I know that you can just add noise, but I assume that isn't the only possibility.
Personally I find the complication is often the source music itself can vary in dryness/sterile sound. Who ever was at the helm during creation matters. Perhaps the most ideal thing is getting studios to improve. Let's be honest, things we hear in our daily life are not as dry as recorded music; and a lot of that characteristic is the sound of the studio and processing.
To me a lot of classD sounds that way because of the elongation of information makes it so you have little need to turn up the volume. Where as on a lot of A/AB amps turning up the volume often increases some tone qualities as they force the speaker to actually start to reproduce them at a level one might recognize in say a guitar amplifier. But with the classD the desire to turn it up is lower because it's simply not that pleasurable being blasted with too much periphery information that is artificially elongated (voltage) by at least the output network if not just the effect of an RF carrier.
It seems that low noise can help a lot, but sometimes it's a mixed bag. Over dampening of both speakers and amps seems to sort of deaden tone, which is part of the "musical" quality.
But I can say I've heard systems that sound outright sweet like candy. Full Tidal systems for example sound WEIRD, like ripe with sugar. Yes it's an odd description but I can't think of a more apt one.
Personally I find the complication is often the source music itself can vary in dryness/sterile sound. Who ever was at the helm during creation matters. Perhaps the most ideal thing is getting studios to improve. Let's be honest, things we hear in our daily life are not as dry as recorded music; and a lot of that characteristic is the sound of the studio and processing.
To me a lot of classD sounds that way because of the elongation of information makes it so you have little need to turn up the volume. Where as on a lot of A/AB amps turning up the volume often increases some tone qualities as they force the speaker to actually start to reproduce them at a level one might recognize in say a guitar amplifier. But with the classD the desire to turn it up is lower because it's simply not that pleasurable being blasted with too much periphery information that is artificially elongated (voltage) by at least the output network if not just the effect of an RF carrier.
It seems that low noise can help a lot, but sometimes it's a mixed bag. Over dampening of both speakers and amps seems to sort of deaden tone, which is part of the "musical" quality.
But I can say I've heard systems that sound outright sweet like candy. Full Tidal systems for example sound WEIRD, like ripe with sugar. Yes it's an odd description but I can't think of a more apt one.
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The irony is I probably have more amplifiers in audio signal chains than you do, possibly an order of magnitude or two. If sweetening isn't adding something that was not there what is it?
I do have one historical application of 'sweetening' (as used by recording studios, etc) that happened to me back 44 years ago in New York City.
It was 1973, and I was on the road with the Grateful Dead, at this time doing a performance at Madison Square Garden. One afternoon, between performances I went with my then girlfriend to see her brother who worked at a start-up company that made the APHEX. When we got there, I was asked if I wanted to try the APHEX to improve the sound of a vinyl recording. Of course, I chose a recording of the 'Greatful Dead' that they had available to try it on.
Now, their musical set-up was obviously mid-fi, with a moving magnet cartridge, etc. At first it sounded rather dead and almost murky. Adding a certain amount of the APHEX signal turned the playback to amazingly real and alive! It worked so well that they wanted to hire me as a recording engineer. I declined, because I knew what the GD sounded like, so it was relatively easy to 'dial it in', but I could not do the same with any other band. However, I got so excited with the result, I invited several members of the Grateful Dead over to hear it from themselves.
They came, were slightly disappointed, and Jerry Garcia then told me that the APHEX was an 'effects box' (as closely as I can remember) and that many recording studios have lots of these sorts of things. We left without adding it to our sound system. Yet, in those years, many people heard the improvement in their recordings and PA's, and they paid a royalty to use the APHEX. The effect was real, and in the right proportion, often useful. For example, Radio City in NY used it at the time.
This is the only 'effects box' I have ever worked with.
However, in specific designs, I do find that I sometimes fail to make a good sounding one, AND I have to be open minded enough to CHANGE components, etc, until I get it right. This has essentially nothing to do with discernible measurements that we normally do, unfortunately, so we often rely on passive components, for example, that have sounded good in other audio equipment. Yet, at least MY parts that I personally design in have never had any obvious added distortion, if in fact it is easily measurable at all! This is the mystery of audio design, that I keep hoping to help people with.
It was 1973, and I was on the road with the Grateful Dead, at this time doing a performance at Madison Square Garden. One afternoon, between performances I went with my then girlfriend to see her brother who worked at a start-up company that made the APHEX. When we got there, I was asked if I wanted to try the APHEX to improve the sound of a vinyl recording. Of course, I chose a recording of the 'Greatful Dead' that they had available to try it on.
Now, their musical set-up was obviously mid-fi, with a moving magnet cartridge, etc. At first it sounded rather dead and almost murky. Adding a certain amount of the APHEX signal turned the playback to amazingly real and alive! It worked so well that they wanted to hire me as a recording engineer. I declined, because I knew what the GD sounded like, so it was relatively easy to 'dial it in', but I could not do the same with any other band. However, I got so excited with the result, I invited several members of the Grateful Dead over to hear it from themselves.
They came, were slightly disappointed, and Jerry Garcia then told me that the APHEX was an 'effects box' (as closely as I can remember) and that many recording studios have lots of these sorts of things. We left without adding it to our sound system. Yet, in those years, many people heard the improvement in their recordings and PA's, and they paid a royalty to use the APHEX. The effect was real, and in the right proportion, often useful. For example, Radio City in NY used it at the time.
This is the only 'effects box' I have ever worked with.
However, in specific designs, I do find that I sometimes fail to make a good sounding one, AND I have to be open minded enough to CHANGE components, etc, until I get it right. This has essentially nothing to do with discernible measurements that we normally do, unfortunately, so we often rely on passive components, for example, that have sounded good in other audio equipment. Yet, at least MY parts that I personally design in have never had any obvious added distortion, if in fact it is easily measurable at all! This is the mystery of audio design, that I keep hoping to help people with.
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Mark Johnson showed here that with the help of his test jigs and scope and CRC snubbers , even the worst ordinary diode could made transformers free of any ringing. Soft recovery diodes are not necessary with properly measured snubbers.
Q. Would an Aural Exciter improve my sound?
Decades ago I worked an afternoon/evening show (on a beach no less) side stage with the Foldback Engineer on a full sized production for an Auz 'legend'.
I stood studying a 'portable' sub rack of processor units plonked on the bench near to the foldback desk containing parametric, graphic, reverb, compressor etc and......an Aural Exciter.
The mix guy noticed and ventured "That's his own rack, he doesn't perform ANYWHERE without his mic first going into that rack and and then into the system".
He did some switching to solo monitor the mic channel, turned up the local monitor box and said "This is his vocal sound that you know, right ?".....ok...."Now this is what's coming direct off his mic, 'The Voice' indeed".
Of course there was no comparison, goes to show 'The Voice' may not be quite what you thought.
Aussies might get the reference.
Dan.
Decades ago I worked an afternoon/evening show (on a beach no less) side stage with the Foldback Engineer on a full sized production for an Auz 'legend'.
I stood studying a 'portable' sub rack of processor units plonked on the bench near to the foldback desk containing parametric, graphic, reverb, compressor etc and......an Aural Exciter.
The mix guy noticed and ventured "That's his own rack, he doesn't perform ANYWHERE without his mic first going into that rack and and then into the system".
He did some switching to solo monitor the mic channel, turned up the local monitor box and said "This is his vocal sound that you know, right ?".....ok...."Now this is what's coming direct off his mic, 'The Voice' indeed".
Of course there was no comparison, goes to show 'The Voice' may not be quite what you thought.
Aussies might get the reference.
Dan.
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If you get a straight line on the screen by dialing multiturn pot. on the test circuit, then the problem is solved in a scientific manner. No snake oil here.
Mark Johnson showed in his LA article that snubbered standard rectifiers have zero ringing compared to the best unsnubbered soft recovery diodes which had some. Mystery is solved. Split bobbin transformers which you use have very high stray inductance and are the most sensitive to diode influenced ringing.
Adjusting resistor reduce it to zero.
Yes, the filter module for the phono section.
Attachments
It is very relaxing to know that you have ringing free power supply at very low cost. Adjusting R in CRC snubber you damp transformer secondary-diodes interference.I use dual bobbins and they have up to 30 times higher secondary stray inductance than toroid. Mark Johnson put the light to this part of power supply design.
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That or batteries now we have the silentswitcher from Jan. I can't remember who pointed this out, but using either moves the ground problem off line level so your PE connection becomes the power amp. This, done right does have a potential to clean all sorts of grot out the system, esp for single ended interconnects. It of course could make it worse with noisy SMPS, but I feel this is an areas where recent developments and strick EMC rules helps us and can lead to lower noise floors and inkier blackness with lifed veils.
I know absolutely positively that adding low order harmonics to the original sound file does not result in any "sweetening". Sweetening by added distortion is just another from the long row of audiophile myths. It can be very easily proven, because it is not difficult to add distortion purely mathematically, by software, to the original sound file. The myth of "sweet distortion" can be very easily disproved, similarly as other myths have been disproved.
On the other hand, listeners have quite often preferred technically worse sound. I do not mean pure harmonic distortion, but rather added noise, added vinyl groove noise, tape copy preferred to original etc. It seems that in fact less sound information is often preferred, maybe depending on audio chain and listening space used.
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