I hope nobody minds, but I'm gonna take a poke at some of these, just for fun.
Sure, as musical descriptors.
No. On the grand scheme of things, in this day and age, with the electronic devices we have, an audio signal is actually quite low on the spectrum of complicated signals that are passed through devices billions and billions of times every second, in nearly every device we have in our homes.
If you can flummox a transistor by giving it something more complicated than a sine wave, then it's broken. We can't just add attributes to a device that has one design goal (take a signal and add gain) and still use the term linear. Once an amplifier can be identified that doesn't follow the rules, or tries to circumvent them by purposely molesting the signal, it should be taken apart or discarded.
Sure, my favorite word to use is "Amplifier." Mr. Amplifier, if working properly, isn't prejudiced against some signals, unless it's broken.
While we're sitting here, waxing poetic about all the ways a properly designed amplifier should be considered non-broken despite insisting that it has attributes that can only be considered distortion, let's all realize that you're currently looking at a computer screen, which is displaying hundreds of thousands of colors across just as many pixels, and we're not confused at all about how it could possibly draw straight lines around this browser window, or how it could possibly display text spaced evenly.
It does all this in a cheap integrated circuit that probably costs all of twelve cents. Even the most complicated musical signal has less information in one second of duration than a postage stamp sized image..and all of this is passed through hundreds..or even thousands of circuits, processors, chips, cheap wire, et cetera..yet somehow, all the pixels line up where they should. They don't shake around, they don't change colors on you, they don't play tricks.
But, we still sit here while looking directly at a component that came from the wal-mart special bin, doing a task that's 100,000x more complicated than the electrical signal representing a classical concert, yet somehow, in our minds, a basic device like a voltage gain stage can still have all these ghostly qualities that if they actually existed in an electrical context, would pretty much completely destroy our entire digital infrastructure.
Sure, as musical descriptors.
In the same way that one spoken sentence becomes an electrical signal over a telephone.
An interesting twist of a question, honestly, it seems crafted to illicit a certain response, however it does it by summing two disjoint terms. Amplifiers don't really care what the signal is, so we can't ask a question that requires them to care.
In a properly working amplifier, no. One would have to start with a broken amplifier, or break it intentionally in some way to get the output to vary from the input.
Yes. This is really irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
No. On the grand scheme of things, in this day and age, with the electronic devices we have, an audio signal is actually quite low on the spectrum of complicated signals that are passed through devices billions and billions of times every second, in nearly every device we have in our homes.
If you can flummox a transistor by giving it something more complicated than a sine wave, then it's broken. We can't just add attributes to a device that has one design goal (take a signal and add gain) and still use the term linear. Once an amplifier can be identified that doesn't follow the rules, or tries to circumvent them by purposely molesting the signal, it should be taken apart or discarded.
Sure, my favorite word to use is "Amplifier." Mr. Amplifier, if working properly, isn't prejudiced against some signals, unless it's broken.
Yeah, in this thread, as well as the ones that crop up about doing RCA cable burn-in.
Because it can be experienced with any of the senses. This whole discussion is starting to take a slightly religious turn, I'm not sure that's wise.
While we're sitting here, waxing poetic about all the ways a properly designed amplifier should be considered non-broken despite insisting that it has attributes that can only be considered distortion, let's all realize that you're currently looking at a computer screen, which is displaying hundreds of thousands of colors across just as many pixels, and we're not confused at all about how it could possibly draw straight lines around this browser window, or how it could possibly display text spaced evenly.
It does all this in a cheap integrated circuit that probably costs all of twelve cents. Even the most complicated musical signal has less information in one second of duration than a postage stamp sized image..and all of this is passed through hundreds..or even thousands of circuits, processors, chips, cheap wire, et cetera..yet somehow, all the pixels line up where they should. They don't shake around, they don't change colors on you, they don't play tricks.
But, we still sit here while looking directly at a component that came from the wal-mart special bin, doing a task that's 100,000x more complicated than the electrical signal representing a classical concert, yet somehow, in our minds, a basic device like a voltage gain stage can still have all these ghostly qualities that if they actually existed in an electrical context, would pretty much completely destroy our entire digital infrastructure.
scott wurcer
Nice to see you here
I read those articles and what I gleaned from those discussions are that levels of sensitivity in electrical circuits can exceed our current ability to measure them.
SY
Really? Please elaborate.
fas42, abraxalito
Welcome, both.
I know the accepted axiom is if it measures right it will sound right and all three of the main audio postulates presented will automatically be optimized but most of us know from experience this is not the case. More important is what is measured and how it is measured. There are many tweaks that are performed after the initial measurements which are voicing an amplifier but are not being named this way. If taken in the broader sense, the design choices of amp bandwidth, response curve, slew rate, damping, etc. are all ways to voice an amp so I find it curious that some reading here seem to be offended by the aim of this thread. No one would suggest that these amp parameters are not within the control of the designer so how are the deliberate choices made about these things not voicing? Amps are asked to reproduce recordings made with various equipment and various methods. When you know how an amp is voiced, you can optimize the source content for the playback to your taste. By introducing a framework where these kind of optimizations can be identified and communicated, the end user and the amp designer will better know what to expect when the music is played back. My understanding is that no one before me has ever thought to do this and I believe it can be valuable.
Nice to see you here
I read those articles and what I gleaned from those discussions are that levels of sensitivity in electrical circuits can exceed our current ability to measure them.
SY
Really? Please elaborate.
fas42, abraxalito
Welcome, both.
I know the accepted axiom is if it measures right it will sound right and all three of the main audio postulates presented will automatically be optimized but most of us know from experience this is not the case. More important is what is measured and how it is measured. There are many tweaks that are performed after the initial measurements which are voicing an amplifier but are not being named this way. If taken in the broader sense, the design choices of amp bandwidth, response curve, slew rate, damping, etc. are all ways to voice an amp so I find it curious that some reading here seem to be offended by the aim of this thread. No one would suggest that these amp parameters are not within the control of the designer so how are the deliberate choices made about these things not voicing? Amps are asked to reproduce recordings made with various equipment and various methods. When you know how an amp is voiced, you can optimize the source content for the playback to your taste. By introducing a framework where these kind of optimizations can be identified and communicated, the end user and the amp designer will better know what to expect when the music is played back. My understanding is that no one before me has ever thought to do this and I believe it can be valuable.
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I think everyone would like a working system for describing the "voice" of a sound system, and have expressed that many times over the years. Attempts have come in fits and starts. It's not that the idea is new, it's that no one has succeeded, at least not in a way that works well enough for it to be widely used on these forums.
I think nobody has succeeded simply because we're going to hit some major roadblocks in doing so. The first would be admitting to ourselves that any electrical component that changes the signal enough to slant it toward any of these attributes by definition makes it broken. If an amplifier does anything but apply gain, we can't call it an amplifier, we have to call it an amplisoundstager or an amplidynamicexpander or an amplitreblesparkler.
The second roadblock we hit right away is the simple fact that these "feelings" we get about certain components can usually be outright deemed false by simple ABX testing, as evidenced by the fact that it's never been done reliably and repeatably to the point where a conclusion about a piece of gear can be reached and agreed on...and can even have humans doing wild tricks of imagination, like, agreeing that A has better dynamics than B...and then completely reversing our decision when A and B are swapped without the listener's knowledge.
So, if you can destroy a person's personal opinion about a piece of gear by simply swapping it without telling the person, how on earth could you possibly quantify that in a manner that could even begin to warrant discussion?
The shaky standard in all this is that normal playback is crippled by too much obvious distortion, the classic "audio system sound" - ABX hasn't much hope when you compare Mediocre A with Mediocre B, might as well toss a coin as to which is "better" ...
Normally, swapping components is just a game of adjusting the flavouring of distortions audibly present - which combination of artifacts is most appealing at that moment? As I see it, the only way to get anywhere is to have a true reference standard of competent sound, minimal audible artifacts, and rate everything in comparison to that.
scott wurcer
Nice to see you here
I read those articles and what I gleaned from those discussions are that levels of sensitivity in electrical circuits can exceed our current ability to measure them.
Of course these folks all use PC boards and they get the manufacturers to send samples in every orientation so they can voice them.
I do not believe that. I believe that we can measure them, we just need to look at the right things in the measurements.
There are good technical reasons for amplifiers to sound different. Getting a handle on those would do us all a great service. Apart from the obvious differences in frequency response and SNR, there are other factors they can affect the sound of an amp. Some of them are:
- Output impedance or damping factor
- Harmonic distortion.
- Harmonic spectrum. Is it constant over frequency, loads and power levels?
- Inharmonic distortion. Including crossover distortion.
- Stability into complex loads
- RF and EMI rejection
- PSRR
Solving some of the problems should be easy, others maybe not.
Can we characterize an amp's sound then look at some of the things in the list above to determine what subjective effects they have? That's a tall order.
We may want all amps to be perfect, but most are not.
I have.
In Music? ... yes.
In amplifiers?
No.
PRAT, by the classic musical definition, is part of the music (sorry by the unharmonious combination of words, but it´s what your inharmonious combination of concepts leads to), so under the classic definition, yes.
BUT, you try to apply that musical concept to an electrical signal or even worse, to the way an amplifier reacts to an electrical signal, which is a very different thing.
Quoting you:
that is not true and is absolutely unrelated.
Pace, Rhythm and Timing are not affected by any kind of slew rate, unless it´s so horrible (say 1 second rise time) that, say, the drums get out of sync with the bass player, etc.
Which of course is an absurd concept, since such a "slow" amp would be absolutely useless to process musical signals.
Which PRAT definition are you using?
I see you give the same name to different things, then if we agree on one, you jump and cheat by applying the other.
I won't accept that dirty trick, neither from you nor from anybody else.
Anyway I will answer.
Which means 2 answers because you hide 2 different concepts under the same name.
a) Music Pace, Rhythm and Timing are NOT affected by any amplifier.
You record a song, it will have the same Pace, Rhythm and Timing played back through any Music amplifier.
Slew rate is not a factor in that.
They might sound brighter, duller, sharper, you name it, but that´s someting else.
2) Slew Rate of an electrical signal (which may represent Music, but that´s not the point), may be affected passing through different amplifiers which have ... duh ... different slew rate.
You want to call it PACE? ....
Why?
As mentioned above, you are mixing 2 different concepts.
Your question has no answer until you clarify what you are referring to and post here a strict definition ... and then stick to it, of course.
Yes.
Nonsense.
Why do you introduce the synthesis concept?.
Stick to what we are talking about.
You jump wildly all over the place.
Calm down.
Galimatias.
I doubt even you find logic meaning in what you write.
1) define subjective (as applied here by you)
2) define typical
3) define the exact meaning and extension of believes as applied by you.
4) define guarantee, again as applied by you.
None of this should be necessary, except that you seem to stretch the meaning of words beyond their normal use to extract twisted conclusions and "win" discussions ... or whatever.
By the way, I´m even tempted to ask you to also define engineer, go figure, because by the way you twist discussions and concepts I suspect your very personal, yldourightish way will not be the same as ours.
Try timbral accuracy
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NOTE: end of discussion about PACE (the real one) , PACE (Mr Yldouright's wrong definition) and slew rate, what he seems to be talking about.
Now we shift to talk about wind.
Why?
Who knows? ... but that´s what Mr Yldouright seems to be interested in now.
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Yes, if you refer to air in motion.
I physically feel it if present.
Everybody else present also feels it, which makes me think that it´s not an illusion I am having just by myself.
I also can see its effects, such as blowing smoke away, feeling its pressure on my face, seeing it move things around such as dust, pushing sails, and 1000 other physical manifestations.
I can also measure its speed, temperature, humidity, etc.
All that meets my "Reality" concept very well .
It's curious but Mr Yldouright's obsessions either can´t be tested the same way or don´t yield the results he claims.
Pity, that´s a sorry state of things.
Would like to help him in his quest but unfortunately reality gets in the way.
No, I´m based on physical proof.
As shown above, no.
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NOTE: end of discussion about wind, now Mr Yldouright seems to be playing Perry Mason or some other TV Lawyer.
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Do you feel all right Mr Yldouright?
Can I offer you a glass of water?
I don't think any further comment is necessary.yldouright said:
Sadly, that won't prevent further comment being made. Here is mine: I think Shakespeare said something about "outrageous fortune"? Surely saying that something daft is daft is not outrageous but entirely reasonable - indeed merely performing a public duty?
I look at it like this. The goal of any amplifier designer typically shouldn't (and thankfully mostly isn't) be to design amplifiers around any type of supernatural quality. Using your example, if an amplifier did in fact behave that way, we would be further ahead to figure out why (does the power supply suck?) rather than try to imagine it being a positive feature.
IMNSHO, amplifiers should be designed with the only goal of "add gain". Flat from DC to light and completely transparent.
Some people like the odd piece of gear that has some degree of brokenness, or even build systems around arranging all the brokenness so the concert of broken irregularities produces something enjoyable to listen to, but I think we do ourselves and the hobby a disservice by talking about non-linearities and attributing euphemistic descriptions to what anyone interested in quality reproduction (rather than production) should only be interested in eliminating.
Thankfully, amplifiers that have "a character" are quite few and far between, as the overwhelming majority of us can't even tell when there's 5 different amplifiers behind a curtain that someone is switching between without the listener's knowledge.
DrDyna
Like JMFahey above, you also stated that the three postulates presented to describe the sonic output of an audio playback system 'were clearly not comprehensive' and you offered 'amplifier' as a way to describe sound. Neither Collier or Webster seem to concur with this definition. If this is the kind of input we can expect from you my expectations about your contributions here are really low.
I use "Amplifier" because that's the only description of what should be a gain stage and nothing else, which is what amplifiers should be.
We shouldn't talk about amplifier sound any more than I should talk about how my coffee cup affects my coffee's taste, so if you asked me how my coffee cup tasted, I would say "Like a cup." just as I say "Like an amplifier."
Regrettably, amplifiers that don't have "a character" are quite few and far between - as is obvious when the volume control is a bit more vigorously adjusted. Listening at "nice", polite levels is not very helpful, when a bit of grunt is asked for the various examples will lose their composure at different power levels, depending upon everything. In recent times I have only come across one amplifier which did not audibly degrade when pushed to higher working levels - which does not say much for the general level of engineering of these devices.
Maybe not, but it's not a new idea either. See, for instance, the "sound quality vs measurements" thread.
BTW: Wiktionary, Collins, Oxford and Webster all agree on the deinition of"timbrel". None of them give it as an alternate spelling of timbrel. Where did you see that?
Attachments
So, would you say that the character you described is simply the result of using an underpowered amplifier for the listening level choice, or do you suggest that even, say, a LabGruppen FP14000 or a PKN XE-10000-U would introduce this issue as well?
IMO, if you have to ride the volume control to get a "character" to pop out, that seems more like a PEBVAC than an amplifier issue.
Meh, iunno.
I would have thought the perfect amp would add nothing to or take anything from the signal being amplified...Therefore to voice an amp (even the phrase is wrong wrong wrong) is not hi fi.
Nice to see links to wire directionality and all the rest, we cant measure it but can hear it etc...But wire directionality when passing AC signals, that always tickles me......
Nice to see links to wire directionality and all the rest, we cant measure it but can hear it etc...But wire directionality when passing AC signals, that always tickles me......
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