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How close to the real thing?

Recently a friend of mine heard a Chopin concert in a Baptist church. I had told him that I had gone out to RMAF this year and heard some of the latest gear. His comment was that he thinks the best audio systems are only about 5% close to the real thing, especially the sound of a piano, though he admitted he hasn't heard the best of the latest equipment.

That got me thinking as I have been going to the BSO a lot this fall and comparing the sound of my system to live orchestral music. It's hard to put a hard percentage on this kind of thing, but I think the best systems capture a lot more than just 5% of the sound of live music.

What do you think? Are we making progress and how close are we?
peterayer
weseixas
519 posts
 
Frank ,

I hope Kirkus have you figured out, this way at least one of us can follow along ... :) :)
weseixas
519 posts
 
Tim,

Triode.......
irvrobinson
295 posts
 
Atmasphere, I noticed that the output impedance of one of your amps is about 4 ohms, and I assume that impedance is not perfectly linear across all ten octaves. So, isn't that high output impedance going to affect the audible frequency response of the amp-speaker combination, and in ways that vary with every different loudspeaker's impedance curve?
irvrobinson
295 posts
 
Mapman says:

"Well, the whole negative feedback issue has been beaten to death pretty thoroughly already in other threads.

My conclusion is that it is just one of many design and execution factors that affect results depending on how well it is executed."

I couldn't agree more.
fas42
58 posts
 
Atmasphere, unfortunately the way you present the concept of feedback with the term "propagation delay" helps to 'propagate' (sorry, couldn't help it ... :-) ) a misconception about negative feedback. Yes, "negative feedback is always lagging behind" but it is still able to "correct the signal it was supposed to". If it ends up lagging by 180 degrees, half a wavelength, with gain still happening, then you have positive feedback, and an oscillator, and fried tweeters!

So, the feedback ALWAYS lags, even by some tiny amount, but that is just part of the understood design of any working circuit. You can easily buy one of those "terrible" opamps with much more global feedback then a typical audio power amp, that is working comfortably at microwave frequencies, that is, beyond 1,000,000 kHz -- not bad for such a "mediocre" part!

Global feedback in an audio device, on the other hand, with discrete components is typically rolled off (because it has to be for stability, remember the oscillator!) to become non-existent at the higher frequencies, where it is most necessary, and where the ear is most sensitive to distortion -- that is part of the real problem. Also, that is why nearly all gear has rising distortion at higher power, and higher frequencies; in other words, it is not the presence of feedback that's the problem but that at the very time it is most needed, it's done a bunk ... :-) !!

Frank
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