Gain without AUDIBLE distortion exists and (except for fashion audio) is quite a bit more common in hifi these days than gain with distortion.
The problem is to agree on what levels is audible.....
And the ear isn´t linear which have lead to different types weighing when measuring.
Not arguing for anything speciell here just an interesting subject the human hearing.
And on top of that the different orders of distorsion makes a great difference.
Just using THD as the scale isn´t the ultimate....if you ask me.
It's quite simple. Do a level-matched ears-only test comparing input to output. If you hear a difference, you've got an effects box. If you don't hear a difference, you've got hifi.
Yes, within reason, THD alone is insufficient unless it is quite low. That's why we do spectrum analysis, IM, frequency response, impedance, noise, overload recovery, and stability as part of a routine measurement suite.
For a line level unit working into a constant known load i agree that´s a good way.
For an amp working with different types of loads.....
It´s very hard to hear and even to measure and most of all to predict all different situations that can occure.
To create different transient situations and measure them is one thing.
The hearing memory is short so to be able to hear the difference takes a much sharper tool then my ears.
Running THD measurement into a resistive load isn´t telling the hole truth about an amps performance IRL.
I think i now have drifted off topic from the off topic subject
.Please can I have £5 for every time a 'subjectivist' mentions THD when criticising 'objectivists'? They talk about it far more than we do.
We don't believe in THD as the only or major test of amplifier performance. We rarely mention it. We do believe it tells us something, so regard claims that it tells us nothing to be merely silly.
We don't believe that resistive loads tell the whole truth. We do believe that they tell us something.
We are happy to defend views we actually hold, so could the criticisms be restricted to those?
I´m not pointing fingers or critisicing anyone here.....or at least that was not my intention.
I have and use a fairly ok set of measurement tools so i´m neither a great believer subjektivism.
I thought it was ok to discuss the subject with an open attitude please tell me were i´m wrong cause every day i learn something new is a good day
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Remember when you are listening to music you have a 36.8 petaflop computer doing the analyzing of what's coming out of your speakers... My computer running Visual Analyser just shut down in embarrassment.
"The most powerful systems in the world are ranked by the total number of “petaflops” they can achieve. A single petaflop is equal to 1 quadrillion calculations per second — or 1,000 trillion operations. By comparison, IBM researchers have estimated that a single human brain can process 36.8 petaflops of data."
"The most powerful systems in the world are ranked by the total number of “petaflops” they can achieve. A single petaflop is equal to 1 quadrillion calculations per second — or 1,000 trillion operations. By comparison, IBM researchers have estimated that a single human brain can process 36.8 petaflops of data."
I wouldn't be surprised if the actual number devoted to auditory processing is less than 5% of that.
a long way better than my PC.
And it does so much in parallel processing.
I can see and hear and taste and breath and stand up and pump blood and process my stomach contents and check for bacteria that should not be there and keep my body fluids in balance and...and..... and.....
It's not only about numbers. It's also about criteria of selection and processing which can be similar for two persons in the best cases but never the same! That's just one reason why conditions are not invariant as they should be for physics to work. Maybe one could find a way around by averaging but I don't think that the result will be so useful for the individual. Actually it could be quite misleading as history tells us....
Also we should not forget that the sound is not perceveid through the ears only. The human body is full of receptors that can inhibit our vital organs and thus the emotional state.
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