Let's make this short and sweet.
If you have two amps which measure practically the same, and have the same power rating, do you believe it's possible that one may sound flat and boring, and for the other to be viacious, full of energy and life? That on a few musical pieces that you know from personal experience do sound lively and are bubbling with life, in a system which always the same, save for the amp?
And I do NOT refer to quiet chamber music, a small jazz trio, and some such typical demo music which anything called an amp should be able to do. I refer to thunder and brimstone pieces, even electronic pieces (e.g. Vangelis, Blue Man Group, etc).
If you think you can rationally design the world's best amp, what are you waiting for? Reason with it, it may just come alive.
If you need to categorize emotion which may or may not be there, so you can build it in, by all means do, I can't wait to hear the result.
BTW, I didn't invent the term "British sound", you Brits did, just look at any magaizine from say 1975 onwards. It's not about absolute hearing, it's about customary work and what one is used to and told and retold many times the sound should be like.
Look at e-bay and similar sites and you will notice that second hand British audio products don't do half as well outside Britain as they do on the home market. Compare second hand prices from the British and say German, Dutch, Swiss, Italian etc. e-bays. Not many Naim, Cyrus et al. devices on offer, and when there are, typically less than one half their price on UK e-bay.
Mostly I dislike euphonic distortion . It is acceptable when Revox tape recorders . When the raison d'etre it makes everything sound like Elvis . Euphonic is an acceptable distortion as it is heard in real life , if happening at high level it can be accepted . In real life too loud or the building will add that colouration . Wood box colouration also is accepted because many concert halls have that colouration . I would say if above 5 watts typical I can accept it . Choose it in preference ? No .
The one concert hall quality much loved is a high ceiling .
5 watts is not a bad yardstick . Seems true almost regardless . My 8 watt amp makes DIN 45500 . It also has suspension bridge distortion harmonics . It took months to get that ( almost like Boeing were doing it ) . It is the only time I can say 8 watts was enough . When clipping it simply says sorry that is all I can give . One thinks right up to that point it would go on for ever . I never had a small amp do that . Usually they sound poor and that is all there is to say . I am pleased and that is rare for me . I only built this amp so as to be more than an armchair critic .
DF 96 . You and I agree on much . My late brother was my research lab . It made me lazy . I sent him an e-mail to his now defunct address , being of some faith I have hopes . His address was valvedabbler . I wish I knew the password as I would love to use it .
If by "euphonic" you mean that the amp is doing something to the original signal other than simply amplyfing it, then I wholeheartedly agree.
That is just as false and artificial as being flat and disinterested.
The amp should be as true to the original signal as possible, only making it louder via the loudspeakers. Obviously, there being no perfection, it will err somewhat, but so long as this error is not noticeable, or is noticeable only here or there and very little, that's all right with me.
To know how it behaves or misbehaves, I have built those headphone amps. The fact is that agree with Dan D'Agostino that fine tuning a power amp is easier with quality headphones - not perfect, not in a jiffy fast, but better than without. Actually, three different headphones, but that's another story, and I do admit to being a headphone fan.
I am reminded of an amp a friend built (an avid tube fan) some years ago. His speakers were JBL 4312 monitors, which are fairly efficient at 95 dB/2.83V/1m, but are also known as pretty fast responding speakers hard to fool. At first hearing, his amp sounded sublime, playing his kind of music, which is classic chamber music and club jazz. Lovely sound! To die for! Never mind it only had like 9 or 10 Watts of power.
Then I had it try to do Vangelis' "Metallic Rain" (soundtrack of "Blade Runner"). It did the first part, rather slow and quiet, very nicely, but when at one point there is a tremendous crash when everything comes in all at once, the amp choked and made it all sound very gentlemanly, stiff upper lip and all that, when in reality, that was supposed be a crash-in, a crescendo of music, some of it fairly sharp.
Well, speaking strictly for myself, I like a crecendo to sound like a crescendo, not like its polished, face lifted, plastic brother.
ANY amp will do its best playing low level, fairly slow music, but the acid test is to play loud, fairly fast music - that's where most of them fall short.
And just for the record, while this experience involved a tube amp, a not so good transistor amp would have fared no better, in fact, it would have fared probably worse to much worse.
As long as one assiduously avoids ears-only listening and trying to correlate measurements to THOSE results, one can make all kinds of silly pronouncements.
Exactly so. A crescendo should have scary, ripping through your body, impact - if your system can't startle you then it's not up to the mark. I have a classical piece that starts with a tremendous fortissimo, this is a real 'round of clean underwear for everyone' piece ...
The recent, highly compressed pop is a tremendous test, puts systems nominally capable of playing loud under big stress when asked to play at higher volumes. Just recently discovered Foo Fighters, and this material is perfect for the task: heavily produced, extremely dense, very aggressive vocals ...
"All in the mind" - fine. Than all we need do is to expand our definition of what we like by saying it has to satisfy our ears and our mind.
In any case, we then seem to have to satisfy both. Normally, we'd call that taste, some people like the priest, others like his wife.
To me, if one can pick out a certain amp among a group of its peers say 8 out of 10 times, then there is an audble difference.
British amps are generally made along similar lines simply because that's the prevailing technical attitude in Britain. Just as many German amps were made "the German way", or Italian amps "the Italian way". There's nothing wrong or odd about it, I think that's fairly normal. Brits believe in what is to me a very curtailed response - like any other approach, so this one has its good and bad sides. I just happen to think it makes the amps made along those lines, British or whosever, sound a little rounded-off, a little too artificially sweetened. I could say the same about most German made amps while they were still made in Germany, which was a long time ago.
The key word here is "most". There will always be others who do not subscribe to the same or similar logic. In the UK, one such company would be TAG McLaren, for example, whose amp I would very gladly own. AVI also sounded good to me.
And it's not as if the UK didn't have some not only world class companies, but people actually leading in the field and setting new standards. Two always come to my mind - dCS, Boothroyd-Stuart Meridian and SME. Some amazing minds working there.
Not to expand any more, but let me go on record as saying that there are other fields where UK stands hardly even seriously challenged, let alone surpased (odd units here and there overlooked, we are talking about general performance over time).
Exactly so. A crescendo should have scary, ripping through your body, impact - if your system can't startle you then it's not up to the mark. I have a classical piece that starts with a tremendous fortissimo, this is a real 'round of clean underwear for everyone' piece ...
The recent, highly compressed pop is a tremendous test, puts systems nominally capable of playing loud under big stress when asked to play at higher volumes. Just recently discovered Foo Fighters, and this material is perfect for the task: heavily produced, extremely dense, very aggressive vocals ...
Exactly - where do I underwrite?
Just out of curiosity, supposing it didn't clip or distort as such. Supposing its gain varied with signal amplitude, perhaps with a time constant of a significant fraction of a second i.e. it acted as a compressor. Would conventional measurements pick this up?
I would say 95% measurements and 5% listening . The listening will be setting the bandwidth and PSU design . Measurements are like a carpenters measure twice cut once . The risks are large .
I never listen to capacitors . However I spend hours choosing ones I feel offer good value . The manufacturer gives data . I am convinced that Audiophile capacitors are 90 % of what one uses for motors . Many manufactures of these capacitors stress the non inductive constitution .
Sid Smith ( Marantz ) told me something like this . " I put some capacitors in for a friend . Did it to please him . My training said it is nonsense . My ears didn't agree . Nigel you must try this . " I gave it a lot of thought and concluded I could find simlar at much lower prices . My great affection for that moment was he genuinely thought I hadn't come across this .
I am convinced bandwidth alone is the sound of an amp as long as it has no gross distortion especailly crossover distortion or instability . I will stick my neck out and say an amp happy to give 1 Hz to 100 kHz - 1 dB will sound drastically different when 10 Hz to 40 kHz - 1 dB . On anything we call music it should ( is ) be irrelevant . Somehow we hear the boundaries . One should say if a near single pole at either end that helps . Some amps need pulling in to give their best . I doubt if the mathematical limits mean anything here ? It is the mechanism .
Someone told me amps which are developed by ear ( the 5% bit ) often measure better . His point being that the changes sometimes were too small to register individually . As a group suddenly something is there . It needs a very good understanding of science to push the changes in the right direction . For example if some says carbon composition resistors sound better one should say did you try non inductive foil types ? If that person prefers the darker sound of CC they will save plenty of money . The hiss of CC is not as bad as some will tell you . They are non inductive and sometimes it will help . Mostly metal film is fine . I use carbon film a lot .
Computers were taught the rules of beauty . These turn out to be simple . Symmetry is assumed to indicate good health ( healthy children result ) . Marilyn Munroe badly failed the test . Her eyes were too close to her nose .
I measured a number of valves recently . Within reason all are about the same and all a bit dreadful . They all sound VERY different . Some ancient Marshall valves ( EL 34 , Mullard ? ) are wonderful . JJ Tesla nothing special . They were identical twins on the spectrum analyzer . Yes I did check everything if asking . As far as I know all transistors sound more or less the same if fit for purpose ( as compared with these valves ) ? Hard to say when a feedback loop has been slapped around the amp .
BTW . Measurements for me resemble OCD .
No, I don't believe that.
If one of the amps is misbehaving then it will show in the measurements.
If both amps are behaving equally well and both are not clipping, then they will sound (substantially) the same.
Why? Because the measurements show that they amplify all the audio content exactly equally, particularly the transient content. Continuous and constant sinewaves do not reveal much about the amplification behaviour of amplifiers. Well 19k+20k imd is an exception.
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Whatever a person's background, it doesn't make them immune to expectation bias. The very act of chopping out the old capacitors covered in dust and grime, symbolically dumping them in the bin, getting out shiny new caps and soldering them in with care and attention, smartening up the wiring better than before, vacuuming the dust out. Then the anticipation of powering up, selecting a test track. How could it not sound better!?
It was like the Pope saying about girlfriends he had known . It was all rather wonderful . When I say " known " I stress not in the Biblical way .
My friend Colleen tells me that not saying something is a lie . I think there are many amps that tell those types of lies . Funny thing when I throw it back at her she says " I am not secretive , I am just very private about my thoughts " . She can out talk me which is very rare , her statement is a wonderful piece of sophistry . She knows nothing about art . That's right , that's why we drag around every art gallery in the world . Apparently it is because she knows that is what I want to do . She knows far more than me which is odd for someone who NEVER studied it ( my eye she didn't ) .
The entire universe is always lies then? What we don't hear and don't see is a lie?
I have to say this 'expectation bias' sounds like mighty powerful stuff - should add about 20mph top speed to a car, convert vinegar to decent wine from the sound of it ... where can you buy a dose of this great booster ... ?
Ah yes, we're all in touch with the music, feeling the emotion (that British amps strip out) and so on, but we're also 100% objective and immune from any subjective influences at all. Well I've tested myself in this regard, and despite being the sceptic's sceptic, I am very prone to such biases. On occasion I have definitely heard strong differences that later were shown to be non-existent.
You reckon you're immune to all of this, do you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimenter's_bias
The irony is that if a person is unaware of their own biases they begin to feel like some sort of ultra-receptive 'seer' who can perceive differences that lesser mortals can't; differences that don't even show up in any of the puny measurements that mere meter-readers dream up. Their ignorance and weakness actually bolsters their feeling of superiority and omnipotence.
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It won't improve the measured speed, as there are aspects of speed that measurements don't address. However, you will arrive at your destination sooner (provided you don't wear a watch - as that introduces stress and prevents the effect from happening). Other people will tell you that your journey lasted exactly the same time, but what do they know? Engineers who insist on measuring speed with stopwatches and rulers will never appreciate the joy of fast driving (at the same speed as everyone else).fas42 said:
I once read (and find it very credible) that the police never considers eye witnesses to accidents reliable in approximating speed because studies have shown that it's usually engine rpm that is associated with it.I have to say this 'expectation bias' sounds like mighty powerful stuff - should add about 20mph top speed to a car, convert vinegar to decent wine from the sound of it ... where can you buy a dose of this great booster ... ?
I also read that the first production car that used a continuously-variable transmission was rejected by the market because people felt it was slow to accelerate. measurements showed the opposite.
I've ridden different bicycles and motorcycles. the braking feel usually varies by a huge amount. in time I learned that usually it's the "brake bite" that's associated with good brakes, not the actual stopping distance. a magazine made some actual tests and it turned out that some of the motorcycles that are "known" to have poor brakes stop better (all factors involved).
electric steering systems are thought not to provide good steering wheel "haptics" (all that's associated with tactile feedback), compared to the hydraulic ones. some manufacturers simulate the haptics in software in order to give the buyer what he thinks is good for him
sensory experience is complex stuff.
BTW, to me the absolute rejection of any kind of measurement makes me think the subjective brigade is formed of some sort of self-proclaimed engineers-artists. imagine the life most engineers that are involved in stuff like TV or photo camera R&D have... they never get to understand the art part of engineering.
IMO the only portion of an audio system where some form of "art" is involved is the speaker and that's because relatively gross distortions are present and a speaker that sounds good IMO manages to balance them in the most non objectionable way.
and getting back to amps... (btw, how come this topic seems to be about amps and amps only?)
one other thing my my previous amp did worse was bass. quite large difference. interestingly, measurements were better in that region too. the current one has way more ripple and also show a horrible clipping behavior.
which made me think there's clearly something that I missed. it's my impression that, in similar cases, an absolute subjectivist always conjectures that measurement don't tell anything or (done more frequently, IMO) associates an arbitrary parameter (usually, the most convenient one) of the device with the perceived sound.
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Measurement of compression with DEQ2496 shows addition of harmonic distortion. Distortion increases with shorter release times.
Measurement of seemingly benign input coupling capacitors reveals mangling of phase to >100Hz, although frequency response appears flat in same region.
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