Your question has been answered, its just not what you thought the answer was.
And its unfortunately that you don't believe that the vast majority of all amps available today have no audible distortions, but that's not my problem.
Unfortunately, a mob over in Sweden have that same problem - the manufacturers must have shipped all their dodgy units over to that part of the world ... 😉
he never said that all amps sound the same. Only the ones designed to have no audible "artefacts " which I guess are industry standard amps sound similar or the same.They were already perfect in 80's and not much progressed from that time. The same with dynamic speakers. Top of the line does not sound significantly better , what improved is bottom of the line and mid priced units.
It's a typical point of view of Sound Engineer or Industry Professional . I never met one who thinks differently. It's their right and it's shared by companies supplying both for pro and audiophile market. Those companies typically put nice faceplate and triple the price for those audiophile idiots who want to buy their junk. What difference one expect to hear from thicker faceplate ??
As evidenced by famous name manufacturers of active monitors - I was very surprised at how poor these were at being reasonable reproducers of music; I guess it's a case of something vaguely in the region of being OK is good enough for pro's ... 😉
Wow, so audio perfection had pretty much been achieved in the 80's. All the recent innovations, especially with speakers with copper shorting rings to stabilize the B-field, poly-caps to reduce distortion, linear motor designs to reduce high-excursion distortion, venting behind the spider and dust cap to reduce high frequency resonances, advanced cone materials, the fact that most PA systems use processors nowadays to deal with the limitations of the speakers...all just marketing B.S. Computer modeling of amps? Not needed. Just design engineers wasting their time.
Saying one wants to design an amp with no audible artifacts is like saying one wants to build a tank that can't be blown up. Easier said than done. Granted, I think some of the newer class-D designs are getting closer and closer. But I don't think they're perfect.
Last edited:
Everyone hears huge differences when knowing what amp is playing and the sounds have level differences, its just how humans behave and its inescapable.
Those differences very often disappear when you don't know what amp is playing and there are no level differences.
Its interesting to find out why this happens, I'll leave that up to you its not that difficult to figure out.
And IME once you know the cause of this strange effect, you stop listening to the equipment and start listening to the music.
Have a happy new year.
Edit: Speakers and the room do make a huge difference in sound quality.
Last edited:
...And IME once you know the cause of this strange effect, you stop listening to the equipment and start listening to the music.
Have a happy new year....
the "effect" may have the ability to let one "off the hook" for a moment . I do wish I never got this mental illness called "audiophilia" and be able to just "listen to the music like in good old days" that's what I wish to all participants of this thread in New Years listening sessions .
I do think Single Ended is worth it for whatever reasons , be it good or bad . The illusions are more pleasant ...
best , L
Have a happy new year....
the "effect" may have the ability to let one "off the hook" for a moment . I do wish I never got this mental illness called "audiophilia" and be able to just "listen to the music like in good old days" that's what I wish to all participants of this thread in New Years listening sessions .
I do think Single Ended is worth it for whatever reasons , be it good or bad . The illusions are more pleasant ...
best , L
This is very dangerous and confusing once we start going there. It's like saying "we'll, your ears are lying. So I'm going to tell you what you are hearing" So why not just take a 1971 handheld transistor radio and convince myself it sounds the same as anything I've heard, live or otherwise. Or maybe the person that hears no difference is the one with the distorted perception.
I admit there's plenty of smoke and mirrors in the hi-fi world as well as some placebo effect going on. But if we're going to tell ourselves our ears, or at least our sonic experience, are always lying or are selectively lying, what's the point of good audio? I can think I like it better and never be able to tell for sure. Surely there must be some balance there.
IME, I've had both cases. Some where I "upgraded" and tried my best to convince myself what I have now is better, only to have that nagging feeling telling me "something's missing. You lost something". And I eventually had to admit I wasted the money. Don't think anything buy my ears could have told me that.
And then I've had other cases where I upgraded and thought "wow, why didn't I do this sooner". And never went back.
And I've also had blind tests that convinced me I was wrong. One example, I'm one that used to roll my eyes anytime someone would talk about upgrading their interconnects. "It's a piece of wire, with 100 times more bandwidth than what is needed for audio. How could it possibly make a difference" And then a friend blind swapped some average ones with some high end ones, and I could definitely hear air rushing through the vocalist's throat with the high end ones and could not hear that with the normal ones. Not saying the price made the difference necessarily. But my old thinking that interconnects don't make a difference was proved wrong, by what I heard.
Last edited:
Absolutely not!
I'm saying trust ONLY your ears. You don't listen with your eyes do you? So don't use them. I strongly advice everyone to do proper listening tests.
Everyone who knows a bit about perception, knows that perception is easily fooled. Your whole brain is involved in perception and it uses everything it can to come to some perception. If you know a bottle of wine is expensive, it will taste better. If you colour white wine red, it will taste like red wine.
A wise person will take that into account. In the case of audio this means you need to level match equipment precisely, and not know what equipment is playing.
Good audio is for the enjoyment of music.
After proper testing of equipment, you know for sure that it sounds the way you like. And you don't listen to the equipment any more, you just listen to the music.
Man, all I can say is that you have some pretty weird senses - or maybe it's a cultural thing ... 😛
So, posting more than 3 amps disqualifies.
Yeah, Tattoo, he said 3. What were you thinking?
If you heard a difference in properly conducted test, then one of them is defective or not designed to industry standard spec, therefore it's bad.
That's a possibility but not a foregone conclusion. And is there an industry standard spec for RCA patch cables, other than the connectors fit and the conductors are connected?
Last edited:
It's a simple logic. So simple that it needs no procrastination.
Passive components like interconnects and speaker wires need no special design other than what's already a standard design in the audio industry. They are already perfected components to the point of audibly transparent transfer of electric audio signal. Any audible change caused by those are degradation of electric audio signal, therefore it's either defective or bad design and the owners should get refund or exchange.
The premise for your logic is that passive components, unless defective or poorly designed, cannot possibly make a difference. And I hold this premise is doubtful. I've heard sonic differences in passive components. If we're going to go the route that my hearing is somehow flawed or biased, then we have to apply that same doubt to the person hearing no difference. If we're going to define any passive component that doesn't sound perfect as poorly designed, then we cannot know if any component is properly designed, because how do we know what sounds perfect? Did either of the interconnects I listened to sound perfect? Or did one just sound better or different than the other? Every sound we've ever heard from an audio system comes through some kind of analog interconnect at some point. So how do we know every single interconnect out there isn't holding something back, and there's more to be discovered?
BTW, followed your link. Didn't see anything like an IEEE or AES standard. Only various manufacturers spec'ing their stuff. Can you give a specific link to a standard?
BTW, followed your link. Didn't see anything like an IEEE or AES standard. Only various manufacturers spec'ing their stuff. Can you give a specific link to a standard?
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.