Let me end the Premp/Amplifier sound debate ...
I'm old enough to remember Julian Hersch from Audio magazine and his very unscientific view that all amplifiers sounded the same once they met a certain threshold. Now the site Audio Science Review pushes the same.
I call these views unscientific as some one with a little bit of an engineering background as well as data science and epidemiology. I find both of these approaches limited, both in technology used and applied and by stretching the claims for measurements beyond their intention, design and proof of meaning.
Without getting too much into that, I have a very pragmatic point of view. Listen to the following three amplifier brands:
If you can't hear a difference, buy the cheapest amplifier you can. You'll be just as happy. However, if you can, you need to evaluate the value of the pleasure of the gear next to your pocket book and buy accordingly. I don't think the claim that some gear is pure audio jewelry, like a fancy watch which doesn't tell better time but looks pretty. I get that, and I've heard that. However, rather than try to use a method from Socrates to debate an issue to the exact wrong conclusion, listen for yourself.
If you wonder if capacitors sound different, build a two way and experiment for yourself. Doing this leaves you with a very very different perspective than those who haven't. You'll also, in both cases, learn about yourself. Are you someone who can't hear a difference? Are you some one who can? What if you are some one who can hear a difference and doesn't care? That's fine. Be true to yourself, but I find very little on earth less worthwhile than having arguments about measurements vs. sound quality and value.
To your own self and your own ears be true. And if that leads you to a crystal radio and piezo ear piece so be it. In my own system, and with my own speakers I've reached these conclusions for myself and I have very little concern for those who want to argue against my experiences and choices.
@mahgister it does not matter how well one treats a room in terms of the direct path sound. One would hear the direct path sound before any reflections arrive. Whether or not those reflections are high level or super reduced. While the room may be important, it is not going to fix the amplifier. |
Try to understand my point without repeating a common place evidence... A bad electronic design or a corrupted source CANNOT be compensated or repaired by a room acoustic... Who does not know that? Who? 😁😊😎
My point is that acoustic control method are more powerful than most upgrade Of gear.... My second point is acoustic is the way, in most case, to transform your system and put it on another level : his true peak working optimal potential.... High quality sound experience is not the AUTOMATIC result after buying a 100,000 bucks piece of gear to replace a 50,000 one... Sorry if you dont know that... 😁😊
It is very easy to buy a good amplifier to begin with...Because electronical audio design is mature industry with good products available... My point is when you have basic good gear the REAL WORK begin, and it is not upgrading to improve MORE because of your " taste" ... Sorry! If acoustic cannot improve a bad quality design, buying and plugging will not replace acoustic... 😁 It is studying acoustic et experimenting with it which is the way and the only way...And especially understanding psycho-acoustic also a bit.... Who dare to say that in audio forum? Me and very few others... Almost all sell their "taste" in gear all over the place ignoring acoustic.... What i claim is not a common place fact like what you just say... It is a scientific fact: it is acoustic and psycho-acoustic which can explain almost all of our audio experience... This does not means that all amplifiers sound the same or speakers...Not at all for sure... This means the main method to listen to the gear you already own it is putting it in an acoustically controlled room... If not, you will never know how your system can sound in optimal conditions and the difference is HUGE.. It is not an opinion here on my part, it is my experience... Not a common place fact at all because most people have no experience with acoustic anyway...Or very little because in small room passive treatment is not always enough to create immersive filling the room sound experience...It takes active mechanical control with Helmholtz resonators AND DIFFUSERS... it is the reason why i insist about that... And anyway acoustic in a dedicated room can cost peanuts , i proved it to myself... I say all that to alert newcomers and advise them to think before throwing money... Most people here are not bankers or billionaires able to buy and plug without even thinking... All people are not able to afford a pro acoustical dedicated room either... It is possible to create one at very low cost... Then i sell hope and creativity and acoustic science... Who say better?
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Ok @mahgister I get the room stuff, it was just that a lot of the recent posts were on distortion and it being something that differentiates one amp from another. Sorry that I thought you were tying the acoustic room stuff with the amp distortion. |
@holmz +1 My thoughts exactly. that Stereophile nonsense caused me to suspect Mr. Carver so many years ago; the latest debacle with an amplifier that can't make anywhere near full power sealed the deal IMO.
Its nice to think audio is a mature technology. But its no-where near as mature as people like to think. If it was, tubes would not still be around; solid state circuits would have replaced them and no looking back (as happens in any field where the new tech replaces the prior art). The problem has been that the semiconductors needed to really supplant tubes (meaning: to make a solid state amp that isn't harsh) didn't exist in the 1970s or 1980s. We had a proper understanding of control theory in that time, but oddly, didn't apply it to audio (probably because if that was actually a goal, no power amplifiers would have been produced 😁). So feedback networks for the most part have been poorly designed and we have several decades worth of solid state amps that come off harsh and bright, especially when you turn it up. IMO this is mostly because the gear was made to make money so the companies making it didn't care that it fell well short of the goal of sounding like real music. Sorry to sound curmudgeonly... This has been what has kept tube amplifiers in business the last 70 years since they do offer a way around this issue (they make enough lower ordered harmonics to mask the harshness of the higher orders they also make). But in more recent times semiconductors have advanced to the point where you can get rid of that pesky brightness/harshness for which solid state is known. IMO we've only just arrived near the top of the R&D sigmoid curve in audio in the last ten years or so. |
