Sagar,
Your name; I took an educated guess. My wife is from Indonesia, the SE Asian version of India, and many aspects of her language are also Sanskrit derived and rather beautiful to an English speaker.
Back to the debate.
As mentioned, there are two camps. One is the straight wire with gain, the other is tubes. If you follow the former, then it is perfectly logical to pursue zero distortion designs, and the chipamps are a good path, with Class D a close second. Greg Ball's SKA, a good, even inspired design, is a very low distortion analog amplifier, and worth a good look right here in this forum. These amps do two things extremely well; rock music and orchestral. They have huge impact and slam, and wonderful clarity. But there is a strange undertone to this audio hobby of ours, as evidenced by the indefinable love we all have for music wherein we want it to make us weep........ Most SS amps do not make you weep, and after all, why do we like music? It tickles our soul........
Some of the highest distortion amps on the planet sound absolutely beautiful, and do indeed make you weep. Listen to any competent single ended triode amplifier. There is something beguiling about this primitive, inefficient technology. The sound is very different to solid state, and immediately you hear it, you realise it somehow communicates the emotion of the music. Many of Nelson Pass' designs do the same. How can this be? The distortion measurements are horrific - up to 10%!!
Until you have done the listening, you will not fully appreciate this, or what it means philosophically. My AKSA is an attempt to capture the beautiful emotional communication of a single ended triode amplifier, but it is not the same as a single ended triode. OTOH, it has slam, impact, clarity - all the things the zero distortion camp love - but absolutely no design has it all......
You will find the journey is fascinating. The destination, if one exists, will probably be overdocumented and boring in twenty years. But in many ways I suspect amp design is about where automotive technology was in about 1950.
I'm happy to discuss the foregoing only superficially as time is short, and I'm not prepared to release all my trade secrets!! After all, audio is my living........
Cheers,
Hugh
Your name; I took an educated guess. My wife is from Indonesia, the SE Asian version of India, and many aspects of her language are also Sanskrit derived and rather beautiful to an English speaker.
Back to the debate.
As mentioned, there are two camps. One is the straight wire with gain, the other is tubes. If you follow the former, then it is perfectly logical to pursue zero distortion designs, and the chipamps are a good path, with Class D a close second. Greg Ball's SKA, a good, even inspired design, is a very low distortion analog amplifier, and worth a good look right here in this forum. These amps do two things extremely well; rock music and orchestral. They have huge impact and slam, and wonderful clarity. But there is a strange undertone to this audio hobby of ours, as evidenced by the indefinable love we all have for music wherein we want it to make us weep........ Most SS amps do not make you weep, and after all, why do we like music? It tickles our soul........
Some of the highest distortion amps on the planet sound absolutely beautiful, and do indeed make you weep. Listen to any competent single ended triode amplifier. There is something beguiling about this primitive, inefficient technology. The sound is very different to solid state, and immediately you hear it, you realise it somehow communicates the emotion of the music. Many of Nelson Pass' designs do the same. How can this be? The distortion measurements are horrific - up to 10%!!
Until you have done the listening, you will not fully appreciate this, or what it means philosophically. My AKSA is an attempt to capture the beautiful emotional communication of a single ended triode amplifier, but it is not the same as a single ended triode. OTOH, it has slam, impact, clarity - all the things the zero distortion camp love - but absolutely no design has it all......
You will find the journey is fascinating. The destination, if one exists, will probably be overdocumented and boring in twenty years. But in many ways I suspect amp design is about where automotive technology was in about 1950.
I'm happy to discuss the foregoing only superficially as time is short, and I'm not prepared to release all my trade secrets!! After all, audio is my living........
Cheers,
Hugh
amplifierguru, I hope you don't think I was comparing your amp to the ESP 3A or 101. I know very little about power amp design and am certainly not qualified to make such comparisons. I'm a plug-and-play kind of DIY builder at the moment, and I am just looking for a decent sounding amp with a good PCB to build on (which yours certainly meets that criteria, and sounds like much more).
Hi halusha,
Sorry. I can be a little prickly at times, especially in 35C heat. I did jump to that conclusion. The SKA should probably never have been released to the DIY community until it had run it's course as a finished Hi-End Audiophile product. The boards alone are worth more than the miniscule kit price when you factor in that they were designed by the guy who coached the Mark Levinson engineers in how to layout PCB's!
I also believe that, while SKA does not attempt vanishingly low distortion, it has predominantly 0.005% of 2HD and 3HD while higher harmonics are at least 10dB lower.
Anything that produces 2% HD is a musical instrument.
Cheers,
greg
Sorry. I can be a little prickly at times, especially in 35C heat. I did jump to that conclusion. The SKA should probably never have been released to the DIY community until it had run it's course as a finished Hi-End Audiophile product. The boards alone are worth more than the miniscule kit price when you factor in that they were designed by the guy who coached the Mark Levinson engineers in how to layout PCB's!
I also believe that, while SKA does not attempt vanishingly low distortion, it has predominantly 0.005% of 2HD and 3HD while higher harmonics are at least 10dB lower.
Anything that produces 2% HD is a musical instrument.
Cheers,
greg
Sheldon - Greg, Result: 1-0
Note* I put this post Subject:
Sheldon - Greg, Result: 1-0
==========================================
Good point, Sheldon!
And we got no answer from Greg ........
Which in itself is a good hint, who is the clever one
in this specific issue.
There might come a day,
when we can listen to amplifiers output
WITHOUT using speakers
....
but until then
LoudSpeaker's eventual HD distortion is what will reach our ears.
What common people with their standard loudspeakers
WILL Actually HEAR.
Some spice simulator guys,
many times seems to overlook this little simple detail
.... but then again
this is no big problem for those guys
as They probably enjoy looking at Fourier Analysis Diagrams
much more than listening to Good Music
Music is for ordinary simple people,
like you and me,
and not for the elite of our population.
Them up there, above the small ones.
lineup while using amp simulations, still in some contact with reality
Lineup Audio Lab & Info
-> audio reality division <-
amplifierguru said:
Sheldon said:
Note* I put this post Subject:
Sheldon - Greg, Result: 1-0
==========================================
Good point, Sheldon!
And we got no answer from Greg ........
Which in itself is a good hint, who is the clever one
in this specific issue.
There might come a day,
when we can listen to amplifiers output
WITHOUT using speakers
....
but until then
LoudSpeaker's eventual HD distortion is what will reach our ears.
What common people with their standard loudspeakers
WILL Actually HEAR.
Some spice simulator guys,
many times seems to overlook this little simple detail
.... but then again
this is no big problem for those guys
as They probably enjoy looking at Fourier Analysis Diagrams
much more than listening to Good Music
Music is for ordinary simple people,
like you and me,
and not for the elite of our population.
Them up there, above the small ones.
lineup
while using amp simulations, still in some contact with realityLineup Audio Lab & Info
-> audio reality division <-
Aw, now don't get me in trouble Line-up. I wasn't trying to best anyone - just a tongue-in-cheek reminder that we need to periodically step back and consider the big picture.
In this case, we can take it even a step or two further. The room is acoustically part of the system too. And, as music clearly affects us on an emotional level, so does the quality of environment - candles or fluorescent, red wine or white, and so on.
Sheldon
In this case, we can take it even a step or two further. The room is acoustically part of the system too. And, as music clearly affects us on an emotional level, so does the quality of environment - candles or fluorescent, red wine or white, and so on.
Sheldon
room acoustics
The room is acoustically part of the system too.
true!
one factor so often ignored and forgotten
I some times draw a parallel saying:
My room is like a big loudspeaker box.
.... with its resonances, standing or climbing waves
a big box with a certain size and form
as well as different damping materials laying around and about
When I close my door and windows,
I get a Sealed, Closed listening room, for sound waves.
Leaving my door open I will try the Vented box variation
Actually every room has got a certain resonance frequency.
And maybe even several such frequencies ......
I tested my own room once using very high volume low bass sinus tones.
From an Audio Tests CD.
I could hear something happen at around 40-45 Hertz.
So I think this would be
the approximate FS, resonance frequency
of the Sealed Enclosure I live and play music in.
lineup room acoustics tester
Sheldon said:
The room is acoustically part of the system too.
true!
one factor so often ignored and forgotten
I some times draw a parallel saying:
My room is like a big loudspeaker box.
.... with its resonances, standing or climbing waves
a big box with a certain size and form
as well as different damping materials laying around and about
When I close my door and windows,
I get a Sealed, Closed listening room, for sound waves.
Leaving my door open I will try the Vented box variation
Actually every room has got a certain resonance frequency.
And maybe even several such frequencies ......
I tested my own room once using very high volume low bass sinus tones.
From an Audio Tests CD.
I could hear something happen at around 40-45 Hertz.
So I think this would be
the approximate FS, resonance frequency
of the Sealed Enclosure I live and play music in.
lineup
room acoustics tester- Status
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