Are future improvements in Amp/PreAmps slowing to a crawl?

hi @ roger_paul
I guess the loss of distortion has become a single minded pursuit for many amp maker - HAlcro; Neodio; LAvardin - do they not address 'velocity' already?
It is fascinating that single ended amps and valves - particularly OTL designs have such legions of fans and they major on the reproduction of a live sound.

"As a bit of a tip: its probably not a good idea to talk about 'distortion-less' in the way that you do, it strains credulity."

~~~~~~~
Yes, straining credulity is my job. I hate it when people touch my stuff.

@parrotbee 
" I guess the loss of distortion has become a single minded pursuit for many amp maker - HAlcro; Neodio; LAvardin - do they not address 'velocity' already?"

This is a good question and the answer is no.

The reason is because you need a method of detecting velocity first before you can correct it - and then you have to do it in real time (without any delay). 

If years ago Ray Dolby was to post a comment the he has found a way to reduce noise in tape recorders - the reaction from this crowd would be "that's impossible - there's no way to prevent the magnetic material from....bla bla bla."

Sorry.

Honestly you know from my previous posts that I do not consider myself as a "know it all" but I do have much more data on the problems with analog amplifiers and ways to make them work without distorting.
Is it difficult to do? Hell yes. Is it impossible? Hell no - I got it to work.

I have tried to share with this audiophile community some of my discoveries regarding sound reproduction that has resolution on a biblical scale. As it turns out I do have a distortion-free amplifying method already and it does produce "live" sound by default. This was the target of my work. It's not magic and I'm no genius. I simply took the time to figure it out. I have had to learn how the brain recognizes a live event from a reproduced event. The accuracy need to satisfy the brain that it is real (live) is a specific property of the sound waves you are listening to. It turns out to be a very simple yet very difficult thing to get right. As I've said until I'm blue in the face - its velocity. The actual speed at which the music signal traverses through an amplifier. It has to match the speed of a sound wave traveling on the outside of the amplifier. The solution is to synchronize the output velocity to the input velocity. It comes in at the speed of sound and it exits at the speed of sound. (same thing as air).

That is exactly what I have done. Period.

When you do that - you have cloaked the electronics and emulated the the most important property of air - its stable velocity. Your brain is satisfied that "this is real and happening now".

The bottom line is going to be the near future. That is when the full method of distortion free sound reproduction will be shown. While it is compatible with current recordings, I am about ready to start making recordings that also have no distortion so as to realize the complete capture and playback with unprecedented results.
I can clone a sound event and repeat it on demand. If the clone is 100% correct - you will not be able to tell the difference. I am not afraid to do the homework even if it took years.

All I can say is watch the news.

Roger

the reason is because you need a method of detecting velocity first before you can correct it - and then you have to do it in real time (without any delay).

Although I find much of this amusing, I do agree that speed is important. Our amps don't sound like tube amps partially because they are so fast; there are very few solid state amps that are as fast as our amps. In that way our tube amps differ quite a lot from the vast majority of tube amps.

As I understand it Roger, you have a means of detecting this 'velocity' but what I found peculiar last time I engaged in this topic was that you had not quantified this velocity as a specification. I'm pretty sure you're not talking about risetime/slew rate.

Actually you just pointed out something that I'm sorry I was not more clear about and it might cause confusion. You are describing speed as in vertical (like slew rate) how fast can it switch between power supply rails.

Velocity is not measured vertically - it is speed as seen along the horizontal axis (time domain).
When you drop a pebble into a pond - the rings flowing away do so at a rate that shows expansion. That is the velocity. The height of the expanding waves (intensity) would be in the vertical axis.

This is why I said that the electrical switching (slew) speed is very fast. But the time measurement I'm talking about would be a race from the input to the output.

A drummer hitting a rim shot can cause a near explosion of energy in amplitude (vertical) but it still flows to the audience members at one (horizontal) speed. No matter how large the transit it still arrives at the back of the hall by traveling at the speed of sound (approx 750 mph).

This horizontal rate seen in the amplifier MUST stay fixed at 750 mph for you to think it was traveling through air.

Any non-linear event happening along the vertical axis causes the speed of horizontal path to vary resulting in an acceleration or de-acceleration of the delivery speed. Like wow and flutter in a tape machine.

It is microscopic Doppler and causes the image to go out of focus.
My auto-focus circuitry can produce a countermeasure along the time domain (a time warp) of extremely tiny amounts. As small as one thousandth of a degree of phase shift. These amounts are so small it has to use red shift and blue shift.

The velocity detector itself can pick up less than a nano volt discrepancy in a line level signal. The gain of the detector is massive. This much pressure is used to lock the red and blue shift generators in a dead battle for no motion or movement (reference point). If the music signal begins to drift ahead of the reference (in phase) by any amount (1/1000 of a degree) it is stopped in real time by the appropriate red or blue shift from becoming a harmonic.

It literally cannot distort.

It matches the flow rate and stability of air. The amplifier treats the music signal as an actual wave. It therefore maintains the speed of sound (Mach One) as the exit speed.

The amplifier becomes "invisible" and acts like a hole in the wall.
In fact that is the sensation. Listening through a portal passing the air disturbance pattern of the original venue (in the past) through the portal and into the present without missing a beat and with no distortion.

An actual miracle.

Your brain instantly accepts the experience as live because it recognizes the accuracy of the delivery speed. In the meantime a complete totally stable image of the original event is "phase locked" in front of you.

Your brain can easily pick out a single instrument in the orchestra and filter out the rest with ease. This only happens with live music because the locations are so stable your brain can apply a vector based filter to block anything it is not "paying attention" to.

It is the same thing as being there.
This took me 30 years to figure out.  

Roger