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An Audiophile's journey

Well, How do I begin? First of all you english teachers out there just don't read this and we'll both be the better off for it. English grammer and spelling is something that I'm not well educated in. I will tell you that I'm a business owner and at 45 years old I don't hit a lick anymore so, all you proper spelling and grammer people just eat your heart out! Now let's get to what I have to say. I've been an audiophile since I was a kid in the 70s. My parents used to punish me by sending me to my room. It was grounding me for being bad. I was bad a lot! My Realistic receiver, BSR turntable, Technics cassette deck was my best friend. Oh, I forgot to mention my Advent loudspeakers. Anyway, I went all these years with solid state gear. When I finally got old enough to not be punished anymore(at least by my parents anyway) I got some Martin Logan SL3 speakers and a Krell amp. I just thought I had arrived! Bring it on everybody! Several years went by. I ventured into trying a tube amp on my SL3s. WOW! What revelation! It was a Rogue M120 Monos. I remember thinking why can such an outdated technolgy be so right in my rig. Then as time went by I got involved in this new website called Audiogon. Audiogon made it possible to buy and sell stuff at a minimal loss if you didn't like it. WOW! What an Idea. Poor dealers! This was late 90s early 2000. Those were the good old days. There were just a few of us excanging ideas and information. It was like an audiophile AA! I bought and have tried so many pieces of gear that I've forgotten more than others know! Then the SET revoltution came. Man, I fell hard. I've since went back and forth several times from SETs to solid state or push/pull tube amps always trying to find that nirvanna or fountain of youth of audio. Fastfoward through the great Bill Clinton years, I tried my hand at being an in home dealer and found that dealing with audiophiles was worse than babysitting children. So, that didn't last long. I still have some connections but, recently I've been blown away! A couple years ago I had a friend that got some popular UCD digtital amps to try and I thought they had great potential. But, still weren't my SET horn combo. Now this SET horn combo was a biamped system with a digital amp on the bottom (600Hz and below) and a SET amp on the top. It was, what I thought, the magical audio reproduction machine. Then a friend got a Spectron Audio Musician III SE MK II amp for his Aerials. He was blown away. He kept after me to hear his rig. Well, to make a long story longer I gave in and listened. I'm as fimiliar with his rig as I am my own. We decided to hear it in my rig. I didn't habe speakers suitable for this monster of an amp. So, I got some Dali Helcon 400 MkII for audition and we went at it. Well, to say that history was made is an understatment. I've since been selling all tube gear and living in audio heaven. I can't beleive that there is not the first tube in my rig now. My take on this is that solid state manufacturers were resting on there laurels during the late 80s and 90s. That why a 300B SET amp came along and all the people were freaked out by the great sound an 8 watt amp could produce. That great midrange! It's what brought audio out of the dark ages. Solid state has gotten on the ball since then. Digital has come a long way and is now sitting in the catbird seat. Sorry for the ramblings this Monday afternoon but, just had somethings on my chest.
philefreak
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,318 posts
 
However you can make a speaker pretty much independent of amplification by making it "active".

You mean like ATCs and PMCs?
magfan
1,583 posts
 
Rwwear, In addition to impedence there is the matter of Phase Angle. Some amps are simply not tolerant of huge phase angles and will heat up or otherwise show there displeasure. You made note of this issue but I think it really deserves near top-billing as a reason.

Some speakers are notorious for being bad on amps, and part of it may be not only the low dip (Apogee Scintilla?) but huge phase angles, which may be brought on by massively complex crossovers.

As for active speakers, I think one of the major drawbacks is simple economics. It is less expensive to make a speaker out of available drivers and electronic components without having to buy / vett an amp and than provide aftermarket support.

I don't think speaker designers give a HRA about amplifier designers. If they did, we would not have need of some amps now deemed 'necessary'.
I am as guilty as anyone, running 85db, 4ohm speakers, and panels at that, which are power hungry, but at least a reasonable load.

That being said, I still fondly remember my first exposure to the than new Braun Tri-amps....LV 1020?
oem
91 posts
 
Rwwear>>> your big Krell can indeed drive any speaker,but isn't it quality of sound that we all seek.
IMHO The Big Krell is not a good match for every speaker.
I recall an instance when a Hafler 500 was driving Quad 63's.The Hafler was able to drive any known speaker at the time.It drove the Quads so well that they blew up.
shadorne's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
An active speaker may work well with the proprietary internal amp but is even more dependent on the specific amp designed for it.

Rwwear,

I agree with you entirely.

However, my point was that the speaker is designed, built, tested and specified with its built in amplifier to function as a whole. This eliminates the dependence on power amplification/load issues for THE USER by specifically designing an optimum solution for it. If you don't agree with the manufacturers optimized solution and final product, then just like with a passive speaker you are free to choose from many "active speakers" and certainly not just ATC or PMC: other examples are Meridan, KRK, Adam, Westlake, Genelec, Quested, Meyer, Tannoy, Paradigm, Linn, B&O, Mackie, Wharfdale, Klipsch, Yamaha, NHT etc.

Here again I find a high current/powered amp essential. Which is also the reason I used a Krell amp when I helped design speakers for an OTL amp company.

Exactly my point. Do you design the amp and spec it for an 8 ohm and a 4 ohm purely resistive load? Do you desigtn to handle the odd speaker that hits less than 2 ohms (like Infinity) and what compromises does that entail when you do that? Do you design the speaker for a high or low output impedance amp? In fact, what do you design for when building an amp? There are many choices. Do you make the amp less stable but with better specs by giving it extreme bandwidth and low output impedance??

Surely if you know exactly what load the amp is driving and over which bandwidth then you can optimize it (which is what Active speaker manufacturers try to do, often quite carefully in their anechoic test facilities with expensive test gear). Generally there is a range of what manufacturers' use to define "optimized" - from small low cost active (that use the design advantages to reduce cost or footprint) to high cost active speakers (where design is used to maximize the performance of of the combination) - you take your pick.

Alternatively, in a passive setup, the USER is forced to try different components (mix and match) and "earball" things at the delaer or in the home setting and try to decide what sounds most right together. Or possibly canvas opinions of other USERS on what they agree sounds good/right. In any case, this inevitably means the USER is testing a few of what are hundreds (if not tens of thousands) of possible combinations where power amplifier interaction with a complex load will be another Isometimes significant) variable in what is heard. In the worst cases of mis-match between load and amoplifier, I would expect even minor effects like speaker cables resitive/inductive/capacitive effects (although extremely small) may start to affect the sound or stability of the combination with certain music at certain SPL's (whenever or wherever difficulty for that particular combination is encountered).

The compromise for tube lovers is that no active speaker with a built in power amp will run on tubes (due to microphonics) However, the way I understand it - those who choose tubes are really looking to get a different sound from Solid State anyway (better from the tube lovers perspective), in which case, an amplifier that is dependent on the speaker load that it connects to is desirable!

In summary, I tried to tackle the specific question "Can you name just one amp that is not speaker dependent" - I said there isn't one - so we agree! However, I believe that active speakers are largely independent of what they are coupled with (no "combination" effect - just the additive effect of "active speaker" response/coloration with source pre/amp coloration but NOT the additional coloration of the two combined affecting eachother in a "third' from of coloration)
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,841 posts
 
Rwwear, given the example you gave, any amp can drive any speaker. However, in the context of what has become high end audio, it will not always drive the speaker *well*. Even a set of our smallest amps can drive a set of the old Apogee Full Ranges, which are 1 ohm, but I would not say that they do it well.

The impedance curve of the Sound Lab is low at high frequencies and high at low frequencies (much more than 16 ohms). While there is little energy at high frequencies, in the case of a transistor amp, there is the possibility of over-emphasized highs, and not enough in the lows. Sound Lab is an excellent example of what I am talking about, as any amp will 'drive' them, but few play them well. Its about getting that last nuance of performance that is the difference between hifi and music. Sorry- there is not a Krell made that can really do that on a Sound Lab.

Similarly, very few transistor amps can make a Lowther or PHY sing (and all of those amps are zero loop feedback). Nor can any tube amp play set set of B&W 802s properly (you will always be 3 db down in the woofer region). It is watching this phenomena for over 30 years from the perspective as a designer ('the Journey') that brought me to the distinctions in the white paper, although everything in it has been well-known, but not always connected.
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