Of course it is my own design 😉 I don't think commercial amps have this kind of sound. But I strongly believe Merrill Audio has it. Probably.
NPR and KCRW are my favorite music producers in Youtube. Here's a link to KCRW recording in Youtube. I first listened to this using my 'ordinary' amp and couldn't hear the beauty. But I saw in the recording the way Erika Wennerstrom sang the song. I thought, if she sang like that, the sound couldn't be just 'flat' like what I could hear with my ordinary amp. So I saved it to my playlist and few days later I used my best amps to listen to it, and wow! It's so lovely.
YouTube
Fourier applies to pressure waves just as much as it applies to voltages or temperature or anything else which has a finite number of finite discontinuities. You often berate us for now knowing about psychoacoustics etc.; maybe you need to do some reading on physics, engineering and mathematics?mmerill99 said:
Yes, you "hope" there is more. So do many other people, especially those whose income or fame depends on this turning out to be true.
Measurements made using music as a test signal are difficult to interpret. This leaves scope for those who don't understand electronics to demand more. No set of measurements can "fully" characterise a system, just as no collection of music could either. You are playing argument games.
Fourier is not a model; it is reality. Calling it a useful model merely exposes your ignorance of mathematics. A Fourier decomposition is equal to (i.e. identical to) the original signal (whatever that signal is: voltage, pressure etc.) except in the vicinity of a discontinuity. Sound has no discontinuities.
You really don't get it, do you? More unfortunately, you don't realise that you don't get it. This is what happens to alchemists who can't be bothered to learn enough chemistry.mmerrill99 said:
Fourier can perfectly describe any continuous function, including sound. You need to be aware that the time domain view and the frequency domain view of a phenomenon are just that: views. They are not models but reality: two different views of the same reality. Both contain exactly the same information, but in different forms. There are even views which combine something of both of these, such as wavelets.
That's very interesting indeed (why? see later).
Sound from live performances propagates to the microphones through air as compression wave. There is a known theory that unlike humans' ears, microphones capture 'everything' such that when reproduced through speakers there is a possibility that the recording contains information we shouldn't hear. (This theory also told me that my super transparent amp sounds different because it should, not because it is not well designed).
Sound propagates from speakers to ears also following the compression wave. Now confusion is around the sound through headphones. The sound is so 'different' than through speakers. I questioned myself why the headphone never display this microphone 'issue'? I thought the close distance to the ears creates 'masking' effect. And like the usual characteristics of masking, bad recordings sound better and good recordings sound worse.
But the close distance from headphone to ears also mean that sound from headphone almost does not propagate through compression wave. As if we are listening to electrical 'sine wave' instead of compression waves. 😀
"Sine wave" tests are usually done to measure the so-called steady state response and therefore usually no one thinks that a system is sufficiently described by the results.
The first sentence is most probably true; wrt the second one, sure that you don't ?
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Are you saying there are no acceptable measurements in place for the actual reproduction of music?
Isn’t that what these devices are for? To me that would be like designing and then building a car, making sure it runs goes in gear and stops, but never testing it on the road doing what it was meant to do.
Seems a little lazy to me......just sayin
So what makes a 'good' car? What is the complete set of measurements that defines it?
If this amp
how could it have "kind of sound"? Do you know different types of transparency? Something like "perpendicular, more perpendicular, the most perpendicular "??
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Surely you have done your homework in the mean time and know by now why your "ad hoc" attempt to introduce FUD is not working.....
Interesting enough, I distinctively recall a "jkeny" user on this forum, with a very similar approach with what we see today, which got banned around 2010 (if memory serves).
But enough of this detective work, after all who cares... BS is BS, that is BS, disregarding on who's perpetrating it
So after you have read Evenharmonic's comically failed try to bring up evidence for his claim, you have no objections?
I mean he wrote "that research" to mark it as dubious opinion work somehow related to "snake oil sales pitch" and mentioned as example for that
-) Zwicker & Fastl, which in fact is
Hugo Fastl, Eberhard Zwicker. Psychoacoustics, Facts and Models
one of the most important books on the topic, full of detailled informations, covering nearly all aspects of modern psychoacoustics
and
-) Cohen, who in fact is
the author of one of the standard books on power analysis and authored quite a lot of publications on the topic:
Jacob Cohen, Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences,
Sure, that must be questionable research.
Seems that something finally was exposed by Evenharmonic's post and your response. 🙂
You would first need to decide what characteristics your looking for, then test compared to a known performer within your parameters.
But somewhere in there subjectivity must come into play.....pleasing to the people and all that.😀
No, of course not. He was asking for a "full" set of measurements. This is like a TV reporter asking a government minister to "guarantee" that some disaster cannot happen again.mountainman bob said:
It is known that in order to get reasonable sound reproduction things like non-linear distortion, hum and noise need to be low - how low is something people still argue about and to some extent it is a matter of individuality. Similarly, frequency response should be wide and fairly level. These are not tests dreamt up by engineers, but the result of listening tests conducted decades ago. Some people don't aim for reasonable reproduction but instead choose some other goal, such as a pleasant sound (to their ears) which may involve frequency response variations or the addition of some low-order distortion.
And here we come to the crux of the circular argument. There is one group who believe that the characteristics for a 'transparent' amplifier were hit 40 odd years ago and we are better off focussing on other things. Another who are convinced that there are major differences to be found glomming and glopping and carving runes into things.
And a 3rd group chase impossibly high performance for sh*t and giggles because they can.
Well as with cars there’s a performance threshold where high performance in one area is a limitation in another......just have to know what you want.
But if there’s no measurements tied to these subjective impressions then we’re stuck with descriptive reviews to understand what it is we’re looking for.
The reviews that are frowned upon by the very people that design these products.......kindly a catch 22 for the consumer!
But if there’s no measurements tied to these subjective impressions then we’re stuck with descriptive reviews to understand what it is we’re looking for.
The reviews that are frowned upon by the very people that design these products.......kindly a catch 22 for the consumer!
Gentlemen, billshurv recently introduced me to ‘Trilogie de la Morte’ by Eliane Radigue. My musical discovery of this year, so far. 
This is a three hours long musical composition made from multiple overdubbed drones constructed entirely from transient free sine waves out of an ARP2500 synthesiser - only it does not sound like sine waves. It sounds like ethereal music from another world, and whose sonic origin is deeply within in this, our human world. It took her eight years to complete it, and as an electronic musician her understanding is that all sound is music. Having listened intently to this, her masterwork, I am now more or less entirely convinced that irrespective of its simplicity or complexity, music is made solely from sine waves.
Therefore it appears to be an equally convincing argument that sine waves can be used to map out or test any aspect of any component at every point within a recording or playback system.
Looks like I have finally learnt something, eh? 😛
ToS
This is a three hours long musical composition made from multiple overdubbed drones constructed entirely from transient free sine waves out of an ARP2500 synthesiser - only it does not sound like sine waves. It sounds like ethereal music from another world, and whose sonic origin is deeply within in this, our human world. It took her eight years to complete it, and as an electronic musician her understanding is that all sound is music. Having listened intently to this, her masterwork, I am now more or less entirely convinced that irrespective of its simplicity or complexity, music is made solely from sine waves.
Therefore it appears to be an equally convincing argument that sine waves can be used to map out or test any aspect of any component at every point within a recording or playback system.
Looks like I have finally learnt something, eh? 😛
ToS
The car analogy doesn't work 🙂 There are no analogies that work very well that I can think off? Best to give them up an concentrate on audio 😉 How can a car accurately reproduce something, to put it simply?
The analogy is in the perception of performance and how it’s tied to actual measurement.....quite relevant here if you ask me.
Not only that "transparency" was reached 40 years ago, but that this property was definitely shown by the limited set of measured number (usually) available.
The same claimed for CD players and DACs already 40 years ago. A bit inconsistent though, as in each decade someone declares, that _now_the goal was reached while the older ones weren't as good.
We had examples recently in this thread where the problems were mentioned digital (obviously still) had 15 years ago,but were surely solved today. Further that manufacturers of electronics should publish measured numbers for THD because THD + N numbers could be misleading as humans are able to listen into the noise.
The latter is correct, but imo the contradiction is obvious.
I don't thinkt there is much debate that other things like speaker (speaker placement) and room acoustics are overall the bigger challenge, but that neither speaker placement nor room acoustic will help to solve the problem if the amplifier/speaker combination does not fit.
But there is disagreement about, that after solving the bigger challenges there still are things to concern, which admittedly must not be of relevance for each and everyone.
Ah but the days of the 454 police interceptor engine option being $500 are long gone. The adverts talk of 0-60 times and cornering ability, but actually how much do they actually matter beyond a very small subset of motorists.
BUT the market for high end audio and the market for prestige cars are similar in that they are selling the same 'lifestyle'. The posh mota makes a certain type feel good when he gets in and sets off same way as powering up his monster monoblocks and looking at his hosepipe speaker cables does. In neither case does the actual performance matter!
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