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... how important is Damping factor in determining what amp to buy

Hi there...

Just how important is damping factor in determining what amp to buy?

In literature and specs - I find this is an often left-out bit of info...


justvintagestuff
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,841 posts
 
Who wouldn’t want better control of the bass drivers? Wouldn’t that yield tight and accurate bass
Actually no. It **might**. Any loudspeaker can be overdamped- IOW, you can have too much damping. The result is 'punchy' bass without much in the way of definition (also called 'body' when low frequencies are being described). The correct bass will have punch and definition at the same time.

If you have too much damping, the speaker can't make the excursion it should to reproduce the waveform- which is why you loose definition. On top of that, the **amount** of 'punch' you get will not be correct (punchy, but not enough). A lower damping factor can allow for more bass excursion. Too much excursion of course and you have muddy bass, but IME that is actually pretty rare- most acoustic suspension speakers are internally damped already, while most bass reflex, horn and open baffle designs (which includes magnetic and electrostatic planars) really don't need that much.

larryi
4,032 posts
 
If I knew absolutely nothing else about two amps, except that one has a damping factor of say 4 and the other had a damping factor of 1,000, I would take the amp rated 4 (it would most likely be a tube amp, and perhaps a single-ended triode with only one output tube).
folkfreak's avatar
folkfreak
1,349 posts
 
As the owner of a pair of VTL MB 450 III with adjustable damping factor (4 settings) I can attest to the fact that damping factor matters. Obviously it's an interaction with the rest of your system but as I got my room resonances under control I could lower the DF on my Magico Q3s and now have it at the lowest setting. The effect of lowering DF is to lose some immediate "punch" in the bass but replace it with greater air, scale and overall body which is much more preferable. My suspicion would be that too many amps (especially solid state) are over damped but that's just my preference and I'm surprised more manufacturers don't offer adjustable DF

ps I can't find any specs on what the VTL damping factors actually are for the four settings, anyone know?
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Actually no. It **might**. Any loudspeaker can be overdamped- IOW

Atmasphere is correct in this regard.

An example was the Linn Isobarics and the Sara which were voice to have great bass with Naim amps of the day, that had 20 damping factor. When a big Krell (>100 damping factor)was put on these speakers they had NO bass, too tight.

This was because Linn designed these speakers with a very over damped (low Q) bass, so they only sounded good in the bass with amps that had low damping factor. (just another marketing ploy by Linn, who were in semi partnership with Naim in those days.

Another similar case to (damping factor, but impedance matching) is poweramps that have very low 1kohm input impedance that could only be driven with preamps with very low (<10ohm) output impedances, usually of the same brand naturally.


Cheers George 

almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
Folkfreak, I couldn’t find any indication of the specific damping factors for the four settings provided on your amp, as you couldn’t, but I did find this statement in the datasheet (which you’ve undoubtedly already seen):
Another new feature is a user adjustable Damping Factor feedback control that allows the user to adjust the amplifier’s output impedance by varying the amount of negative feedback. Impedance can now be precisely set to suit the listener’s taste, and to improve control of the loudspeaker loads to deliver best performance. The 4 possible settings are:
1. LOW -- Lowest damping factor, good loudspeaker control, most natural sound.
2. MED -- Better loudspeaker control, with some impact on sound quality.
3. HI -- Best loudspeaker control, with a little more impact on sound quality, but on speakers that need the control the sonic improvement is clear.
4. MAX -- Maximum damping factor, but sonic impact is noticeable
So since the amp’s damping factor is being adjusted via feedback, changing the setting can be expected to affect sonics in ways that are in addition to the change in damping factor itself. Most likely including changes that occur in the amp’s distortion characteristics. The "Low" damping factor setting, btw, is undoubtedly the one which utilizes the least amount of negative feedback.

Also, given that it is a tube amp I would expect that the damping factors corresponding to all of the settings would be at most not a great deal more than single digits, perhaps 20 or so at most. Which per my earlier comment would make it very expectable that sonics would change significantly among the various settings.

In any event, it certainly looks like a very impressive amp!

Regards,
-- Al

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