It seems.-)
I compare with diy-se or other good stuff. And I do use extreme diy-fullrange. And I do use extreme modified sources. And I do not listen any "audiophile records". And so on.
Trust me, the AM1 sounds better than EVERY Accuphase or KRELL or so, but is not a clean and homogen amp - compared to: look above.-)
I compare with diy-se or other good stuff. And I do use extreme diy-fullrange. And I do use extreme modified sources. And I do not listen any "audiophile records". And so on.
Trust me, the AM1 sounds better than EVERY Accuphase or KRELL or so, but is not a clean and homogen amp - compared to: look above.-)
Don't get me started on cork variability and cork's non-zero effect on flavor and aging profiles. I built a pretty decent sized business because of that.
Wine is always a terrible analogy anyway. See, when people claim that X or Y is important in winemaking, they back it up with blind tasting data rather than ever-fanciful stories; I became experienced at designing and performing sensory tests for exactly that reason.
If you attempt to use basic logic and evidence on someone whose goal is to tell fanciful stories, it will not be productive.
Sorry Andrew. Not sure how I missed your question.
The output resistor is in parallel with an inductor BUT I will have to check the emitter resistors. Hmmm, think I may have made a mistake
I bet I measured it with my multimeter, when I should have used the DATS
Just got back from shopping
Thinking about it whilst looking around Tescos, I only assumed they were emitter resistors because they are around 2.5 to 3watt and are well off the circuit board (they look like the output resistors, only a different value).
I know it's not the best amp in the world but I think it's incredible value for money. You'd be lucky to buy an enclosure for that sort of money, let alone build a whole amp. If it had a bit more detail in the higher frequencies, I'd struggle to find fault with it.
Speakers are my own design. Passive 3-way.
Source is a Playstation 3 playing WAV files off a USB stick. DAC is a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic (the original one with the Wolfson dac chips). Clock has a separate transformer with a PFM flea to power the clock and Teddy Regs powering everything else IIRC (it was years ago that I modded it)
Speaker cables are just 13amp flexible mains cable (very short runs) and interconnects are Chord Chrysilis (Naim used to recommend this cable for non-Naim sources to Naim amps or the other way around).
Just took the lid off my other CA AM1 and the "Emitter or whatever they are" resistors are 4.7R. Can't be bothered to remove them from the board but the colours are, Yellow, Purple, Black, Silver, Brown. And the output resistors are Brown, Black, Black, Gold, Brown (10R).
All capacitors are those KYS type apart from the two 100uF 50v caps that now made by "Yungli" (I think that's what it says on the side).
All capacitors are those KYS type apart from the two 100uF 50v caps that now made by "Yungli" (I think that's what it says on the side).
Tzzzz. Eieiei. Uiuiui.
Sorry. I do not know, where I could start;-))-;
If you trust me: Build, or buy, any little se - one or two step, transes or tubes - not important -, not expensive and easy - and no separate pre-amp. That would be the benchmark.
Your speakers will sound ugly than. Start to tune these, to modify, to get, step by step, better results. To get much much experiences in speakers and to get an (early) end of multiway. Cause: The se will not play depths, mids, highs, it will play homogeneously and analytically. A fullrange only has a chance to keep up,-) No joke. Less than 20 kHz are enough.-) (No joke,-!)
Wires: speakers 0,6 mm solid core. Line current too. NF: slaughter any very cheap in-ear-headphone (laqueured lace with little diameter;-) Do not use RCAs! Much much better, and cheaper: DIN!
Source: Use your pc or tablet or mp3-player without separate DAC. Resell the remainder and buy good beer or wine or records (If vinyl, use a Salas RIAA, as example) to enjoy,-)))
If you trust me,-)
Sorry. I do not know, where I could start;-))-;
If you trust me: Build, or buy, any little se - one or two step, transes or tubes - not important -, not expensive and easy - and no separate pre-amp. That would be the benchmark.
Your speakers will sound ugly than. Start to tune these, to modify, to get, step by step, better results. To get much much experiences in speakers and to get an (early) end of multiway. Cause: The se will not play depths, mids, highs, it will play homogeneously and analytically. A fullrange only has a chance to keep up,-) No joke. Less than 20 kHz are enough.-) (No joke,-!)
Wires: speakers 0,6 mm solid core. Line current too. NF: slaughter any very cheap in-ear-headphone (laqueured lace with little diameter;-) Do not use RCAs! Much much better, and cheaper: DIN!
Source: Use your pc or tablet or mp3-player without separate DAC. Resell the remainder and buy good beer or wine or records (If vinyl, use a Salas RIAA, as example) to enjoy,-)))
If you trust me,-)
So I believe I know your point. But it seems you don't know my point yet...
My point is not about incorporating "taste" (which has no relation with reproduction) into audio. About this, I may have my own views which will still be different with yours. But for get about this, it is not my point.
I agree about the aim of hi-fi, which is to "reproduce" sound. The question is "which part of the sound?". It's easy to answer this if the reproduction system is PERFECT, because the answer is we want to reproduce ALL parts of the sound...
Which one is similar: (A) male dog with female dog (B) male dog with male cat? This question represents the analogy for imperfection in the reproduction. When it is not perfect, and there is no answer, you cannot "enforce" that the answer should be A because dog to dog is more similar than dog to cat. If people choose SIZE as the determinant factor, I call that convention (Biologist may prefer other factor, who knows).
So the convention to determine similarity or high fidelity of sound reproduction is...? Bring up the dictionary, government law, rule or audio society convention, audio guru's opinion or whatever you can find and lets see if everyone will agree with that, or if it is sufficient enough to include all "parts" that will have an effect on sound reproduction.
Regarding distortion, I doubt that it is more important to the majority of people than it is for me.
Many people enforce that distortion is critically important when they don't have the capability to differentiate 1% THD to 0.1% THD in ears-only test. What is wrong with these people? Most people that strive for ppm distortion are those who cannot hear it! Believe me.
If you can hear minute details in audio reproduction, you will know that in the output of 0.05% amplifier (or may be even the best amp in the world) there are a lot of things that is NOT supposed to be there (and I'm not even comparing to the "source" which will bring the discussion about "taste", but comparing to the input). Then it is your decision to include/exclude what you think is more critical or not.
There are a lot of parameters that is considered INAUDIBLE, and this is where the mistake originates.
The 10R is output resistor in parallel with a coil (as you have correctly noted).
The 4.7R is a zobel. It is in series with 100n cap.
Attachments
You cannot enforce that all people should have the same "taste" with yours. It has been mentioned (by Vacuphile I believe) that a fullrange for example has a tendency to have unacceptable distortion level. I'm very sensitive to distortion, and that's why I don't go with FR (not even with the sweet-spot 2nd order crossover) even tho I realize how many goodies we can get for free (without big effort) in that approach.
But I agree that people should taste that approach to know what is possible.
But I prefer the hard way...
I watched many youtube videos on swimming. Some coaches teach the "wrong" things to swimmers but I prefer to do the right things even if it is hard to do.
But I realize that from productivity point of view, the right thing is not always better, especially when we are not "there" yet. Some techniques for example is critical if we want to have minimal drag in water, but what is the point if speed is not yet the critical objective.
So may be there should be a "balance", a transition from wrong approach to correct approach. To know what is correct, in business process engineering I'm "trained" to look for best practices. In swimming, I look at how people like Michael Phelps did it.
The above swimming story is an analogy to creating the best audio system. To get the best possible is never easy. Enjoyment is a valid objective as it does exist in listening to live performance. In my audio approach, I try to go for the lowest distortion I could hear (I set 0.002% as the threshold of diminishing result) and solve the issues that come along with it.
In my previous analogy (swimming) this is what I call productivity.
We listen to sound coming out of transducers (speakers), not coming out of amplifiers. So when the speaker cannot handle the truth, then it is more productive (for our enjoyment) to mask it
But unfortunately I couldn't find any distortion that can make music more enjoyable...
In my previous analogy (swimming) this is what I call productivity.
We listen to sound coming out of transducers (speakers), not coming out of amplifiers. So when the speaker cannot handle the truth, then it is more productive (for our enjoyment) to mask it
But unfortunately I couldn't find any distortion that can make music more enjoyable...
Distortion is everywhere in the audio chain. Especially in the speakers.
Take a simple Elna Silmic capacaitor - They seem to divide opinion. They can a sound a bit soft. Elna Cerafine can sound a bit course. Some people (me included) like the sound of paper midbass drivers. They seem to make electric guitars more realistic - Why? At a guess, it's probably break up or some kind of distortion.
There's no perfect sound.
This is a good example of the "distortion A" versus "distortion B"...
You like paper driver, not because paper distortion is enjoyable. But because you don't hear the worse kind of distortion in stiff cone drivers. So it should be clear now that no distortion is good.
Paper has high damping properties, while stiff material not. Stiff material with less natural damping may ring at high frequency. In term of amplitude, paper's low order distortion is usually higher, but in term of intrusiveness (or fatiguing effect) the higher order distortion is more disturbing.
Multimeter should read an "almost shorted". Whatever that would be............................The output resistor is in parallel with an inductor BUT I will have to check the emitter resistors. Hmmm, ........................
I bet I measured it with my multimeter, when I should have used the DATS
That is a measurement even though it has a lot of tolerance on the result.
My multimeters generally read 0.1ohms or 0.14ohms.
If I try to measure a 0r22±5% then I would expect to see 0.3ohms on the 2000 count DMM and 0.35 to 0.37ohms on the 50000count DMM.
But none of these readings can resolve the tolerance of the low value resistor.
I use a different method to allow me to match emitter resistors to <0.5%
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Hi Fidelity is not only about THD
A good example of why THD is not sufficient to describe "fidelity" is in the naturalness of the sound/music. This musically correctness should be part of fidelity, shouldn't it? You can make a low THD amp that sound unnatural because THD is based on single sine wave input which doesn't have the characteristics of real music.
This is actually what I meant with the third level consisting of 1% people who can judge amplifier sound by this characteristics. I put small numbers here because from looking at people's amplifier designs, I know when they don't understand about this from no emphasis on linearity in their designs.
People always talk about linearity but have you read how it affect sound perception?
You are right, this is not easy to hear, so you assume that as long as the THD is low, good amplifiers should be indistinguishable. But that's wrong. There is also big issues with power supply that can make or break an amplifier sound (at microscopic level but I believe is critical, not because I can hear it well, but my hypothesis that lots of people can "feel" it consciously or not).
Another case example is why some people (including me) still using tube. It is not because we or I like distortion...
A good example of why THD is not sufficient to describe "fidelity" is in the naturalness of the sound/music. This musically correctness should be part of fidelity, shouldn't it? You can make a low THD amp that sound unnatural because THD is based on single sine wave input which doesn't have the characteristics of real music.
This is actually what I meant with the third level consisting of 1% people who can judge amplifier sound by this characteristics. I put small numbers here because from looking at people's amplifier designs, I know when they don't understand about this from no emphasis on linearity in their designs.
People always talk about linearity but have you read how it affect sound perception?
You are right, this is not easy to hear, so you assume that as long as the THD is low, good amplifiers should be indistinguishable. But that's wrong. There is also big issues with power supply that can make or break an amplifier sound (at microscopic level but I believe is critical, not because I can hear it well, but my hypothesis that lots of people can "feel" it consciously or not).
Another case example is why some people (including me) still using tube. It is not because we or I like distortion...
You're assuming things that I didn't say.
Polypropylene drivers have even higher damping than paper and plastic drivers are the worst for reproducing electric guitars.
I had some 10" Tannoy studio monitors years ago (plastic midbass driver). They produced some of the most realistic vocals (male and female) of any speaker I've ever owned. They also sounded very alive at low volumes but could produce 'Disco' SPL levels with very little power, but they couldn't produce electric guitars correctly and that goes for all the other plastic coned speakers I've owned (Some very expensive Dynaudio monitors included).
I was like you years ago, thinking that low distortion was the ultimate goal. One day you may come to the conclusion that reproducing good sound is a lot more complicated than that. Until that day comes (assuming it ever does) we'll have to agree to disagree.
I agree with you on the plastic cones...
There are a lot of parameters going on in driver and speaker design. Stiffness for example, must be considered along with mass. Final damping is a function of motor design. So in general, cone material cannot be analysed independently...
Regarding plastic vs paper, there are inherent different characteristics. For example when we see the ability to "absorb" wave ripples, plastic stands between metal and paper.
Also when we talk about electric guitars (especially the pedal drive) we are talking about amplifier clipping that can generate HF garbage to speakers. We are also, I believe, dealing with cone flex, which is a situation where the cone loses its pistonic behavior. And when we talk about flexing cone (cone resonance) we must observe the difference between common plastic and paper cones...
Right near the center of the cone, where the coil is connected, is the strongest part of the cone. Dust cap will usually enforce the cone at slightly higher perimeter/diameter. At higher perimeter, for paper cones, usually the cone is not homogenous, but stronger near the center. For plastic cone, usually it is homogenous right after the dust cap.
Also the shape of the cone. All good paper cones that I know have exponential curvature. This increases strength of the area near the center where force is high. I have seen plastic cone where it is non-exponential.
I'm not sure where we should agree to disagree...
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