The Ridley Effect?

Interesting new audio designer/company on the horizon, claiming to have bridged the gap between silicon and glass. Their site previews their upcoming pre, amp, and speakers. Definitely aimed at the uber high-end market, but their technology sounds interesting...
http://www.ridleyaudio.com/Technology.htm

One thing that bothers me from his website. The output devices in his poweramp have a lifespan of 10,000 hours? You can't pull transistors out of a circuit and replace them like tubes. Does this mean that after the requisite 10,000 hours the amps are on their last legs? Possibly planned obsolescence to the nth degree!

Good point. Maybe there are replaceable "boards" with all the requisite components. The guy seems to have a legitimate EE pedigree, based upon his other websites, and journal publications.

Who will be the first comapany to sell "Transistor heaters" to modify existing amps?!

They will sell these devices in the millions, claiming to use this mysterious Ridley Effect.

Sounds like mumbo jumbo to me. As a power engineer I know reliability is dramatically reduced by running transistors hot, this increases impedance and will reduce the life of the component. 10,000 hours of MTBF is not much this is just over a year. This heating is reducing the MTBF by a factor of 10.

Cherian said:

Sounds like mumbo jumbo to me. As a power engineer I know reliability is dramatically reduced by running transistors hot, this increases impedance and will reduce the life of the component. 10,000 hours of MTBF is not much this is just over a year. This heating is reducing the MTBF by a factor of 10.

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Hello. Just wanted to say that I agreed with you 100%...happy listening,
Roberto.:musicnote:

Beat_Dominator said:

Who will be the first comapany to sell "Transistor heaters" to modify existing amps?!

They will sell these devices in the millions, claiming to use this mysterious Ridley Effect.

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No sh*t, IMO the Ridley Effect (TM) is designed to effectively remove money from gullible audiophiles' pockets.

How hot does the inside of a powerful class A SS amp get?

IWalker said:

How hot does the inside of a powerful class A SS amp get?

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Hola IWalker...sometimes very hot, but this could be due to too many bias...I had experience with the Mark Levinson ML-2, ML-20, ML-20.5 and ML-20.6., Krell KSA 300 and Bedini 25 and model 100. All of them class A solid State...when they were driving my CLS, I had some blowing output transistors due to too much heat!...I did adjust the bias in a such way to have the less distortion verus bias adjustment...when the bias was setted too high, I had bad power transistors, and too much heat...I decreased a little bit the bias, the harmonic distortion will encrease a little bit too, but no more bad output transistors...also I founded out that they have the be running hot at the heatsinks, in a such way that you could touch it with no problem...too much heat will make the output transistors to short...right now I am with tubes...happy listening,
Roberto.

IWalker said:

How hot does the inside of a powerful class A SS amp get?

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Inside - don't know I have measured 140 F where heatsinks connect to chassis at the top of my Plinius.

Dan

140 F is only 60 C. Running a transistor at 150 C or 302 F to me is just crazy. I know it will run at this temperature but not for very long.

yeah, it seems crazy...I was just trying to see if it made any sense, considering the "tube like" sound often heard from Class A SS amps...along with the heat they generally seem to produce! I'm sure there are other reasons that a Class A bias gives that type of sound...but figured I'd try to explore the thought a little further


Intel Pentium M processors operate within normal parameters up to 100C. That's not TERRIBLY far off...and I would assume that with the complications involved, operating tolerances would be tighter in those chips. Just speculating though!

Hola...I just wonder why all transistor´s specs are done at 25 Cº. Too much heat at transistors, as far as I know, it is not good for them...happy listening,
Roberto.

roberto,

what kind of tube amps do you run now? Are these on your CLS?

jtwrace said:

roberto,

what kind of tube amps do you run now? Are these on your CLS?

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I have a Power two Sonic Frontiers...and yes, it is on my CLSIIz. It has a little mod. with wonder caps...the sound is very liquid, with tons of warmth, right size of the instruments with superb 3D. I have the cymballs with the drummer, not at the front of the stage as most SS. The vocals are great but what I like most is that I can understand the musician(s) easy. The left hand of the piano player comes easy too and of course the fingering of the guitar player. The music that I listen most is jazz or classical solo or up to small chamber music. I have a lot of singing woods around that makes my sound very musical and joyable. I believe in sympathetic resonace .. Sympathetic resonance is the main principal behind it. As in high school you have experimented with tuning forks. Strike one fork of the same frequency and bring it next to a same fork the stationary one will start to react without even touching it...Sound as we know it is movement of air, but the quality of this movement is the result of resonance of the material providing this vibration. Different material gives out a difference resonance character. For example steel, glass, marble, wood all has their resonance signature...happy listening,
Roberto.

roberto said:

I have a Power two Sonic Frontiers...and yes, it is on my CLSIIz.

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Interesting, I know there is at least one other person on the board with that amp. I love the look of the amp, and the reviews were all favoriable. However when I heard one in a store they just could not get my toe to tap. I don't think the store had the amp set up correctly, they only carried the S.F. line for a few months it seems.

Ridley Effect

I see there are a lot of questions about the "Ridley Effect".

Let me try to straighten out a couple of issues:

First, the lifetime of 10,000 hours that has been commented on. This is with continuous use, something that you are unlikely to do with a power amplifier.

With more realistic usage, At three hours/day, that's about 10 years of operation. We provide a 5-year warranty, and replacement of parts beyond this is not expensive. We are not interested in the "designed obsolescence" approach to business, and expect our customers to have these amplifiers for life.

Our preamps, which use the same technology, now have a demonstrated life of 22,000 hours, with no degradation in sound.

And finally, the high temperature of 150 degrees is much less crazy than you might think. The semiconductor manufacturers are rating their devices much higher than this now due to demands of the the automotive and laptop market. The secret to running this hot is a very controlled thermal environment.

I'll be happy to answer any specific technical questions anyone else may have on this forum.

Best Regards,
Ray Ridley

Roswell.................wrong state though, was thinking this was UFO technology.

Just kidding.

I salute those willing and able to march down their own path. I hope to hear some of your stuff one day.

Funny thing about all this. Bob Carver built amps that, according to th ewriters at Stereophile magazine were indistingishable from Conrad Johnson and Bering tube amps, and did it all with solid sate designs, and they run at just above room temperature, even when driving difficult loads...

My M-500t's sound VERY tubey and never get above 95°, even when driving my Sequels. The Silver 7t's I used to own never go warm. The only way I knew they were on was that they made music, and had a tiny polit light on the front panel, they ran that cool...

And from what I hear, the Sunfire amps are the same way--tubey goodness and cool as a cucumer.

--Richard C.

Tubey goodness... Love it