Audiozen, do not worry about typos we all type in hurry. (Plus English is not
my first language, so I do not always pick up on them and often make many
myself.)
Now, my knowledge of circuit boards is certainly limited, but it does not come
from internet browsing and/or hi-end dealers. That is, I am a physicist doing
research in university for more than 10 years now, who in his last year of
university has taken a course on advance physics lab techniques that have
applications in industry, e.g. chemical vapor deposition (CVB), laser
lithography (LL), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and a few more others.
Since I caught this hi-fi bug, I have returned quite a few time to those lecture
notes. Regarding printed circuit boards (PCB), the lectures about LL mentioned
two thing that are of interest here: 1) that when it comes to printed circuit
boards teflon (i.e. fluorocarbon) is considered an exotic material (which while
expensive yields very good dielectric constants and dissipation factors), and
2) that most often the substrate is not pure teflon (i.e. fluorocarbon) but it
uses glass cloth and fluorocarbon resin.
I have no doubt that there are very expensive teflon PCBs and extremely
expensive teflon PCBs. It may be possible that, unlike in the C-2810 where
they used expensive PCBs, in the C-2820 Accuphase went for extremely
expensive PCBs. However, one can not pick that up from the way the terms
"teflon", "fluorocarbon resin" and "glass cloth fluorocarbon resin" are used in
the Accuphase brochures and/or by Accuphase dealers. IMO it is more
important to realize that we talk about very small returns here as these
techniques deal with 2nd and 3rd order effects. The weak point of most C-
2820 and C-3800 owners (also C-2810 for that matter) is the room which
induces zero order effects, i.e. 100 to 1000 times larger than what it is gain
by using exotic material for the circuit boards.
According to Accuphase the most important advancement in C-2820 is
further refined AAVA volume control which was derived from the C-3800. I
must admit that I find this claim by Accuphase intriguing. In the C-3800 pre-
amp, the AAVA circuit is design as a balanced network, which IMO does not
seem to be the case in the C-2820. (The schematics in the C-3800 manual
clearly show a balanced AAVA, whereas the schematics in the C-2820 manual
show a design that is not balanced and that is very similar to the one in C-
2810). What I would say that the C-2820 borrows from the C-3800, is the
superior power supplies but with less caps. (The C-2810 seems to have the
transformers developed for the older C-2800 model). This should make it
more dynamic than the C-2810. Though, ultimately this will depend
sensitively on the power amp and the speakers that are used.
Here comes my take on this matter, or what I call dealer's talk vs. the
"poor's man" talk, i.e. me. The difference between the C-2810 and
C-2820 is roughly 10K and the difference between the C-2820 and the C-
3800 is also about 10K (at least in Europe). The dealers, will always tell one
that a C-2410 is almost a C-2810, that a C-2420 is almost a C-2820 or that
a C-2820 is almost a C-3800. Whereas I would tell anyone to take the 10K
difference, to do some bargaining with the dealer and to get a DG-48 room
correction system together with a "smaller" preamp. A C-2810 + DG-48 will
yield better results than a C-2820, or a C-2820 + DDG-48 will yield better
results than a C-3800. As mentioned, the room affects the sound significantly
and the Accuphase DG-48 (also DG-38) do a marvelous job at correcting this.
In the end, I should maybe apologies to the rest of the contributors here for
"brutally" attacking Audiozen and going way off topic in my debate with him. I
wrote my posts yesterday after reading Audiozen's thread above on PMC vs.
Salk speakers. I lost my patience with him when I read that he never listen the
C-2820 (as I also remembered some of his other posts and my previous
encounters with him here on Audiogon).
I will be glad to hear Audiozen's opinions on the AAVA volume control in C-
2820 vs. the on in C-3800. Not as a preach but as a constructive discussion.
Paul
