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ICE Amps for classical music?

I listen to classical orchestral music at heavy volume. I detest reproduced music for always sounding more or less electronic and not acoustic. Real music is beautiful in a way reproduced music--so far at least-- never is. I have become curious about Wyred4sound amps because of low price and high watts. I am wondering if any of you "mostly classical" listeners have heard these amps and feel they do no more damage to music than amps which are NOT ICE amps. I am using a Plinius SA100 now and have used a VAC 100/100,
a Bedini Classic 100/100, a Music Reference RM-9, and other tube and solid state amps. They all had their pluses and minuses, of course, but for least electronic, clearly the Bedini was the winner. So what about ICE amps?
rpfef
dob
577 posts
 
"How can classical music sound natural at a heavy volume ? "

The answer to this interesting question lies in the attendance of classical music concerts parrtucularly orchestral, choral and operatic ones. You will be surpised to find out that SPL at your ear varies from zero to about 115 dB (if you happenn to conduct the orchestra during this attendance as well).

This variation is not in the form of the since wave (as most of amplifier manufacturers try to convience us with many useless specs) but according to the capricious imagination of a composer and even more capricious interpretation of a conductor.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
"You will be surpised to find out that SPL at your ear varies from zero to about 115 dB"

Yes, but recorded music is compressed - tailored for average audio system.
weseixas
519 posts
 
Guidocorona..

Yes many times and i tend to get seats that are no further back than the 8 th row as most are recorded no further back than row 3-5 .

A symphony as most anything that comprises live un-amplfied instruments , goes from soft and delicate , to large and powerful, they never sustain high volumes.

Whenever a statement is made about playing symphony music loud, it tells me their system is compressed and lacking in low level details and dynamics, noted due to the system's inability to swell like live music.

Listening to a symphony on a system like that, would be nothing like a live symphony, no matter how loud you turn it up.

Dob,

In the past , many moons ago , i used to measure avg usually 82-88db , crescendos sometimes hit a peak of 109 db from row 7.
weseixas
519 posts
 


Even with compression, you can get a pretty good imaginary symphony to scale ...
dob
577 posts
 
"Yes, but recorded music is compressed - tailored for average audio system "

Keith Howard (Hi-Fi News Sept 2007) made actual measurments or peak power and peak SPL obtained using B&W805, Music Fidelity power amp and classical music recordings.

His measured peak SPL was about 110 dB (and corresponsing peak power was 3500 watts)

On other hand - most of today recorded music is compressed. This is one of the reason why I like Golden Age recordings...seem to be much less compressed.
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