For me, it is poorly calculated/made crossovers with too much or too little frequency overlap, copious amounts of unnecessary volume, and bad music.
going briefly over the thread, it looks like lot can contribute to listening fatigue
so here is my contribution
I was recently doing quite a lot of amp to amp comparison, just for fun
my setup is spare system in living room (I have two systems upstairs and home theater in living room plus some other system in the basement), so this system is temporary in the living room, it consist of JVC cd player, heavily modified, lampized, good sounding, as source (I did not want to remove my junsong or azur from other systems so it will do), preamp is Onkyo, do not remember model number, like 3060 something, used only as a volume control, tone controls bypased, I used some tube preamps here, but they have too much gain, and the amps...here I swapped like dozen different amps...and the PA speakers...you can see those on my page, they are 18" woofer, 4x dayton mid, and selenium horn tweeter, (radians removed) tweeter lowered to ear height for domestic purposes...anyway, here comes the fun part...I generaly put there NIKKO Alpha 230, which I just got from ebay, good sounding amp...and get aquainted with sound, play few songs, different genres, and then swap the amp...and do it again, and compare
well, some amps exhibit cleary not too pleasing dry cold sound...no appealing in long term, leading quickly to listening fatigue
some sound harmonious, pleasing, inviting, asking for more cds to put in, more listening and re-listening (every time I make major upgrade, and sound improves, I need to relisten my favourite records and cds)
some apms are so so in between
now I do not have complete theory why is this...but
when I listen to good tube amp (like Transcendent OTL), which frienkly is just a buffer, I can close my eyes and easily picture the musicians, the image is plastic, I can "see" the sound with no effort, my brain makes little adjustments, its fun and pleasure to listen to
I can pretty much say that from like 10-12 amps I compared, there is clear positive correlation between the sound quality (low listening fatigue) and the amount of heat they generate (this offcourse is meant as joke)
now at one point, I hade pretty terribly sounding Fisher receiver, and was curious as why it sounds so bad, actually it was given to me by my friend because of that...for parts, he could not stand the sound of it, guarantied quick listening fatigue
similarly I was interested why SuperA JVC super hiend home theater receiver sounded pretty flat (boring) while on paper it had better parameters then most of the amps...so I did one experiment...I bypassed all the preamp and tone control sections in both Fisher and JVC receivers. You know those chip based volume control, chip based balance, bass and treble controls, in case of JVC..SAE 7 band equalizer, all the digital delay and dolby boards, which by the way, are always "silently" in, even if they are bypased...I simply brought signal straight to the power amp. Boy or boy, what a difference...Fisher sounds almost listenable, and JVC beat the the heck out of NIKKO, its soo good, it even sounds better than some tube stuff.
Anyway, long story short, there must have been something messing up the sound in all those remote controlled chip based tone/balance/volume control circuits. Phase? I remember long time ago I had Pioneed cassette deck and somone suggested to remove those muting transistors on the output, and I did, and it improved the sound significantly...so what were those muting transistor messing? Phase?
So those receivers, Fisher and JVC (I think its model 805 or 705) before the direct signal to the power amp section, the soundstage was flat, collapsed, boring...does this indicate phase issues? Brain not being able to completely make up the soundstage, working hard, leading to listening fatigue? After the mod, JVC sounded so good, image clear and stable, pure pleasure to listen to it. What happened? The same amp, just that garbage in preamp section completely bypased (previously it was not engaged either, but the signal had to go through those chips, you get the pint).
Sorry for the long post, I hope you find some of it usefull.
so here is my contribution
I was recently doing quite a lot of amp to amp comparison, just for fun
my setup is spare system in living room (I have two systems upstairs and home theater in living room plus some other system in the basement), so this system is temporary in the living room, it consist of JVC cd player, heavily modified, lampized, good sounding, as source (I did not want to remove my junsong or azur from other systems so it will do), preamp is Onkyo, do not remember model number, like 3060 something, used only as a volume control, tone controls bypased, I used some tube preamps here, but they have too much gain, and the amps...here I swapped like dozen different amps...and the PA speakers...you can see those on my page, they are 18" woofer, 4x dayton mid, and selenium horn tweeter, (radians removed) tweeter lowered to ear height for domestic purposes...anyway, here comes the fun part...I generaly put there NIKKO Alpha 230, which I just got from ebay, good sounding amp...and get aquainted with sound, play few songs, different genres, and then swap the amp...and do it again, and compare
well, some amps exhibit cleary not too pleasing dry cold sound...no appealing in long term, leading quickly to listening fatigue
some sound harmonious, pleasing, inviting, asking for more cds to put in, more listening and re-listening (every time I make major upgrade, and sound improves, I need to relisten my favourite records and cds)
some apms are so so in between
now I do not have complete theory why is this...but
when I listen to good tube amp (like Transcendent OTL), which frienkly is just a buffer, I can close my eyes and easily picture the musicians, the image is plastic, I can "see" the sound with no effort, my brain makes little adjustments, its fun and pleasure to listen to
I can pretty much say that from like 10-12 amps I compared, there is clear positive correlation between the sound quality (low listening fatigue) and the amount of heat they generate (this offcourse is meant as joke)
now at one point, I hade pretty terribly sounding Fisher receiver, and was curious as why it sounds so bad, actually it was given to me by my friend because of that...for parts, he could not stand the sound of it, guarantied quick listening fatigue
similarly I was interested why SuperA JVC super hiend home theater receiver sounded pretty flat (boring) while on paper it had better parameters then most of the amps...so I did one experiment...I bypassed all the preamp and tone control sections in both Fisher and JVC receivers. You know those chip based volume control, chip based balance, bass and treble controls, in case of JVC..SAE 7 band equalizer, all the digital delay and dolby boards, which by the way, are always "silently" in, even if they are bypased...I simply brought signal straight to the power amp. Boy or boy, what a difference...Fisher sounds almost listenable, and JVC beat the the heck out of NIKKO, its soo good, it even sounds better than some tube stuff.
Anyway, long story short, there must have been something messing up the sound in all those remote controlled chip based tone/balance/volume control circuits. Phase? I remember long time ago I had Pioneed cassette deck and somone suggested to remove those muting transistors on the output, and I did, and it improved the sound significantly...so what were those muting transistor messing? Phase?
So those receivers, Fisher and JVC (I think its model 805 or 705) before the direct signal to the power amp section, the soundstage was flat, collapsed, boring...does this indicate phase issues? Brain not being able to completely make up the soundstage, working hard, leading to listening fatigue? After the mod, JVC sounded so good, image clear and stable, pure pleasure to listen to it. What happened? The same amp, just that garbage in preamp section completely bypased (previously it was not engaged either, but the signal had to go through those chips, you get the pint).
Sorry for the long post, I hope you find some of it usefull.
For me:
Bad tonal balance (tipical monitor loudspeaker with middle band in evidence, tweeters that kills mosquitos, poor bass o too evident, etc.)
dynamic compression
clipping
metal cones
tweeters (eheheh)
too low volume (eheheh 2)
bad music
Regards,
Gianni
Bad tonal balance (tipical monitor loudspeaker with middle band in evidence, tweeters that kills mosquitos, poor bass o too evident, etc.)
dynamic compression
clipping
metal cones
tweeters (eheheh)
too low volume (eheheh 2)
bad music
Regards,
Gianni
Compression is something that my ears are very sensitive to. The compression of FM broadcasts drive me crazy- it sounds totally fake.
I have old Bose 301s set up in my shop. They are hung by the ceiling exactly like the store displays. I also have a hard-wired equalizer that makes them sound a lot better. They are driven by a Nakamichi Stasis amp (a freebie I refurbished 😀) and the amp doesn't have any problem at all driving these inefficient speakers.
If you listen moderately loud, they sound great- clear, balanced, full sound. But if you turn them up really loud, the compression is immediately apparent. After a few minutes, the whole tonal balance is way off and remains that way if you turn them down. You must turn them off and let them cool down. After all, the "woofer" is the midrange too in these speakers.
When I say amps can cause fatigue, I'm talking about amps with ringing. Those will hurt your ears after awhile, tho you may not be aware why. And circuits with a lot of higher harmonics grate on my ears after awhile. E.G., bad opamp circuits.
I am glad to read that other people find the room to be a problem. If the reflections are hot in the midrange (not uncommon) it will wear you out. Yes Allen, pretty much the same thing as bad tonal balance, but maybe from a different cause.
I am glad to read that other people find the room to be a problem. If the reflections are hot in the midrange (not uncommon) it will wear you out. Yes Allen, pretty much the same thing as bad tonal balance, but maybe from a different cause.
Why would a commercial amp be ringing? On paper, they all look the same as far as bandwidth and distortion. On paper, the differences are in power output and dynamic headroom.
But we know that they do not all sound the same. I know I keep preaching this, but it is the interaction between the speaker and amplifier that causes most of the sonic differences between amplifiers. Speakers develop back emf from their motion through the magnetic circuit and also through michrophonics. This back emf is fed right back to the input via the feedback network. How much is fed back depends on the electrical damping, the gain of the amplifier, and probably other factors too.
This is where a two stage amplifier really shines through. If you configure the output stage to have a gain of one, these back emfs will not be amplified! Even if you configure it for a gain of 3, it's better than a single stage amplifier with a gain of 20 or 30.
And even if you configure the output stage as a less than unity gain emitter follower configuration (gain 0.9x), which will typically have a harmonic distortion figure that is high by today's standards (like 0.1%), the net distortion into a real world load will still be much lower than a traditional power amplifier with global feedback.
Amplifier specifications are rated into a resistive load. The real world load of a loudspeaker is very much more complex than this, and contains dynamic elements as well.
I've had this experience too, time and time again. I've gutted a lot of recievers for parts; more than I have fixed. And my experience is that the power amplifiers are usually a lot cleaner than the rest of the circuitry.
When I look inside a commercial receiver, it looks a mess to me. The layout is typically horrible. It's all about fitting the most stuff into the least space. The audio signal goes back and forth a few times through ribbon wires and computer grade connectors. The potentiometers are cheap, or worse yet there is digital sound control. Yuck!
I don't do simulations. I do KVL and KCL by hand, with a calculator.
Furthermore, simulations use a resistive load. I saw a dummy load that emulated the load of a real world speaker, but could not find it. It incorporated an array of resistors, inductors, and capacitors. Its impedance varied quite non-linearly with frequency, just like a real world speaker system.
It's a lot easier to drive a resistive load than it is to drive a variable impedance load with dynamic emf, like a real world loudspeaker.
Results vary widely with different speakers. Mechanical damping as well as electrical damping figure into the picture. The actual relationship between speaker and amplifier is complex and widely variable.
Lots of headroom and high damping factor help mitigate the effects. Current drive (instead of conventional voltage drive) deals with the issue, too.
Bad design, bad build. They happen - I've owned some. They also happen in DIY amps (see name of website) 😉
Amen. I said the same about 100 posts ago. My 'research' into the field found two items of significance and only when the SPL was higher which leads to fatigue sooner:
1. Cone break-up
2. Tweeters
I do think the interaction of amp and speaker is important. What I don't know is how big the effect is, what the results are, etc. I just haven't done the work or read the research. Very interested to learn more, for sure.
I have to admit, I don't like tweeters. Almost all sound fake to me. And many hurt my ears. They do add needed to warmth to strings and some voices. If only that didn't come with the annoying fakeness. 🙁
Amen. I'm just looking into this myself.
I think the effect varies greatly with both amplifier and speakers. I also think this effect is what separates the men from the boys when it comes to amplifiers, all else being "equal."
Amplifiers that measure the same can sound quite different; that's a fact.
Agree 100% with all this, this is very similar to the process I went through. Conventional audio electronics has lots of very junky elements, used "because that's the way you do things ...!". So, if you go through methodically and rip out, or bypass the pap, 'miracles' will happen ...
Pano, don't be so nasty, 😛 ! Tweeters are good boys, they're only doing what they've been told - fed with corrupted sound that's exactly comes out ...
In the computing game it's called GIGO - Garbage In , Garbage Out ...
Shhhh...... don't let SY hear you.
I thought I addressed the issue quite objectively. I did not appeal to woo or a higher power. 😀