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

Here are some comments...

http://v2.stereotimes.com/post/hcat-df100-mk-iv-and-high-fidelity-pro-cables-a-followup/

This was coupled with another product under review at the same time.
It also preceded the most recent breakthrough (higher rez) that is yet to be reviewed.

I don't understand much, if any, of Mr. Paul's explanations for his discovery/invention

I would not feel bad about that. I suspect that mach 1 has nothing to do with the inside of an amp. Given two explanations, its likely that the simpler one is the correct explanation. We have Mr. Paul's rather lengthy explanations and we also have a very simple explanation for the same thing.

Air is anything but a constant when dealing with the speed of sound. Humidity and air pressure both play a role. Do you have compensation for pressure and humidity?

There is no compensation necessary. Assume 750 mph as normal. Even if the concert hall all of a suddenly became 20 degrees warmer and loaded with humidity the actual speed of sound may go up or down by a small percentage but where ever it ends up - (751 mph?) it is constant.

For it to have an impact on the velocity tracking that I'm talking about it would have to change (as above) between notes in the performance.
And even then it could only screw up the image for that quick second until it remains stable again at the new value. Temp and humidity generally take a long slow time to modify the speed of sound.

OK- so despite my asking several times it appears you did have a measurement system after all! Why didn't you just come out and say so the first time I asked?

This measurement is something that is applied to the circuit design itself - not to the unit on the bench. It tells me the level of resolution that the built unit will have. But it is not something that you can attach as probes to the hardware itself. Once I have the data given by the virtual analyzer it only confirms the current circuit configuration and settings will be repeated for each unit built to that schematic. 

If I were to try modifying the circuit to increase the resolution - it would have to pass the virtual test measurement first before implementing the mod into production.

I designed the computer model to interact with some of the hooks in the spice simulation software. I also use the Tina software (Texas Instruments) simulator.

I actually had to contact TI and notify them of a bug I found in the software that was falsely reporting raw THD measurements. They have since recognized the problem and have updated their software.

Their technical staff suggested I "send them my schematic" and they will see what kind of distortion issues I have. (Ha!) I said no thanks just fix the program.

Hm. I don't suppose you see where the problems are in your response here?

I'll point them out: First, apparently you don't have a measurement system as one of your recent posts seemed to suggest. You have a simulation method. Simulations are great when the simulation system works and they really suck when they don't. The thing is, if you don't then back up the sims with actual real world data, the sim might be helpful but you can't know that its accurate. Some simulators are pretty good these days, but I've seen them be a mile off.

One example I know of resulted in an ESL to be really hard to drive. Turned out the sim was nothing like the real world measurement- it was a country mile off. Once that was pointed out to the designer and corrected, the speaker became a whole lot easier to drive and better sounding at the same time.

In your case we have several problems. First, there is nothing to suggest that an amplifier has to operate at the speed of sound. I think any designer would agree that a good amp will treat all frequencies with the same speed. Most are much faster but none run at the speed of light. So you have to make a far more convincing argument; one that is backed up by some sort of physical law. The conclusion you jump to by simply declaring that amps have to be as slow as air is not logical- but I can see it appealing to those who don't have an engineering background.

The second problem is a physical measurement of the performance of your circuit is required. Without it no-one (including you) could say if it even works at all- right now the position you seem to be in is that you have an amplifier that sounds nice but to separate it from the competition you've come up with a panacea that no-one in the industry seems to have even heard of!

The problem with that scenario is that sooner or later you will run into someone that takes it personally when they see that there is an attempt to pull the wool over their eyes. Further telling them that they are just not up to 'speed' (if you will pardon the expression) is not actually the way to solve that problem; in fact its a recipe for making it worse.

What's hurting you right now is you don't have any means of proving that what you say is true. Its not enough to ask someone to trust you. Its further not enough to say that you've been working on it for however many decades (or that you found a bug with someone else's product; I can tell you from personal experience no-one cares). People often devote their lives to ideas that are mistaken. So I would encourage you to come up with a physical test that allows you to differentiate your amplifiers in the way that you say they are different.  Put it in a box and then show how other amps to measure up.

What’s hurting you right now is you don’t have any means of proving that what you say is true

I’m not being hurt by this. its just like the quote says "A Failure to Communicate"

The concept of two speeds referenced in an amp is just not registering.
Until there is a way I can tell this in a way the an "EE" can understand it - its not going to happen.

There are 2 axis seen in o’scopes
A sound event has data that is displayed on both axis.

1: The event has height or amplitude (you see a transit that might represent a rim shot)

2: It has a time or duration (see on a scope as the horizontal distance from when the transient started to when the transient ends.

If you want to know how long it lasted you would adjust the horizontal sweep rate to "spread out the display so as to get an accurate time or duration of this event.

Hopefully there is no disagreement with this statement..

Take the slew rate for example. It is defined as volts per microsecond.
Volts = height or vertical distance traveled
Microsecond = Time it took to swing that many volts from beginning to end.

I don’t want to confuse you by talking about slew rate - I just want to separate the vertical axis (and what it represents) from the horizontal axis (and what it represents)

When audiophiles remark that "wow this is a fast amp" they are generally talking about the ability of the amp to put out quick transients (tiny bells, upper keys on a piano, triangles etc.)
Clearly they are talking about it being faster than perhaps another amp that can’t "present" the top end as well. The latter may have a worse slew rate or some bandwidth limitation that does not allow the extension of the upper part of the spectrum.

You were closer to understanding what I’m talking about when you refereed to propagation delay or group delay.

If I said that the INPUT signal (source) has a speed (before it even begins to travel through the amp) would that make sense to you?

I believe a have a way to describe this with more clarity.