Audio Research preamps EXCESSIVE OPERATING COSTS


Soooo disappointing.
So you want to use in home theatre mode.  Get ready to pay up to operate.   The tubes stay on and when family uses system 10 plus hrs a day for tv and videos, the tubes burn away.  Most of the 8 tubes have life of 4000 hrs and cost $150 per tube to replace.  Over 5 years operating costs could approach $5000 or more.  And this excludes wasteful elec costs of $100 to $200 per year for bulbs running without being used.   Sooooo disappointing.


I called audio research and they confirmed all this.  Further, they lacked any sensitivity to theses issues.  Seemed kinda arrogant.  

Sooooo disappointing.
emergingsoul

Showing 1 response by mwinkc

Decooney, yes tubes were used in TVs for years... not because they worked well, but because that's all we had.
I remember pulling the heavy TV  out from the wall, removing the 10-20 screws and power cord interlock so I  could access the insides of the TV,  making a map of where each type of the 10-15 tubes were located or in some cases, hidden...pulling them all out, driving to the electronics store with a showbox full of tubes and testing every one of them...getting positive results on many, negative results on some and unknown results on others. You spend money buying replacements for the known bad ones and maybe some of the questionable ones, take them all home and carefully re-install the tubes, put the cover on, cross your fingers and turn it on. If it worked, great! If not....back to the store to re-test the questionable ones, repeat until it works.
This was a once in 6-18 months routine.
No...when transistors became available, NOBODY kept building TV s with tubes. SS was the way to go.
Yes, I have a tube phono stage and it's great. And, it's only on for a half hour to an hour before I listen to an LP, and gets turned off when optical or other digital sources are in use.