Modern Linestages

A question for Mr. Atmasphere,

Were you to design the best linestage of which you are capable, without regard to cost, and applied the "standard mark-up" formula you referenced earlier:

A) Where do you think it might weigh in?
B) What do expect the cost (per pound) might be?

We can do the rest of the math.
It might be enlightening for the OP, given the specific question he raised. (I'm kinda curious, too.)

Marty

Response34,
No need to apologize.
I wish you the best of sucess with your Purity Audio Design products.
Best Regards,

Martykl, thanks for the question. I'm not exactly sure how to answer- it might help to tell the story of the MA-3.

This is our flagship amplifier. I had the idea of 'something' for a long time but it was pretty nebulous. But along came a customer that wanted something beyond our MA-2s, and was willing (he said) to wait, **but also to pay for it**.

So I really had to think about what an amplifier like that would really be. I went though 15 chassis concepts and about 7 major circuit concepts before I settled on something that I thought we could build but also suited the 'idea'. That process took 7 years and involved a few blind alleys. Ultimately we lost money on the original amplifier, which is pretty normal on any R&D project.

Now to your question- what would such a preamp even look like? There are a lot of questions to be answered, and we have an issue of perspective- from where I sit, we already make the state of the art in that the existing MP-1 has a patented direct-coupled (and very reliable) balanced output. It has no feedback, and only 3 stages of gain from the LOMC phono input to the output of the linestage. It can drive headphones directly (something most tube preamps can't do without additional circuitry) and is fully differential and balanced from input to output.

I don't care what preamp you are talking about, what I just put in that last paragraph is a mouthful of SOTA stuff.

So to give the question justice its simply going to take time, but since this is the 2nd time this has been asked of me maybe I better devote some time to it...

This is our flagship amplifier. I had the idea of 'something' for a long time but it was pretty nebulous. But along came a customer that wanted something beyond our MA-2s, and was willing (he said) to wait, **but also to pay for it**.

If anyone is still CONFUSE, there's NO hope.