Seriously considering doing an OTL - but . .

[otto88]

Seriously considering doing an OTL (leave aside which one for now) , but

one of the biggest strengths of a good OTL is a midrange without euphony, but very clear transparent, alive with fine detail -- but may be a two edged sword.

On 60 - 70s (or other) pop or rock recordings which are ‘poorly recorded’, eg close miked, are they too revealing?

[aardvarkash10]

Originally Posted by otto88

Seriously considering doing an OTL (leave aside which one for now) , but

one of the biggest strengths of a good OTL is a midrange without euphony, but very clear transparent, alive with fine detail -- but may be a two edged sword.

On 60 - 70s (or other) pop or rock recordings which are ‘poorly recorded’, eg close miked, are they too revealing?

Have I got this right - you are concerned that your proposed amp will be too good for the source material you have?

Leaving aside the veracity of your suppositions about the "strengths" of an OTL design, doesn't your amp selection criteria guide you toward reinforcing mediocrity?

[CLS]

I do have some CDs that I listen less and less with the improvement of the system. Those are of course badly produced records. I think this is inevitable.

There are some songs I do like in those bad recordings. Digital EQ comes in handy at these moments.

And, you don't want to play them loud, so it's good to leave them in the late night when you listen quietly.

So, why worry? Ultimately, you can use ear plugs if there's no cure to those records.

[otto88]

{{ Leaving aside:
transparent midrange “alive with fine detail” aren’t suppositions. they’re common observations from those who’ve heard them.
Have you heard OTLs (or read reports on them?) }}

Clearly you are a purist.
I would be too, if the music I often liked, was as pure as eg well recorded string quartets.

I’m a realist who wants to spend time n money on things with a good probability of enjoyment.

Yes you have it right. This is not Madness
As much of my listening is 60 - 70s rock, I’m thinking maybe some SE euphony *might be better.
This is the 1st time youve heard this idea?

Constructive comments please, preferably from people whove listened to OTLs quite a bit, including with 60 - 70s rock, 50s blues, etc.

[otto88]

CLS

Thanks, but I don’t want to lower the volume, as some of this music I like to pump UP, eg Led Zeppelin, garage rock . .

Digital EQ could help, I’m putting together speakers which will have digital XO. Off topic, but with what (software?), what sort of settings do you apply?

[otto88]

Any OTL owners or listeners reading?

[Bigun]

I don't think many people will find your question an easy one to answer - it's very subjective and depends a lot of personal taste. Even if you did get answers, I'm not sure they would be what you need.

my thoughts... build the best amp you can that will give you the best sound for well recorded material. Anything less will be, well, less.

if you have music that *you* prefer listening to without a revealing amplifier you can always 'dumb it down', perhaps at the flick of a switch ?

[otto88]

I basically agree with you
though when *you mean by "dumb it down"?
thanks

[suntechnik]

imho major concern would be speakers safety unless coupled to electrostatic ones in DIY case especially.

I am owning Graaf 13.5 preamp (manufacture that was famous for it's OTL amps) it improves everything. I believe better amp sounds more natural so any record might benefit from it.

Galvanic decoupling (good OT) is a nice stuff however.

[bear]

My opinion:

- there are two unrelated issues here

The first issue is the system sound, the result
The second issue is the effect (generally speaking ) of an OTL, usually with significant feedback, in terms of sound using a typical dynamic speaker.

While the two things are interrelated in this case, they are actually somewhat separate.

What a given system will sound like depends a whole lot on things other than any single component. In my experience it is impossible to "tailor" any given component or series of components more than just a little bit and end up with something that will sound "right" across a broad spectrum of recordings. IF the source is a CD then in most cases (again my experience) nothing in the following chain will be any better than that CD player/DAC no matter what you do. Sure you can make it sound somewhat pleasant, but again that sort of system then seems to fail in some way with some percentage of source material.

The OTL amp is very sensitive to the impedance vs. frequency of a given speaker, feedback tries to cure this but is never quite sufficient. So the OTL "likes" higher Z and "dislikes" lower Z, whereas your typical brute SS amp is the opposite (generally speaking in broad terms).

There is no "tube sound" per se, and one can configure tubes to give a wide range of subjective sounds... Otoh, it is not easy to get SS to sound like tubes, but you can make tubes sound pretty much like SS, if you know how... but most are not going that way anyhow, so that's only important in terms of speaking of a range of subjective impressions.

My general view is that trying to set up "euphonic colorations" to "correct" a system just won't work. And, the greater the differential that is used to make the corrections the worse the result. In other words, you can not "filter" a "filter" and make it correct.

So, will an OTL sound good or "correct" or "euphonic" or "accurate" in your system? Impossible to know without really knowing and understanding the complete system - and maybe even hearing it. On paper, in theory, it is unknowable.

Just my 2 cents worth.

_-_-bear