Rating: 
Summary: Response to Bill Fiorucci (Hazelwood, MO (St. Louis County)
Review: I have to comment here on Bill Fiorucci (Hazelwood, MO (St. Louis County) review shown below. It is so unfortunate that people like Mr. Fiorucci can condemn Mr. Slone's amplifier designs without ever once listening to one. I have known Mr. Slone for over 4 years and I can attest to the fact that the designs he presents in his books are his own original topologies (unless stated otherwise). I have heard numerous types of Mr. Slone's amplifiers and I can tell you straight up that these amplifiers have astonishing sonic excellence and I would put them up against any amplifier class; solid-state or vacuum tube. I am no stranger to high-end audio and neither are several of my friends and associates. In "every" case once a person has the priviledge of auditioning the amplifiers they immediately find they have a new reference amplifier. I have also auditioned Mr. Slone's fully discrete Class A preamplifier and I can tell you I was not prepared for the sonic experience I got. In a word: spectacular. Furthermore, I have shown the amplifier to two high-end speaker manufacturers as I was curious as to how the amplifiers would sound to "expert speaker builders". In both cases the fellows said "I have heard detail and resolution coming out of my speakers I have never heard before." One of the fellows had a McIntosh amp that he used as his reference, and he later e-mailed me telling me the Slone amplifier "blew the Mac away". I am 100% serious here. The detail, resolution, transparency, realism and sheer power of these amps can only be experienced. If someone resorts to writing unsubstantiated, rude and hateful reviews (like Mr. Fiorucci did) without even having the decency to build up one of the amplifiers and actually listen to it, then he does a great injustice to Mr. Slone's hard-earned and well deserved reputation. I understand there are over 2,000 of Mr. Slone's amplifiers in circulation in one form or another "out there" and in every review I have ever read on the internet from people who have actually LISTENED to the amplifiers, the reviews are all positive and many times overwhelming so. My advice is to do your own homework by going a search in the Audio Forums and read for yourself. Better yet, go listen to or build-up one of these amazing amplifiers for yourself. You will be utterly convinced, and will hear what a truly high-end amplifier can deliver. Pure science, pure audio.
Rating:
Summary: Does high-end amplification at a mid-fi price interest you??
Review: If so, you need this book. Better yet, buy all three listed here at Amazon as I did. Randy's easy to read writing style makes learning about electronics and amplifiers fun, as any hobby should be. Granted, this book will not make you a electrical engineer but it will open your eyes to the inner workings and design of amplifiers in general.The book contains many projects as indicated by it's title. Randy's Seal Electronics offers these projects in kit form. I purchased his Opti-Mos kit. Talk about ease of assembly. And, if you have a problem he is as close as the telephone. "What does the amp sound like", you ask? For my ears, AWESOME!! So there you have it. A great project sourcebook with readily available kits for a true hands on learning experience and
as an added bonus you even get to speak with the author.
Rating:
Summary: A Store House of Audio Information.
Review: Randy has done a wonderful job of compiling a tremendous amount of information and high quality schematics in one book. "Source" in the title of this book is apply named. I thoroughly enjoy the nearly A-Z coverage of Audio circuits and the high degree of common sense descriptions that go along with them. If you are an Audio Hobbiest, then you should not be with out this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great resource for audio projects
Review: This book covers pretty much every kind of audio circuit you could wish to build. I find Randy's writing style very easy to read and the pedagogical tone of the book makes sure that everything is explained down to almost the last detail (although you do need some knowledge of electronics). Minimalist audiophiles probably will find heresy lurking in the pages, particularly Randy's views on sonic `accuracy' versus `niceness'. That said, Randy does provide a discrete preamp and his position on tubes vs solid state appears to have softened somewhat compared to earlier views expressed in the `High Power Audio Ampilifier Construction Manual'. Indeed his OPTI-MOS design actually tries to simulate the soft clipping inherent in many tube circuits, and it also doesn't try to drive the distortion in to the three zero's range (although it is still `low' by any standard). I am little surprised that Randy doesn't present a one box 6 channel home theatre power amplifier design (although perhaps people don't consider this `audiophile').
I found the discussion of active crossovers perhaps slightly over simplistic (I don't recall any mention of the phase characteristics of the drivers themselves). However, as with the rest of the book I think it is a good springboard to more sophisticated systems. Also quite a bit of the information in the power amp and power supply sections can be found in the power amp book (although there is a new discussion of power supplies for signal processing systems - a good read). There is also a really useful chapter on creating balanced and unbalanced lines as well as stepped attentuator resistance tables.
All in all I've had a lot of fun reading the book and have learnt a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Best source of audio related projects
Review: This book really sets the standard for other books dealing with building audio equipment.
The projects listed are straight forward with operational description and pcb layouts as well as the schematics. The author clearly sets what the goals of an ideal amplifier should be (debunking any predominant myths that come along with such bold statements) and leads the reader to various designs and projects following the goals. The numerous projects listed are all described very well (some with pcb layouts), and Randy provides many options to choose from building your ideal audio system. I built his opti-mos design and the sound is pure harmony, like nothing else I've ever heard before (I had a couple bumps along the way but Randy is extremely helpful providing answers via email). You can be sure that if you have a design question regarding an audio equipment, you'll find the answer in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Amplifier projects but not good design: a cookbook
Review: This is a smaller and more project-oriented version of this author's earlier book on building solid-state audio amplifiers. The amplifiers in this book are "plain vanilla" Class B direct-coupled transistor amplifiers, which will provide reasonable performance for utility or musical instrument use, but due to the lack of precision-matching of semiconductors and the "more-is-better" approach to using NFB, these are not going to compete in sound with Krell or Threshold. It's delusional to think otherwise. Rather than a clean sheet of paper engineering effort walking the reader through all aspects of these designs, this is basically a presentation of a completed design as "the one true amp". I believe this author basically cookbooked these himself from works by Hood and others. More effort is made in this volume to explain the etching of printed circuit boards. It's my belief that this is inherently an unpleasant and messy task and that the PCB era coincided with the near-death of hobby electronics in the U.S. for precisely that reason: much of the renaissance in audio hobbyist equipment building is soley due to the re-popularization of vacuum tube amplifiers built using 1950s techniques. (No ferric chloride involved.) Personally, I think this type of amplifier is more effectively bought than built today, but if what he has is what you want, it will probably work reasonably well and is at least built from common parts. Don't delude yourself that these are truly a high-end product: compare them to mass-production amplifiers costing a little more than the retail price of all the parts and you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Amplifier projects but not good design: a cookbook
Review: This is a smaller and more project-oriented version of this author's earlier book on building solid-state audio amplifiers. The amplifiers in this book are "plain vanilla" Class B direct-coupled transistor amplifiers, which will provide reasonable performance for utility or musical instrument use, but due to the lack of precision-matching of semiconductors and the "more-is-better" approach to using NFB, these are not going to compete in sound with Krell or Threshold. It's delusional to think otherwise. Rather than a clean sheet of paper engineering effort walking the reader through all aspects of these designs, this is basically a presentation of a completed design as "the one true amp". I believe this author basically cookbooked these himself from works by Hood and others. More effort is made in this volume to explain the etching of printed circuit boards. It's my belief that this is inherently an unpleasant and messy task and that the PCB era coincided with the near-death of hobby electronics in the U.S. for precisely that reason: much of the renaissance in audio hobbyist equipment building is soley due to the re-popularization of vacuum tube amplifiers built using 1950s techniques. (No ferric chloride involved.) Personally, I think this type of amplifier is more effectively bought than built today, but if what he has is what you want, it will probably work reasonably well and is at least built from common parts. Don't delude yourself that these are truly a high-end product: compare them to mass-production amplifiers costing a little more than the retail price of all the parts and you won't be disappointed.
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