While the amplifier is indeed just a part of the system, it's a pass through device, having an input which must deal with the incoming signal, and an output, which must deal with the speakers. Therefore, mismatches can happen on both sides.
Some amplifiers will do very well with nominally 8 Ohm speakers, but may not do well with say nominally 4 Ohm speakers; most Japanese amps tend to be at least a bit like that, as opposed to many German made amps, which were initially designed for 4 Ohm speakers, albeit at a lower power levels.
A good example if the breed would be my Sansui AU-X701 from 1984. With my speakers, which are the nearest thing to easy to drive speakers I know of, it will do very well indeed, but switch over to AR94 speakers, and it degrades in performance quickly after you go over say 5W of average power. And it's balanced, very well built, and was not cheap at all when new. As opposed to my H/K Citation 24, of exactly the same power rating, which doesn't give a hoot what it's driving, it just goes about its job with no complaints. As does my Marantz 170DC power amp. My Philips AH280 power amp is somewhere in between, it does best with 8 Ohms speakers, it does degrade somewhat with 4 Ohm speakers, but not as much as most Japanese amps of the day (1979).
That this is not a matter so much of the hardware but of design is best winessed by my humble H/K 6550 integrated amp. It's a SEPP design rated at 50/70 W into 8/4 Ohms, yet manages to sound WAY better than it has any right to, and in fact, it sounds better than its 6 years younger H/K 680, at the time their top of the line model, rated at 85/130 W into 8/4 Ohms and costing about twice as much, is a dual mono design, etc.
I would go along with everything in your post, except for the latter, Dejan - my goal is for all recordings to come good: to accept that a certain album is not satisfying to listen to would be an admission of failure, for me. The "bad" recordings will never turn into gold, but their inadequacies can minimised to the stage of being subjectively irrelevant, at which point the musical event captured can be enjoyed as an experience with full integrity. In fact, these recordings, rescued from the reject bin, are the most satisfying to play - because of that fact.
Yes, having equipment that is both technically of a high order and satisfying to listen to would be a good place to be - the interesting aspect for me at the moment, as I have mentioned many times, is how far down the ladder one can go and still extract worthwhile performance - and that's remarkably low, in fact ...
Anyway, to ease the trauma of those around, I'm now fiddling with a well made, pricey at the time, name brand electronic keyboard - and I haven't fallen off my seat in amazement at how much better "quality" gear sounds,
! You see, it's all a continuum ...
Anyway, to ease the trauma of those around, I'm now fiddling with a well made, pricey at the time, name brand electronic keyboard - and I haven't fallen off my seat in amazement at how much better "quality" gear sounds,
! You see, it's all a continuum ...Yesterday I had three very unusual experiences of high fidelity. The first was via my awful miniature radio in the bathroom. It made the sound of a chiming clock to perfection. Mobile phones can do similar with the old style ringing tone. Being FM it has the potential to sound OK. I can never remember an FM radio that didn't sound OK and hardly remember a CD that did.
Later that day I was watching a film about the book In Cold blood. I was convinced something was going on in the kitchen of my house which is about 30 feet away. I had to pause the film as it was so real. It was in the film and was an atmospheric part of the sound track. The Magneplanars are very good at this. Although the sound was in the usual film style it was very accurate. The style is intimate rather than a stage play.
I am off on holiday and have a mountain of work to do before I go. So off to the shed to catch up . The BBC proms was on via an old 5 inch Samsung TV and digital decoder. I couldn't believe my ears. I was spell bound. I reflected that often so called hi fi systems can't keep me listening as long as this had. Miniature but all in focus.
Later that day I was watching a film about the book In Cold blood. I was convinced something was going on in the kitchen of my house which is about 30 feet away. I had to pause the film as it was so real. It was in the film and was an atmospheric part of the sound track. The Magneplanars are very good at this. Although the sound was in the usual film style it was very accurate. The style is intimate rather than a stage play.
I am off on holiday and have a mountain of work to do before I go. So off to the shed to catch up . The BBC proms was on via an old 5 inch Samsung TV and digital decoder. I couldn't believe my ears. I was spell bound. I reflected that often so called hi fi systems can't keep me listening as long as this had. Miniature but all in focus.
That "miniature but all in focus" quality is a very important clue - that "low grade" system was doing many things right in a range of competence, which obviously was a low volume one. My perspective is that you take that competence, and conceive of it increasing in volume to any level you desire, up to deafening SPLs in fact - my experience is that such a thing is possible, but obviously all the elements of the system have to be beefed up accordingly, as needed to get to the levels you're after. But, there is nothing intrinsically anywhere that stops that process of scaling up going up as far as you want, say to be capable of 132dB peak SPLs, and still give the same satisfaction - though, you should then stand a bit further back ... ,
,
Last edited:
Hi Frank. That's what I love about my big system. It is dial a volume and has no focus limits. The system even has bass. A sound engineer friend listened the other day and said something is very weird about the sound when pipe organ. Yes it sounds real and that is very weird. The weirdest thing is 1940 organ music on 78's still shows this. I was listening to Buxtehude the other day and said to myself that's why Bach walked 250 miles to meet him . There is plenty to dislike about my system. Mostly the accuracy. I can live with that. The big OB I have are better in many ways. They are coloured. Both speakers make me feel happy when I listen. I am fussy like you can't imagine so no small deal.
Somebody said to me once. " You are like all hi fi people , you stopped listening to music years ago and now only listen to the equipment ". Laying in the bath listening to my crap radio I thought" No ".
My VW Golf has a really nice sound system. Full range speakers and 20watts. It really communicates.
Somebody said to me once. " You are like all hi fi people , you stopped listening to music years ago and now only listen to the equipment ". Laying in the bath listening to my crap radio I thought" No ".
My VW Golf has a really nice sound system. Full range speakers and 20watts. It really communicates.
Weird, Nigel? I'd call that great, myself! As for music derived from 78's, I have no problems with such, or earlier - bring it on, I say!! One of my "goodies" is Nellie Melba, early 1910's, from cylinders - instead of the typical cartoon voice, there is a full, rich operatic voice, a real person singing, with notes that ring out with tremendous intensity - and well behind her is the piano accompaniment, with authenticity and a nice sense of space around the instrument ... I'm listening to real people performing.
This is the pleasure derived when the system gets out of the way sufficiently, makes the efforts worthwhile ...
In theory, that would be correct. Unfortunately, we do not live in theory, but in hard and heartless practice.
Interafaces are as importnat today as they always were. Some collosal mismatches can still happen. A friend had a CD player with an output impedance of 2k connected to an integrated amp with an impedance of 8.2k. That made the sound appear to be thin, almost like mist. Now tell me you would enjoy a kickdrum with the authority and weight of mist.
I agree with John that using too many buffers will eventually spoil the sound, doing exactly what it was put in to ihibit, but the older I get, the more sense I see in buffering inputs with FET high impedance buffers. That would inhibit such problems, which I admit are not very frequent, but are still frequent enough to have meaning.
I'm afraid you'll die of old age waiting for ALL recordings to sound good, Frank, because quite simply, some are bad enough to be unrecoverable. If what you have as their output is distorted and clipped sound, the better the equipment the more distortion and clearer clipping you'll get - period. But, as I said, there are occasions when you realize that what you previously believed to be a poor recording is in fact a good one, when played on competent equipment. True of both LPs and CDs.
The amp may fail not at its input, but at its output. If it's a relatively standard budget model, it is very likely to run into serious, possibly even mortal trouble if it runs up against a speaker with a truly wild electrial performance, like impedance down to 3 Ohms or less in conjunction with a -60 degree phase shift. Some otherwise highly regadred speakers were extremely difficult loads to drive, such as AR 3a Improved, or Yamaha NS-1000. The NS-1000 in particular needs a behemoth amp to show what it is capable of. otherwise you'll wonder what the hullabaloo about is all about, with lesser amps it sounds like many a cheap speaker and simply doesn't show its true face. Key pointer - if its 12" bass driver sounds like a $10 5" bass driver, you need a better amp.
I will answer for him. He did and likes them if memory is right ?
Hiraga is someone is have a lot of time for.
Who hasn't?
It was extremely popular in the second half of the 70ies. And a fine amplifier it is, the nearest thing I know after the Otala/Lohstroh amp.
I'd reccomend it to anyone with a clear conscience.
Hi,
The final version was described in L'Audiophile #15 dated April 1980.
That is assuming you're referring the Le Class A (20W)?
Ciao,
Er, ... no, I could not buy L'Auiophile here at the time, the last version I'm aware of dates back to the late 70ies.
That one also has 20W or so, a small job, altogether 8 transistors per channel, running mostly in class A and sounding GOOD!
It's still very popular here. An evergreen, you might say.
I've never met him either, a fact I regret. In 2003, he tested my filter for his magazine, and if memory serves, by then he was also Editor-in-chief of that magazine.
He measured it and listened to it, resulting in a comment to the effect of that being a no nonsense product which does exactly what it's said to do. But because of varying conditions of the power lines, it will do better in some places and less well in others, so he suggested try before buy.
In my view, that's as fair a comment as I could ever wish for, and I am grateful for his honesty and objectivity.
As for his amp, in my view, it's somewhere between the O/L amp and the rest of the pack, but leaning more towards the O/L than towards the others. Although this is a little too general, because "the rest of the pack" had some very different sounding amps; it's really more of a reference to the fact that the Hiraga was cheap to make, so in many ways, it could and should be called the poor man's taste of the High End at down to earth prices.
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.