard against all other trumpets to be measured is just plain silly. Same with audio gear unfortunately.

      Wish it was easier than that – but when a product gives you a certain feeling – that’s pretty hard to measure and quantify.

      • Soundminded

        January 2, 2012 at 7:23 pm

        It is nice to know if an amplifier will actually produce its advertised power. If you recall the power wars of the 1960s and 1970s before the FTC stepped in the entire industry was in chaos. There was IHF power, EIA power, RMS power. You could connect a different power supply of the same voltage to generate measurements for advertising than the one you supplied to the buyer. There were even amplifiers that were rated by how much power they consumed. Of course the reviews didn’t tell us that a 60 wpc IHF rated HH Scott receiver would blow up if it were connected to an AR3. We had to find that out for ourselves the hard way.

        One of the problems that confronts anyone buying an exotic piece of equipment from a small manufacturer is that one day when it needs service there may be no one around who can repair it. What would you do with that NYAL amplifier if it needs to have its bias adjusted? Usually a widely distributed product sold to professionals will be repairable. You can fairly well count on the fact that in 10 or 20 years amplfiers made by Crown, QSC, McIntosh, Bryston will be fixable even if some don’t think they are the best sounding.

        • January 3, 2012 at 8:09 am

          Couldn’t agree more with you on this one. I do remember the wars and I also remember certain companies trying to use peak power and all the hubbub about rms vs. peak etc. But that’s when marketing guys try and get involved in the measurement side.

      • hahax

        January 3, 2012 at 6:06 am

        Measurements are lousy indicators of sound. Sometimes they are even deceptive like the old super low harmonic distortion values of amps years ago. But I have seen examples where an experienced designer correlated sound and measurements. Decades ago a friend of mine picked a cartridge(a Technic at that) anonymously from a group of about 50 using a frequency curve and a 1 Khz square wave. I still recall him saying ‘I know how it sounds’ whan he did it. We bought them and they were just like he expected.

  2. hahax

    January 2, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    Your criticsm of Stereophile is interesting(and I do believe in’good’ measurements) given why it was founded. I knew Gordon Holt and would trust his comments almost always. He started reviewing for High Fidelity magazine and quit because they mainly measured and didn’t allow proper negative criticsm. Gordon knew that many positive measurements often came with so so performance. So after a year at Weathers he founde Stereophile on the basis that if it didn’t sound like real music(on good software) it wasn’t good no matter what the measurements. And this changed the nature of audio reviewing and was a major factor in the excellent reproduction a lot of todays gear is capable of.

    Paul’s example reminds me of an experience with the Audio Research D100 amp, the 1st ARC solid state amp. I borrowed it from Gordon Holt and plugged in the preamp leads and connected my LS3/5a speakers tyo it. I turned it on and heard a short hum and then nothing. Pushing in my woofers met with resistence. The amp had a put the 60 Hz AC turn on surge picked up by the inputs. It seems you had to plug in the input leads and turn them 90 degrees so they were parallel to the back of the amp or you got this full power turn on surge. ARC claimed no responsibility because the warning was in the manual. But name me another amp that you can’t just hool up normally and play?

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