Quote:
The previous years 1018 weighed 34 lbs and was based on the low end model of the Elite series. As someone else mentioned earlier in another thread it looks like the trend is that quality is going down as the number of features has gone up this year for some receiver brands.[/quote]I'm just guessing but I am pretty sure this is happening mostly because:
1) the price of raw metal has been climbing higher & higher at scary rates for the past few years and since a receiver's power amp uses lots of it - the power transistors' heat sinks* of course but in particular the power transformer (where much of a receiver's weight comes from) which is crammed full of iron plates and copper wire - to keep their prices competitive, I'm sure many manufacturers are probably cutting back on their receivers' power output which in turn translates to lighter weight.
So the
build quality of the receiver can be just as good as before, but now relatively speaking it just doesn't generate as much power for the speaker system.
2) shipping costs - a major "hidden" cost of consumer products - are going up because of fuel prices, so any reduction in product weight helps reduce [i]that[/i] cost.
3) the economy sucks and the leisure(?) electronics manufacturers need to economize just like the rest of us.
*
I've also seen more and more power amp sections equipped with small fans - this is probably an attempt at reducing the cost of the heat sinks by making them smaller by sharing cooling duties with a forced-air system
