Here is a little something I dug up - a series of letters in Stereophile, covering just what we are discussing here. The link below is page 5, where S. Lipshitz replies. He is big on measurement, and his work is the basis for understanding differences between components:
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/182/index8.html
Pano - here is another good article if you can get it. I'll help pay for these articles if you'd like, email me:
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=5425
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/182/index8.html
Pano - here is another good article if you can get it. I'll help pay for these articles if you'd like, email me:
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=5425
motives ...
Talking more about motives - what motive did Peter Walker have to throw the gountlet to the very mob that was driving the sales of his products (HiFi press) ?
I mean, he could just junk the "squawking" 405, keep cranking out the "vastly better sounding" Quad II, introduce a few audiophile approved unobtanium parts (tm) along the way, add another zero or two to the price tag and laugh all the way to the bank.
Talking more about motives - what motive did Peter Walker have to throw the gountlet to the very mob that was driving the sales of his products (HiFi press) ?
I mean, he could just junk the "squawking" 405, keep cranking out the "vastly better sounding" Quad II, introduce a few audiophile approved unobtanium parts (tm) along the way, add another zero or two to the price tag and laugh all the way to the bank.
I think that you mistake conservatism for integrity. This leads to misunderstandings and impugns the reputations of others who are more progressive in audio design.
Now, this does not mean that all amplifiers have to cost dearly to be successful. I have designed 10W power amps that cost about $1 for the active parts. I have also designed amplifiers the size of refrigerators that would cost at least $10,000, and probably more. I have heard and admired amplifiers (tube) that cost up to $100,000 and they made the best quality sound that I have ever heard. This is my reality, and I live with it every day.
Now, this does not mean that all amplifiers have to cost dearly to be successful. I have designed 10W power amps that cost about $1 for the active parts. I have also designed amplifiers the size of refrigerators that would cost at least $10,000, and probably more. I have heard and admired amplifiers (tube) that cost up to $100,000 and they made the best quality sound that I have ever heard. This is my reality, and I live with it every day.
Sometimes both go together. Not necessarily.
I do not admire an amp for 100 k$. IMO no amp is worth this money.
Not even a speaker.
There are some very wealthy people in this world who can afford amps of this quality. I am not one of them. Apparently, you are also not one of them. That is not the basis for an understanding of audio quality, and whether people can hear the difference.
Let me give you a separate example:
On one occasion, I split one shot of the most expensive Cognac that I have ever tasted. I think that it cost about $7000 per bottle, and we paid $350 just to sample it. It was very smooth, more smooth than any Cognac that I have ever tasted in my life, but I would not buy any more, because I cannot afford it. However, there was a difference between that and a standard VS, VSOP, or even somewhat better Cognac. That is not an illusion. It is the same with audio.
Let me give you a separate example:
On one occasion, I split one shot of the most expensive Cognac that I have ever tasted. I think that it cost about $7000 per bottle, and we paid $350 just to sample it. It was very smooth, more smooth than any Cognac that I have ever tasted in my life, but I would not buy any more, because I cannot afford it. However, there was a difference between that and a standard VS, VSOP, or even somewhat better Cognac. That is not an illusion. It is the same with audio.
Speaking of $7000 Cognacs, not many left made with pre-phylloxera-epidemic eaux de vie! Better buy a bottle before they run out. Or better yet, one of each 😀
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
@ Bratislav,
That is of course a reasonable point of view, but leaving a lot of studies in the field of cognitive psychology aside take for example what a good magician can do right in front of your eyes.
Obviously you can´t trust your eyes anymore but do draw afterwards the conclusion that you can´t leave your house anymore? 🙂
Surely not, but why? Because it is possible to fool our cognition but it seems there are ways to deal with this fact.
If you design a test procedure you have to take into account that the cognition of your listening panel is influenced by a lot of external and/or internal factors and you have to deal with them.
But as the experimentator is prone to faults and influences himself he _has_ to include positive and negative controls in his test procedure to be able to trust in the results.
And of course statistics matters. Nobody would accept a one trial double blind test. If you do more trials .... voila there´s statistics.
It was an interesting discussion in the stereophile after Les Leventhal presented his paper at an AES Convention and in a JAES article.
http://www.stereophile.com/features/141/index1.html
His JAES Articles are:
Type 1 and Type 2 Errors in the Statistical Anaylsis of Listening Tests
Les Leventhal, JAES, Vol. 34, No. 6, 1986 June
Statistically Significant Poor Performance in Listening Tests
Les Leventhal, JAES, Vol. 42, No.7/8, 1994 July/August
Analyzing Listening Tests with the Directional Two-Tailed Test
Les Leventhal, Cam-Loi Huynh, JAES, Vol.44, No. 10, Oktober
Wishes
That is of course a reasonable point of view, but leaving a lot of studies in the field of cognitive psychology aside take for example what a good magician can do right in front of your eyes.
Obviously you can´t trust your eyes anymore but do draw afterwards the conclusion that you can´t leave your house anymore? 🙂
Surely not, but why? Because it is possible to fool our cognition but it seems there are ways to deal with this fact.
If you design a test procedure you have to take into account that the cognition of your listening panel is influenced by a lot of external and/or internal factors and you have to deal with them.
But as the experimentator is prone to faults and influences himself he _has_ to include positive and negative controls in his test procedure to be able to trust in the results.
And of course statistics matters. Nobody would accept a one trial double blind test. If you do more trials .... voila there´s statistics.
It was an interesting discussion in the stereophile after Les Leventhal presented his paper at an AES Convention and in a JAES article.
http://www.stereophile.com/features/141/index1.html
His JAES Articles are:
Type 1 and Type 2 Errors in the Statistical Anaylsis of Listening Tests
Les Leventhal, JAES, Vol. 34, No. 6, 1986 June
Statistically Significant Poor Performance in Listening Tests
Les Leventhal, JAES, Vol. 42, No.7/8, 1994 July/August
Analyzing Listening Tests with the Directional Two-Tailed Test
Les Leventhal, Cam-Loi Huynh, JAES, Vol.44, No. 10, Oktober
Wishes
But definitely price is not the determining factor. I've had a tasting of Richard Hennessy which is about $1700-$2000 for the 750 mL, and the $350 for 750 mL Germain-Robin Anno Domini is actually better--and it's not even from Cognac, it's from California! (BTW, this is not just my opinion--it's pretty much the default opinion).
It is interesting that the Quad 405 is used an example of progress or perhaps as an example of an essentially blameless component.
However those amongst us who have carefully and systematically
endeavoured to optimise he sound of our components will probably attest that it is a trivial matter to improve the sound of this amplifier as well as quite a few others, with a few well chosen substitute components or changes to wiring and lay out, the addition of snubber circuits and the like..
To choose but one example any amplifier using capacitor input power supplies will, not might, produce high frequency switching noise as the rectifier diodes go in and out of conduction. There is a nasty little LC tank circuit being excited several times per second. This noise is further modulated by the power demands of the amplifier being fed a music signal and driving a loudspeaker with the power supply being hooked up to the amplifier boards by wire or traces with actual resistance sometimes twisted or sheilded but more often not and all merrilly radiating rf emissions... Oh not to forget that the "filtering" of the power supply capacitors is not meaningful above a few khz and certainly does not prevent switching noise passing on through.
These mechanism's are combined with amplifier circuits with a declining PSRR with rising frequency.
Well I suppose one may still argue that these mechanisms are sonically benign, but tests conducted after work done to improve these effects (using a standard amplifier as comparison) certainly indicate otherwise, some conducted with a blind subject and some not.
Now have you ever seen two different amplifiers where the power supply implementation is even similar other than as it might be drawn on a circuit diagram? I have usually observed different components with different switching characteristics, or cable lengths , twisted or untwisted, circuit boards with ground planes or not, long runs to the amplifier board or short, transformers with different winding resistance and leakage inductance, interwinding sheilds in some cases but not in others. toroids or EI's, capacitors with different high frequency characteristics etc.
Now getting two different amplifiers to sound the same does not seem a trivial task to me.
Rob.
However those amongst us who have carefully and systematically
endeavoured to optimise he sound of our components will probably attest that it is a trivial matter to improve the sound of this amplifier as well as quite a few others, with a few well chosen substitute components or changes to wiring and lay out, the addition of snubber circuits and the like..
To choose but one example any amplifier using capacitor input power supplies will, not might, produce high frequency switching noise as the rectifier diodes go in and out of conduction. There is a nasty little LC tank circuit being excited several times per second. This noise is further modulated by the power demands of the amplifier being fed a music signal and driving a loudspeaker with the power supply being hooked up to the amplifier boards by wire or traces with actual resistance sometimes twisted or sheilded but more often not and all merrilly radiating rf emissions... Oh not to forget that the "filtering" of the power supply capacitors is not meaningful above a few khz and certainly does not prevent switching noise passing on through.
These mechanism's are combined with amplifier circuits with a declining PSRR with rising frequency.
Well I suppose one may still argue that these mechanisms are sonically benign, but tests conducted after work done to improve these effects (using a standard amplifier as comparison) certainly indicate otherwise, some conducted with a blind subject and some not.
Now have you ever seen two different amplifiers where the power supply implementation is even similar other than as it might be drawn on a circuit diagram? I have usually observed different components with different switching characteristics, or cable lengths , twisted or untwisted, circuit boards with ground planes or not, long runs to the amplifier board or short, transformers with different winding resistance and leakage inductance, interwinding sheilds in some cases but not in others. toroids or EI's, capacitors with different high frequency characteristics etc.
Now getting two different amplifiers to sound the same does not seem a trivial task to me.
Rob.
john curl said:for .75L I might go for it!
Why settle for shaved white poodle owner Hardy bottles ?
Rename yourself John Sparrow and steal some Black Pearls from Remy-M.
I've heard extremely expensive amps though not ABX and not on my preferred speakers (Martin Logan Prodigy) and I could not tell they were a bit better than my sh**y amps. But then I am a low class country boy, always "distracted" by the music and happy to get any decent single malt whisky.
I do sometimes have to wonder if my ear was "ruined" when I was in my teens. My mentor had a large collection of scores and 78 rpm recordings of their performances and I spent a good deal of time following scores while listening to crappy reproduction learning to hear the music and not the crappy sound.
I do sometimes have to wonder if my ear was "ruined" when I was in my teens. My mentor had a large collection of scores and 78 rpm recordings of their performances and I spent a good deal of time following scores while listening to crappy reproduction learning to hear the music and not the crappy sound.
I think this thread is finally starting to make some sense.
I personaly do not care for whiskey or cognac, but boy, if I get few years aged home distilled plum brandy from my friends in slovakia, my home country, that is something to behold.
Back to the amplifiers, my goal never was to have amplifier with lowest distortion possible. Goal always was highest pleasure from listening to it, no matter how badly it measures.
As I said before I never encountered two amplifiers sounding the same. But I always had amplifiers with significant distortion and character of their own.
Theoreticaly, if two amplifiers are extremely low distortion, and all the other test requirements are met, they would sound the same in proper AB tests.
But than the real question is: would I like the sound? Whenever I borrow low distortion amplifier and compare it to my 2 watts Magnavox SE El84 amp with 2% distortion, I prefer Magnavox.
I personaly do not care for whiskey or cognac, but boy, if I get few years aged home distilled plum brandy from my friends in slovakia, my home country, that is something to behold.
Back to the amplifiers, my goal never was to have amplifier with lowest distortion possible. Goal always was highest pleasure from listening to it, no matter how badly it measures.
As I said before I never encountered two amplifiers sounding the same. But I always had amplifiers with significant distortion and character of their own.
Theoreticaly, if two amplifiers are extremely low distortion, and all the other test requirements are met, they would sound the same in proper AB tests.
But than the real question is: would I like the sound? Whenever I borrow low distortion amplifier and compare it to my 2 watts Magnavox SE El84 amp with 2% distortion, I prefer Magnavox.
adason said:
I once had the pleasure of drinking some with the (then) young Ms. Zwack herself.
On the second point, David Rich never spoke to me again after I suggested that there were people who prefer open-loop directly heated triode amps.
By the way Scott, the amp designs that I alluded to on the top of this page, were associated with Dick Sequerra. He hired me to design the first two.
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