Voicing an amplifier: general discussion

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Indeed. Rolex does NOT sell timepieces. Rolex sells an experience. There are many more examples in these times where what you buy is not the product but the experience and the image it represents.

It's even worse: if you get something without paying for it, you can safely assume that YOU are the product!

Jan

Where do you get his nonsense about rolex watches, lol ...🙂

Yes, in those circumstances they should match up fairly well. I believe that all amplifiers have the potential to sound identical, but usually don't because they are impacted by subtle implementation problems, weaknesses in the power supply area or they are too susceptible to various interference issues; or, the manner in which they operate generates interference, impacting other components in the reproduction chain.

Two identical amplfiers from the same manufacturer don't sound the same , major effort to get them close, muchless 2 different amplfiers , well maybe they do on PC SPEAKERS..
 
Two identical amplfiers from the same manufacturer don't sound the same , major effort to get them close, muchless 2 different amplfiers , well maybe they do on PC SPEAKERS.
Well, they should, in part that's QC. Subtle variations in everything will cause those behaviours, so the trick is to lift the reproduction above the level where you're listening to the "sound" of the amplifiers. I did the trick some time ago of having two different speakers for left and right, both were 2 ways, but were very different in just about everything else - this "worked", as in soundstaging, etc, all still fell into place ... if you can make differing speakers "balance" then you should be able to get amplifiers to present a unified front ...
 
So, would you say that this phenomenon is something that's audible and readily identifiable?
Yes ..

Well, they should, in part that's QC. Subtle variations in everything will cause those behaviours, so the trick is to lift the reproduction above the level where you're listening to the "sound" of the amplifiers. I did the trick some time ago of having two different speakers for left and right, both were 2 ways, but were very different in just about everything else - this "worked", as in soundstaging, etc, all still fell into place ... if you can make differing speakers "balance" then you should be able to get amplifiers to present a unified front ...

Who said anything about balance, i said sound , the sonic signature will be different...
 
That's why I quoted the word balance, I was referring to the apparent sonics - if there is a "signature" then the amplification, in the context of that system, is not transparent.

As an example, you have a vocalist dead centre - you should be able to move over and listen closely to the left speaker, and then do the same at the right one - the identical person should be at each, 😀 ...
 
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eg. In the past, when I "believed" that 'everything makes a diffeference' (even cabling), there was one evening when a certain DIY cable was thought to be the best of the bunch we tested. Another evening that very same cable was thought to be terrible -- in the same system. Never mind that we were peeking.
In the past I thought that cables might make a difference, better put - that conductor materials might make a difference. I set out to color the sound by passing the signal thru bananas, potatoes, human beings, beer wine and mud. I failed.
All I found was an impedance difference. Once the gain was adjusted, blind testing here on the forum showed it almost impossible to hear the difference.
There is a thread about it somewhere.

Growing up, I was taught that amps make little to no difference as long as they are low noise and have adequate power. Then I got involved in blind tests of amplifiers that really opened my ears. Amps don't all sound the same. Even those with adequate power and bandwidth.

I'm sure there are good technical reasons for the audible differences. Some of them I've been able to measure.
 
The key differences are audible and identifiable, and you can sensitise yourself to the characteristics, in a similar way people do for compression codec artifacts, by using the right recordings and having some guidance as to what to look for. Modern compressed, aggressive, extremely heavily textured rock is almost perfect for this, it puts immense "stress" on a system's resolving qualities - say, a gung-ho Foo Fighters track would be ideal. At a first step, you can learn to hear the voltage sag start to cripple the sound as the amplifier manfully tries to cope with the source material, and fails, at a certain volume level. Then, proceed to other niceties of misbehaviour ...
 
And guess why it's never going to happen ...

OK then, I'll have a stab. Could it have something to do with the experimental design -

...is a listening test intended to show that as long as a modern audio amplifier is operated within its linear range (below clipping), the differences between amps are inaudible to the human ear

So they already know the right answer even before the punter hands over the folding stuff. Neat 😀
 
what part of a bet do you not understand? - they have taken a side, offered stakes on their belief, given any an opportunity to prove them wrong, collect the money

you can investigate the terms beforehand, decide if they are "fair", worth the offered 50:1 odds in your favor
 
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what i said was the soundstage as presented in the recording will be different from amplfier to amplifier
That's exactly what's wrong in your thesis.

Amplifiers do NOT modify soundstage which is something already embeddeed in the recording ... or as I also mentioned (and you conveniently choose to ignore) a live feed.

But it's EASY to test.

As I said (why do I need to REPEAT this?) :in a sound system chain insert a few competent amplifiers (behind a curtain , don't cheat 😉 ), switch them in at random and try to pick which soundstage is which 😉
By ear, of course 😉
 
For many people soundstage means a lot more than that, a 3D presentation is the natural outcome of competent reproduction, because the depth cues picked up by the microphones become meaningful, are translated in the brain into an "illusion" of distance. If one hasn't been exposed to a system working well enough for these clues to be sufficiently clear then the tendency would be to assume that left/right is all one can get; yldouright's correlating of reproduction of soundstage information with the capability of the system is very meaningful when one is attempting to assess quality.

Well, to begin with there is no real 3D "presentation" or whatever you call it because our limited technology provides us with the poorest means: just 2 channels, in 2 fixed positions, to represent the incredibly complex 3D field in an orchestra playing live in a ... stage ....

Where do you think the concept comes from?

That spatial position is represented in 99% recordings just by different settings of a panpot if each instrument is close miked (which was my example) or in, say, a gifted 1% (or much less) the volume difference plus some true phase difference, *if* the live orchestra (which can be as small as a string quartet or a sax/piano duo) is picked up with a single pair of microphones, arranged in one of the classic settings.

Including binaural or artificial head recordings.

In any of those cases, either the standard "fake" one or the very few direct recordings, the spatial information, the soundstage, gets embedded in the recording.

No amplifier, which works with signals at the speed of light can change that.

Even if it did introduce uneven delays (which *would* thus affect "space"), we can't perceive the micro or nano seconds involved.

To boot, the gross difference in soundstage stated by some reviewers would involve timing differences measured thousand or million times longer delays, because they should be measurable in milliseconds ..... where are they?

Even worse, such differences should be selectively applied at some parts of the music and not to others, to create a difference in timing able to affect soundstage in some way.

In fact, by sticking to such outrageous and impossible to demonstrate statements, they are shooting their own foot.

Don't waste time on us who have a firm grasp on how things work, based on solid knowledge and experience, go try convince some gullible unsophisticated customers that they should spend their hard earned money on esoteric products.

Practice which I don't condemn per se, there's people for everything ... including Homeopathy, Natural Healing, Astrology and a thousand other Human Interests of the same kind.
 
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