OP said:
I mock this stuff because it is so eminently mockable. But the fact of the matter is it is also nice stuff to know. You just need to keep straight that its nice stuff to know, and not drink the Kool aid and start thinking you can actually build a music system with it. You can't. You can only build a music system by listening and evaluating by ear.
Look, some of these tech stories are really well crafted. For sure. Heck I start to believe them myself sometimes! Over the years though I noticed some things. Several tube amps would drive speakers just as loud as I wanted, and feel more powerful doing so, and have greater bass slam and extension, than some other amps that were on paper much more powerful. Smaller power supplies, less capacitance, more powerful sounding.
Now listening99 I hope you are listening because I want you to listen to this. Someone gonna attack me for this on the basis of some technical reason or other. They will in doing so glide right past the fact it sounded better, more powerful, with greater extension. A lot of them know this to be true. Heck a lot of them have heard it, actually experienced it themselves. So they know, on some level, the pointlessness of the tech talk. Nevertheless they persist. Nevertheless they try and explain away reality. Just watch.
The technical reason for this, at least the one we are given, is bandwidth. The claim is made that transformers with greater bandwidth sound more open, dynamic, and powerful. So there is a technical explanation. Might be right. Then again, might not.
I'm studying amplifier tech because I'm running into some difficulty when running the STA200 into my Moabs, at high volumes characterized by significant bass extension: think giant BOOM and you get the idea. Most of what I listen to is jazz/acoustic, so it's not a big issue until I move over to something that emphasizes boom, so I'm curious as to how the tech shows up in these applications..
I mock this stuff because it is so eminently mockable. But the fact of the matter is it is also nice stuff to know. You just need to keep straight that its nice stuff to know, and not drink the Kool aid and start thinking you can actually build a music system with it. You can't. You can only build a music system by listening and evaluating by ear.
Look, some of these tech stories are really well crafted. For sure. Heck I start to believe them myself sometimes! Over the years though I noticed some things. Several tube amps would drive speakers just as loud as I wanted, and feel more powerful doing so, and have greater bass slam and extension, than some other amps that were on paper much more powerful. Smaller power supplies, less capacitance, more powerful sounding.
Now listening99 I hope you are listening because I want you to listen to this. Someone gonna attack me for this on the basis of some technical reason or other. They will in doing so glide right past the fact it sounded better, more powerful, with greater extension. A lot of them know this to be true. Heck a lot of them have heard it, actually experienced it themselves. So they know, on some level, the pointlessness of the tech talk. Nevertheless they persist. Nevertheless they try and explain away reality. Just watch.
The technical reason for this, at least the one we are given, is bandwidth. The claim is made that transformers with greater bandwidth sound more open, dynamic, and powerful. So there is a technical explanation. Might be right. Then again, might not.