John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jump to Latest
#94,744
Hi Anatoliy,
Standard measurements may not help to sort the better amplifiers, but they do point out the poor performers. If you become a little creative, you can take measurement information that does correlate to better sound.

So if you are going to talk about how great your amplifier is, include the basic measurements or you are just so much noise.

One thing I have found to be very valuable to keep in mind. Do not evaluate your own work. Let critical people do that instead. It's less embarrassing that way.

-Chris
 
#94,745
anatech said:
Hi Anatoliy,
Standard measurements may not help to sort the better amplifiers, but they do point out the poor performers.
Click to expand...

Poor performers I used to make 50 years ago, before got my MS EE diploma. 😀

If you become a little creative, you can take measurement information that does correlate to better sound.
Click to expand...

Yes, and I know which measurements correlate to better sound. 🙂

One thing I have found to be very valuable to keep in mind. Do not evaluate your own work.
Click to expand...

As if I have no idea what end result I want to achieve? 🙂

Let critical people do that instead. It's less embarrassing that way.
Click to expand...

It is exactly what I am doing. A first, I am myself very critical to quality of sound reproduction. Second, I test my designs on speakers of local audiophiles, and value their feedback very much.

Now, please let me return to my thesis, that started all this cavalry attack on me:


"However, if you always listen to compressed music and don't care of quiet sounds that create illusion of space, you do not need SE tube amps."
 
#94,746
Wavebourn said:
Yes, I over-reacted. And I am sorry for that. But I will stay behind my words that opamp topologies repeated again and again, no matter how refined, can not create such illusion of a space in soundstage how single ended amplifiers do. The only drawback of them is, huge power consumprion. The rest is just technical details, and forte-fortissimo they can reproduce as easy, as PP amps do. You should remember my Tower design, with single ended output, loaded on counter-modulated CCS augmented source follower, driven by vacuum tube driver with enormous speed and linearity. It delivered 200W per channel, consuming more than kilowatt of energy. This amp is different. It is made only of 2 tubes per channel, just assisted by a sand. And I am proud of it, and am ready to contest.
Click to expand...
Well yeah, op-amps have no chance if you use 741's like you touted in that mixer. So you, just now, seem to be discovering the SET magic; like what Sound Practices and Glass Audio magazines were publishing in the mid 90's (about 25 years ago!).

BTW, Choke loaded SET is the way to go. Just takes big cores if you want power.
The Sound of the Machine
 
Last edited:
#94,747
morinix said:
Well yeah, op-amps have no chance if you use 741's like you touted in that mixer. So you, just now, seem to be discovering the SET magic; like what Sound Practices and Glass Audio magazines were publishing in the mid 90's (about 25 years ago!).
Click to expand...

Unity gain buffers using 4558 and power amps with opamp topology are totally different things.

No, I brought SE amps on higher level. Published in mid 90'Th mentioned Pavel PMA when he criticized all SE amps at once, as if they have drawbacks of that SE amps of 90'Th. Today is 2017, and my SE amps have no that drawbacks. But they have one major essential property of SE amps: diminishing distortions of decaying sounds that preserve space, air in soundstage. But since it is 2017, they have low output resistance, low intermodulation distortions up to full power, and symmetric, but soft, clipping. And very low dynamic distortions.
 
#94,750
Hi Anatoliy,
I wish I could make it. I would definitely be in that crowd of critical listeners .

The SET amplifier died in the 30's and the clear superiority of P-P designs was the reason. Bell figured this out as did all people chasing better reproduction. I have yet to hear a SET system I can live with as they have their own distortion types. The only place you could find a SET amplifier was in cost conscious products. Like tube table radios and television sets. The higher quality ones use P-P circuits.

My first amplifier was a tube SET design. Later, it got swapped out for a P-P amplifier and I have never looked back for myself. Just saying. You have an opinion and other folks have theirs.

-Chris
 
#94,752
Audible distortion does not equal, does not mean, that there is "distortion" in the THD sense. This is probably one of the least understood things among audiophiles, who claim they like low distortion but only the opposite could possibly be ever validated - EVER. What they hear are things related to stuff like feedback results from crossover distortion, emf, etc. Things that might be of "no fault from the amp" but if wavebourn or anyone else has done good work to prevent the audible aberrations then kudos.

I have no idea exactly how Wavebourn has come to his conclusions, or if he is even sure exactly why he has his conclusions, but would prefer to listen to his amp/s in order to gather a sense of validity. In fact I have offered to give a review of his amp by sticking it into systems ranging from DIY, prototype, to hopefully a system with speakers that cost more than Scott's car. But he said he only has one, which he will need for the Bluff's Art Festival?
 
#94,755
Last edited:
#94,757
Isnt the issue Wavebourn is talking about is clipping behavior of each stage? Since amp is what I would call low power, music peaks with many systems, to reach a given spl, might often clip.

A very high power amp just avoids clipping behavior all together.


THx-RNMarsh
 
#94,760
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom