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Re-Lauch of the SAE Brand

MakeMineVinyl

MakeMineVinyl

Well-Known Member
As some of you may know, I'm an engineer at ATI (Amplifier Technologies). ATI was originally SAE back in the early days, then the SAE brand was purchased in the 80s by a 3rd party, then bought back by ATI, and has languished for many years.

ATI has re-launched the SAE brand with a new stereo amplifier, and I'm particularly happy about this because I had a large hand its design. The first release is called the 2HP (for 2 horsepower). I've seen it covered in a few magazines and it has a dedicated website (http://hear-sae.com/products/sae-2hp/). Hopefully the reviews will start coming soon.


In designing and laying out the 4 layer circuit boards, I took a very unusual approach for an audio amplifier of using power-plane techniques which are more typically used in computer PCBs. Also, I took extreme care in keeping absolute symmetry of the current paths of each device in the signal path, along with the use of double-weight copper PCB traces, some of which were made of extreme width, and covering all four layers, so that there would be no compromise in current carrying capability or imbalance of currents which could cause distortion and noise.

The result of all this is that the amplifier measures as good as a top notch preamp - only it does it at 800 watts per channel :banana-rock:

Unfortunately, if you have to ask how much it costs, you probably can't afford it...

I just had to share this because its fun to be in on the rebirth of an iconic brand.
 
TO me, the more kids in the pool the better. It's good to have more options.
 
Whoa.... Nice! Yeah I'm probably in the never-would-own-this-unless-I-sell-my-house crowd, but still, that's impressive - both power, and more so, the s/n rating.
 
PaulyT said:
Whoa.... Nice! Yeah I'm probably in the never-would-own-this-unless-I-sell-my-house crowd, but still, that's impressive - both power, and more so, the s/n rating.
Click to expand...

Now that most amplifiers get very good specifications, two are still extremely hard to make exceptional; noise and distortion at high frequencies (20kHz region). Take a look at the full power distortion verses frequency plot of just about any good amplifier (when they even publish them), and you will see a dramatic increase in distortion in the 10kHz and above region due to the amplifier running out of loop feedback. The SAE's distortion is almost a flat line across the entire audio band, and is still below .01% at 20kHz at 800 watts. At 1kHz, it is something like .005% at 800 watts; something you would associate with a preamp, not a power amp. I'm pretty happy with that.
 
Okay, I'm a dumb ass.....who the heck are you ?
Maybe my Dr didn't put everything back in when he cut me up....I promise, I'm getting better.
Wardsweb, do you have something to do with this ?
SAE is back, thats a good sign.
 
Their Director of Marketing, Bill Skaer, contacted me back in November of last year and again after CES in January. We were discussing this amp and possible local store fronts with really good speakers to set up a demo in San Antonio, Dallas or Houston.

Some of you may know I have been an SAE enthusiast for a couple decades. I even flew out to Montebello and met Morris. Once he learned I was technical, he was like a proud Papa showing me some of his design schematics and builds. He was doing some cool stuff with optically isolated outputs and manufacturing for several well know brands. Cool trivia: Morris collects Ferraris. He has one in the manufacturing warehouse and a picture in his office taken from the air above his house showing many lined up in his circular driveway. He even let me go through a huge closet of NOS SAE gear and purchase what I wanted. ATI was in the same building that housed SAE. I shipped back a pallet of stuff still in original packaging. I still run a full SAE rack of gear in my office at work. I got to be close friends with James Bongiorno, one of the designers that went through SAE back in the day. I have a file cabinet full of SAE owners manuals, service manuals and original blue line schematics on D plot paper that James sent me. I even built and maintained James website for his Spread Spectrum Technologies company until his death. It is now owned by Wyred 4 Sound. I worked with EJ Sarmento there to transition things over to them.
 
Barney said:
Okay, I'm a dumb ass.....who the heck are you ?
Maybe my Dr didn't put everything back in when he cut me up....I promise, I'm getting better.
Wardsweb, do you have something to do with this ?
SAE is back, thats a good sign.
Click to expand...

I'm the ententity perviously known as soundhound.
 
rammisframmis said:
Barney said:
Okay, I'm a dumb ass.....who the heck are you ?
Maybe my Dr didn't put everything back in when he cut me up....I promise, I'm getting better.
Wardsweb, do you have something to do with this ?
SAE is back, thats a good sign.
Click to expand...

I'm the ententity perviously known as soundhound.
Click to expand...

Piss on it! :handgestures-thumbup:
 
Lone Stranger said:
rammisframmis said:
Barney said:
Okay, I'm a dumb ass.....who the heck are you ?
Maybe my Dr didn't put everything back in when he cut me up....I promise, I'm getting better.
Wardsweb, do you have something to do with this ?
SAE is back, thats a good sign.
Click to expand...

I'm the ententity perviously known as soundhound.
Click to expand...

Piss on it! :handgestures-thumbup:
Click to expand...

Damn, you discovered the secret sauce. :happy-smileygiantred:
 
rammisframmis said:
PaulyT said:
Whoa.... Nice! Yeah I'm probably in the never-would-own-this-unless-I-sell-my-house crowd, but still, that's impressive - both power, and more so, the s/n rating.
Click to expand...

Now that most amplifiers get very good specifications, two are still extremely hard to make exceptional; noise and distortion at high frequencies (20kHz region). Take a look at the full power distortion verses frequency plot of just about any good amplifier (when they even publish them), and you will see a dramatic increase in distortion in the 10kHz and above region due to the amplifier running out of loop feedback. The SAE's distortion is almost a flat line across the entire audio band, and is still below .01% at 20kHz at 800 watts. At 1kHz, it is something like .005% at 800 watts; something you would associate with a preamp, not a power amp. I'm pretty happy with that.
Click to expand...

So, in what application would this be used, more beneficial, than...say an ATi 2 channel amp? Would the improvements be audible?

Cool design by the way.....though I'm not nuts about the faceplate. A plain SAE logo would have been cool....but I like plain.
 
rammisframmis said:
Unfortunately, if you have to ask how much it costs, you probably can't afford it...
Click to expand...
I'd still like to know. And I can't find any information about even its MSRP anywhere.
 
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