Regulation, GC and low-level detail

[Dr.H]

All,

There have been very long and tedious threads on regiulated IGC and to avoid having to wade through the noise to get to the relevant, I have the following question:

To those who have tried the regulated GC, be it NIGC or IGC, with or without pre: I expect that bass performance would have improved (tighter, more detail, maybe more weight), but did the amps DETAIL retrieval improve, especially the LOW-LEVEL information. Also, what impact did regualtion have on highs and mids-were highs more deleicate and mids more immediate?

Thanks for sharing
Ryan

[carlosfm]

Ryan,

Bass is better, tighter, more impact, dynamics, slam.
To put it simple, when you get a tighter bass everything gets better, including midband, treble, detail.
It's what happens when you change to a good amp that drives your speakers better.
You can "follow the tune" more easily.
It is more obvious on demanding musical material.
Anyway, with or without "easy" to drive speakers it's always obvious, shockingly obvious or just obvious.

[jackinnj]

Originally posted by carlosfm
Ryan,

Bass is better, tighter, more impact, dynamics, slam.
To put it simple, when you get a tighter bass everything gets better, including midband, treble, detail.
It's what happens when you change to a good amp that drives your speakers better.
You can "follow the tune" more easily.
It is more obvious on demanding musical material.
Anyway, with or without "easy" to drive speakers it's always obvious, shockingly obvious or just obvious.

If you can hear it, you should be able to measure it. Why no empirical evidence?

From what I've read, the only benefit to supply regulation is lower odd order harmonics when the amp clips.

[GRollins]

Easy...measurements don't tell the whole story.
Ever seen a measurement that measures dynamics? Considering that dynamics is such a large portion of music, it's unfortunate that there's no meaningful way to test performance in that realm.
I'm not saying that some clever person can't come up with a way to render such information in numbers, but they haven't done so yet. Over-reliance on specifications is a seductive path, but one that ultimately dead-ends short of its goal--at least for now. The trick is to be patient while someone comes up with a new test.
Mind you, I'm not holding my breath. I've got too many ideas to try out to sit around waiting for the next True Test to come along.

Grey

[carlosfm]

Originally posted by jackinnj
If you can hear it, you should be able to measure it. Why no empirical evidence?

The unreg. GC has 1000~1500uf caps on the PSU.
It's the only way that it sounds good, increase capacitance and it will sound bad.
With this so small capacitance, there are voltage variations on the PSU with the amp playing music.
And what I listen is to the music, not test tones.
Those voltage variations kill the bass.
With the reg. PSU that doesn't happen at all, and you can have big caps before the regs without mucking up the sound of the amp.

Simple, isn't it?

But the more important is: it sounds better.

[analog_sa]

DETAIL retrieval improve, especially the LOW-LEVEL information.

An interesting question Ryan. I have still not tried regulation with the GC, probably as i stopped listening to it months ago.
It's no longer entertaining

Regulated circuits tend to have better bass, macro dynamics, cleaner and more organised sound. As you delegate more of the PS functions from the caps to the regulators, the regulator 'sound' becomes more prominent. It will greatly depend upon the regulator topology if this 'sound' is pleasing or not and if it improves the perception of mid-band immediacy and low-level detail. For a regulator to achieve these goals it needs, among other things to be faster than the amp it feeds (if feedback type) or to have consistently low impedance within a wide band of frequencies if open-loop. No 3-terminals IME are good enough for this.

Then again, low level excellence seems not to be a top sonic priority to everyone.

[carlosfm]

Originally posted by analog_sa
As you delegate more of the PS functions from the caps to the regulators, the regulator 'sound' becomes more prominent.

Not only the regulator, the cap you use after it may kill the sound completely.
Use the values recommended by the datasheets and you won't like the sound of the amp...
Although with LM338 PSU the sound is better for me compared to unregulated, I'm sure that this is not the ultimate regulated PSU to use here.
Discrete is probably (or certainly) better.
Pedja has been there, done that, long ago.

[carlosfm]

Originally posted by Dr.H
but did the amps DETAIL retrieval improve, especially the LOW-LEVEL information. Also, what impact did regualtion have on highs and mids-were highs more deleicate and mids more immediate?
Ryan

Take two good amps, one with limited power (A) and the other one with good current and power (B).
Both are good sounding amps.
Test them with a pair of speakers.
These days speakers are hard to drive (that bass reflex thing and complex crossovers ), so you'll struggle to put amp A singing.
Amp A, can't drive most speakers, bass is not tight, it swamps all the rest (as it always happens).
Amp B has tight bass, dynamics, and everything else is right.
In my experince, you can detect if an amp is not driving the speakers properly, even at low volumes.

So what's the amp that has more detail retrieval, and more low level information?
Don't forget, when bass is not right, it kills this.

Now a question: does anyone expect to have around 50 watts RMS out of the unregulated GC with 1000~1500uf caps? Really?

[richie00boy]

I'm following this and find it interesting. Whilst I am more objective than subjective, I agree that we don't have measurements for everything yet and we must listen to stuff.

What's on my mind is, how can we resolve that increasing the caps above say 1500uF makes the sound worse? What could the problem be?

Something to do with nasty power factor on the supply?

Excessive current spikes caused by charging huge low impedance caps just for a tiny part of the cycle?

Can all this be read across to a normal discrete power amp?

[carlosfm]

Originally posted by richie00boy
What's on my mind is, how can we resolve that increasing the caps above say 1500uF makes the sound worse? What could the problem be?

This happens with these LM chips, I also would like to know why.
But the fact is that they don't sound good with big caps.

A test that I may do with an unreg supply is use some big caps on the PSU, and small ones on the chip.
I don't hope much, but after all the tests I made with the reg. PSU, it seams more likely to perform better than using just some big caps on the chip, or changing the 1000uf caps on the chip for bigger ones.
I meand 33~100uf on the chip, no more than that.