".....a computer with sound card, a pair of speakers or headphones and some THD analysis software or equipment can do the same test and see the shocking results for themselves....."
This kind of test probably will not replicate the same kind of spectrum as the harmonics of an unclipped waveform would. You can pass off as undistorted an unclipped sine wave with harmonics , though the sound would be 'different ' with different levels of odd and even harmonics. Even harmonics making it sound warmer and odd harmonics making it sound 'harder' .
A clipped waveform would have very high levels of higher oder harmonics making it unpleasant.
SE tube amps prove the point. Relatively high even order harmonics but still sounds great.
The point I was trying to make is that a clipped waveform is not the proper way to determine at what level harmonic content becomes audible.
This kind of test probably will not replicate the same kind of spectrum as the harmonics of an unclipped waveform would. You can pass off as undistorted an unclipped sine wave with harmonics , though the sound would be 'different ' with different levels of odd and even harmonics. Even harmonics making it sound warmer and odd harmonics making it sound 'harder' .
A clipped waveform would have very high levels of higher oder harmonics making it unpleasant.
SE tube amps prove the point. Relatively high even order harmonics but still sounds great.
The point I was trying to make is that a clipped waveform is not the proper way to determine at what level harmonic content becomes audible.
Ashok,
So according to your thoughts, testing distortion perception the way Eva proposes, you are clipping the waveform, and even in that case, which is producing a more unpleasant form of distortion (due to the distribution of harmonics), you require very high THD numbers to be able to detect it.
So with non-clipped sound, you would need even higher THD to notice!
So according to your thoughts, testing distortion perception the way Eva proposes, you are clipping the waveform, and even in that case, which is producing a more unpleasant form of distortion (due to the distribution of harmonics), you require very high THD numbers to be able to detect it.
So with non-clipped sound, you would need even higher THD to notice!
Exactly
Distortion is often only aurally detected with quite high figures if we just listen to the change of timbre. Timbre change is the only property of harmonic distortion that is aurally perceivable with a sinusoid for instance and this can be masked quite strongly by speaker distortion.
But distortion mechanisms like crossover distortion will mask fine details in music because it has the most influence at low levels.
Class-d amps usually suffer less from the latter than class-AB.
Furthermore speaker distortion is usually only 2nd and 3rd order which is less perceivable than higher order distortion (that is often generated by electronics). I assume that there are two resons for this: 1.) they are more harmonically related (in the musical sense) than the higher order ones and 2.) they are more likely to be suppressed by our hearing's masking mechanisms.
Regards
Charles
In a system many things matter. Loudspeaker distortion could be kept at low levels, but drivers providing this are often expensive,
e.g. Mundorf´s big AMT units (about 800 Euro/each). Our hearing is less accurate in the bass, so distortion here may be unnoticed if it doesn´t interfere with mid-frequencies; the area in which our hearing is usually best developed (probably for evolutionary reasons).
So what are the criteria for a good amp? No one seems to agree in all the aspects, but if I may guess for a moment?
Constant output impedance in the audio area.
Little phase shift. It seems our hearing is sensitive to time domain faults. And of course you can again say and claim in general that the loudspeakers are much worse than amps in this case, but this is what I believe in.
Small distortion figures when it comes to tranisent signals. This means that a large bandwidth may be necessary. The amp should be able to handle all signals that passes through it, and an input filter that limits upper frequency response is preferable to internal slew induced distortion, or even distortion caused by the output filter. Short randomly repeated tone bursts are probably a better way to assess amps than traditional methods.
How does a amp "recover" from being driven hard, even if clipping has not been the case. In other words, is there a thing which could be called "memory distortion"? Does an amp´s responds depend of what happened just a fraction of a second earlier? And of course recovery from clipping is important as well!
A nice small and rapidly falling spectrum (for higher overtones) when it comes to steady tone measurements of harmonic distortion.
This is from the HIFI Akademie (German) power amp, text is in German but it´s the spectra that matters.
http://hifiakademie.de/?id=1.2.2&si=MTE5MDAzNzM3OS44OTg4fDgxLjIyNS4zNS4yMzV8IA
BTW, crossover distortion is usually independent of how hard the amp is driven (in non-clipping conditions at least). Thus the sensitivity of the speakers may count if this form of distortion is perceived or masked.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The benefit of the F/E method I have mentioned is that one of the drawbacks of conventional blind testing; that the test persons tend to concentrate on recognizing the objects under test instead of telling how the objects sound: i.e. how good they are, this limitation falls to the ground. Quite the contrary, in this sort of test the purpose of it is to see if and in case how many times and by which test persons an object can be identified.
A drawback may be that e.g. an amp may be identified by a clearly bad quality and another by a less negative but still obvious quality. Both amps are identified to the same extent, but one is inferior. The best amp is the one that can´t be identified at all, but in reality this seldom happens thus a small degree of identifications is what usually counts for the verdict "a good amp".
e.g. Mundorf´s big AMT units (about 800 Euro/each). Our hearing is less accurate in the bass, so distortion here may be unnoticed if it doesn´t interfere with mid-frequencies; the area in which our hearing is usually best developed (probably for evolutionary reasons).
So what are the criteria for a good amp? No one seems to agree in all the aspects, but if I may guess for a moment?
Constant output impedance in the audio area.
Little phase shift. It seems our hearing is sensitive to time domain faults. And of course you can again say and claim in general that the loudspeakers are much worse than amps in this case, but this is what I believe in.
Small distortion figures when it comes to tranisent signals. This means that a large bandwidth may be necessary. The amp should be able to handle all signals that passes through it, and an input filter that limits upper frequency response is preferable to internal slew induced distortion, or even distortion caused by the output filter. Short randomly repeated tone bursts are probably a better way to assess amps than traditional methods.
How does a amp "recover" from being driven hard, even if clipping has not been the case. In other words, is there a thing which could be called "memory distortion"? Does an amp´s responds depend of what happened just a fraction of a second earlier? And of course recovery from clipping is important as well!
A nice small and rapidly falling spectrum (for higher overtones) when it comes to steady tone measurements of harmonic distortion.
This is from the HIFI Akademie (German) power amp, text is in German but it´s the spectra that matters.
http://hifiakademie.de/?id=1.2.2&si=MTE5MDAzNzM3OS44OTg4fDgxLjIyNS4zNS4yMzV8IA
BTW, crossover distortion is usually independent of how hard the amp is driven (in non-clipping conditions at least). Thus the sensitivity of the speakers may count if this form of distortion is perceived or masked.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The benefit of the F/E method I have mentioned is that one of the drawbacks of conventional blind testing; that the test persons tend to concentrate on recognizing the objects under test instead of telling how the objects sound: i.e. how good they are, this limitation falls to the ground. Quite the contrary, in this sort of test the purpose of it is to see if and in case how many times and by which test persons an object can be identified.
A drawback may be that e.g. an amp may be identified by a clearly bad quality and another by a less negative but still obvious quality. Both amps are identified to the same extent, but one is inferior. The best amp is the one that can´t be identified at all, but in reality this seldom happens thus a small degree of identifications is what usually counts for the verdict "a good amp".
ashok said:
I think that you are just repeating what you have read from other people about THD without any personal experimentation. Consider these facts:
- Usual clipping does not produce more higher harmonics than lower harmonics, if you sort the harmonics by amplitude you always get 3rd > 5rd > 7rd etc... no matter how much clipping is applied... unrtil you get an square wave. I have done the test while looking at the spectrum analyzer.
- This story about warmer sounding and cooler sounding that everybody is telling is a plain myth. You can actually hear the separate tones that result when you clip a given tone. I can't detect a progressively clipped 1Khz tone until the resulting dominating 3Khz tone becomes loud enough to be heard, and if I increase clipping further I can clearly identify 3Khz.
- Higher harmonics resulting from clipping are easily get rid of by turning trebble down, leaving only 3rd and 5th
Eva said:
I think that you are just repeating what you have read from other people about THD without any personal experimentation. Consider these facts:
- Usual clipping does not produce more higher harmonics than lower harmonics, if you sort the harmonics by amplitude you always get 3rd > 5rd > 7rd etc... no matter how much clipping is applied... unrtil you get an square wave. I have done the test while looking at the spectrum analyzer.
- This story about warmer sounding and cooler sounding that everybody is telling is a plain myth. You can actually hear the separate tones that result when you clip a given tone. I can't detect a progressively clipped 1Khz tone until the resulting dominating 3Khz tone becomes loud enough to be heard, and if I increase clipping further I can clearly identify 3Khz.
- Higher harmonics resulting from clipping are easily get rid of by turning trebble down, leaving only 3rd and 5th
Hi Eva
This is absolutely spot on. Every point.
I pointed out this site in another thread:
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~jcgl/Scots_Guide/audio/clipping/page3.html
I postulate that really the "bad" sound from music clipping is due to the input signal. To which, as you point out, turning down the treble gets rid of.
Next argument on "warmth" I often see posted are the quality of the distortion. The old even verses odd harmonic. This usually ends up in repeat some misconceptions about devices used to make an amp, but as Dr. Berners at UA audio points out "absence of even harmonics has often been (wrongly) attributed to solid-state technology"
PS - Here's a ear training site with some THD examples.
http://www.pcabx.com/technical/nonlinear/index.htm
I generally think it's a bad idea to teach yourself to notice small distortion elements that you normally wouldn't. It's like training yourself to hear the resonance of your ear canal.
PSS - I think we're all in good company with ColdAmp and NCD posting to this forum. (Hypex in other threads) It's pretty incredible the quality of these modules and the support they give.
How come that so much irrelevant information about the performance of amps have been the norm for so long?
Harmonic distortion under steady state conditions doesn´t say much but it´s likely that our hearing is more sensitive to distortion created under transient conditions. Some like Vandersteen make this claim and say they have empirical data to conform the claim. (The instrument which exhibit the least overtones are said to be the flute and some old analog synths may also be a rather easy signal to amplify).
An amp´s ability to respond when driven into e.g. 8 Ohms in parallel with a capacitor may say something about the stability but I don´t believe this to be enough!
Power amps are supposed to deliver current into often reactive loads so the stability of amps and the function of feedback systems receiving delayed signals may be of interest. This also incorporates the ability of the amps to handle back-EMF from the speakers.
An amps distortion to the mains may be of interest as well. And when it comes to Class D amps EMI is of importance as its occurrence can affect sources and preamps.
I think there was a time many years ago when there were a genuine interest in better and more relevant audio measurements.
For some reason this seems to have declined. Why?
Harmonic distortion under steady state conditions doesn´t say much but it´s likely that our hearing is more sensitive to distortion created under transient conditions. Some like Vandersteen make this claim and say they have empirical data to conform the claim. (The instrument which exhibit the least overtones are said to be the flute and some old analog synths may also be a rather easy signal to amplify).
An amp´s ability to respond when driven into e.g. 8 Ohms in parallel with a capacitor may say something about the stability but I don´t believe this to be enough!
Power amps are supposed to deliver current into often reactive loads so the stability of amps and the function of feedback systems receiving delayed signals may be of interest. This also incorporates the ability of the amps to handle back-EMF from the speakers.
An amps distortion to the mains may be of interest as well. And when it comes to Class D amps EMI is of importance as its occurrence can affect sources and preamps.
I think there was a time many years ago when there were a genuine interest in better and more relevant audio measurements.
For some reason this seems to have declined. Why?
There must be many reasons. But one reason I think simply has to do with the amount of research that that would take. Who would pay for that?
Certainly most big players won't...there is zero requirement for that kind of research (not from the engineering department or marketing department).
Most people are convinced that a home theatre receiver with cd or dvd player is already perfect sound forever. So we've come to the end of history as far as most people on earth are concerned.
So the research for better measurements would be for a couple of freaks like us in the fringe. Hopefully most of us will continue to use our ears to be the final judge in any case.
We ; the consumers have a lot of power if we can unite! A cost/benefit analysis of traditional measurements would probably be very negative. In science; who would publish something like: our measurements show no correlation between what we wanted to measure and our actual measurements!
Indeed a result but probably of less value...
Or ; we don´t now anything about if this substance(medicine) is dangerous to human beings, our research don´t show anything at all; it can be dangerous but further investigations will likely be worthless."
Still (from Elektor) a quote "Of course, it´s difficult to judge sound from these three amplifiers from the measured result, so we would like to hear from readers who have experiences with one or more of these modules."
Compare to: "we don´t now anything about secondary effects of this medicine, in case you encounter any negative effects please let us know."
When it comes to research some of it are administrated by the public (taxes) in most (developed) countries.
In science results are only preliminary (preliminary valid until they are falsified) but
we want to seek evidence for a hypothesis or a theory , so astrology or something like that can be left behind.
That is, evidence based research is the norm.
Then there is a society called AES maybe better than CES.
http://www.aes.org/
Indeed a result but probably of less value...Or ; we don´t now anything about if this substance(medicine) is dangerous to human beings, our research don´t show anything at all; it can be dangerous but further investigations will likely be worthless."
Still (from Elektor) a quote "Of course, it´s difficult to judge sound from these three amplifiers from the measured result, so we would like to hear from readers who have experiences with one or more of these modules."
Compare to: "we don´t now anything about secondary effects of this medicine, in case you encounter any negative effects please let us know."
When it comes to research some of it are administrated by the public (taxes) in most (developed) countries.
In science results are only preliminary (preliminary valid until they are falsified) but
we want to seek evidence for a hypothesis or a theory , so astrology or something like that can be left behind.
That is, evidence based research is the norm.
Then there is a society called AES maybe better than CES.
http://www.aes.org/
Bas Horneman said:
CD/DVD players and amplifiers *are* perfect nowadays, even the lower cost ones, at least they are perfect in comparision with the rest of the stuff that we routinely have in the audio chain. There is a lot to improve in (commercial) recordings, (low cost) speakers and particularly in listening environment acoustics.
@Lars Clausen
At the end of your product page (What you need to build a complete amplifier.) you have written that for 2x200W one need 2 x 40-42V transformers and not 63V. So Elektor did what you say!
Has anybody listened to the Velleman VM100 or the NCD1 module?
The Velleman is very cheap (55 Euro)!
Regards
Tolu
At the end of your product page (What you need to build a complete amplifier.) you have written that for 2x200W one need 2 x 40-42V transformers and not 63V. So Elektor did what you say!
Has anybody listened to the Velleman VM100 or the NCD1 module?
The Velleman is very cheap (55 Euro)!
Regards
Tolu
Tolu said:
You obviously mix up AC and DC voltages! To get the proper DC voltage after the rectifier bridge multiply with the root of 2 ; approx. 1.4 and deduct a small loss by the bridge (a bit less so if Scottky diodes are being used). The AC voltage is measured by "weighing" it in so called RMS (Root mean square). The peak value of 220 V AC is more than 300 V.
A 2*42 V transformer will give about 59 V DC, (and there is a thing called regulation which has to do with the inner resistance of the primary and secondary windings and the core, thus a 1000 VA rated transformer will "drop" it´s voltage less than a 300VA transformer while delivering the same current which must of course be within the limit of the 300 VA transformer´s capacity). Using a regulated lab supply may affect measurements a bit compared to the usual unregulated supply. A regulated supply usually is a servo system that tries to keep the voltage constant while the current draw from the supply varies. Being "a too fast"
system may lead to instability and being "a too slow" system may introduce IM distortion in the amp. Thel had some objection about using a lab supply.
In the article and the presentation of the NCD 1 module the author says it can be driven up to +/- 60V DC ( I don´t have the article in front of me but read it today) thus driving it by +/- 40V DC doesn´t make sense to me.
I don´t agree to Eva´s claim about (nearly) "perfect" players and amps. The better speakers you are using and the better room treatment you have achieved, the more obvious differences in both amps and players are perceived.
Hi,
I shall not answer on the behalf of Eva but.....
"in comparision with the rest of the stuff that we routinely have in the audio chain"
...the two words comparison and routinely caught my attention and I agree.
I also believe that the lucky guys among us that have the right proportions of
and treatment of their listening environment are quite few.
Listening room acoustics shall not be underestimated.
/ Mattias
I shall not answer on the behalf of Eva but.....
"in comparision with the rest of the stuff that we routinely have in the audio chain"
...the two words comparison and routinely caught my attention and I agree.
I also believe that the lucky guys among us that have the right proportions of
and treatment of their listening environment are quite few.
Listening room acoustics shall not be underestimated.
/ Mattias
There is no such thing as relatively perfect. Eighter an item is perfect in some sense or it isn´t.
If you say that speakers contribute more to bad sound than amps
it can be possible to try to investigate into it. But in my opinion this statement has to much of generalization to it.
Thus, maybe some speakers contribute more to bad sound than some amps. But this seems trivial indeed. Even more so as some amps can contribute more to bad sound than some speakers.
Conclusion; we need to investigate most speakers and amps (and CD/DVD players) or at least a great sample that could be considered representative and compute the statistical outcome. In addition we need to consider acoustics in the listening rooms.
This seems to be a huge project in order to prove a statement that perhaps was a bit easy-going IMHO.
Eighter an item is perfect in some sense or it isn´t. If you say that speakers contribute more to bad sound than amps
it can be possible to try to investigate into it. But in my opinion this statement has to much of generalization to it.
Thus, maybe some speakers contribute more to bad sound than some amps. But this seems trivial indeed. Even more so as some amps can contribute more to bad sound than some speakers.
Conclusion; we need to investigate most speakers and amps (and CD/DVD players) or at least a great sample that could be considered representative and compute the statistical outcome. In addition we need to consider acoustics in the listening rooms.
This seems to be a huge project in order to prove a statement that perhaps was a bit easy-going IMHO.
Yea.
Maybe there is even nosuch thing as perfect in itself.
I agre that it is easy to generalize. You often take an average of
ypur own experiences and "generalize" based on this.
In my own case, it's the amp, hooked up for now, on highs and the room in the lows
that sets the limits for my listening experience.
/ Mattias
Maybe there is even nosuch thing as perfect in itself.
I agre that it is easy to generalize. You often take an average of
ypur own experiences and "generalize" based on this.
In my own case, it's the amp, hooked up for now, on highs and the room in the lows
that sets the limits for my listening experience.
/ Mattias
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