Why are low distortion amplifiers boring ???
PS.
When I get a chance to dig through my myriad of electronic parts > to find an Audio Technica transformer used to drive the
ATH-7 Electret Headphones, and measure its parameters, I will start a HELP thread to design a high power output stage using
this transformer to drive it. I want to hear a TX driven amp. with little to no negative feedback just for the fun of it 🙂
( such a design will have rather high THD )
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Because if you’re not trying to make it TOO large, they are just not all that difficult to make.
SO >
Why does simplicity of design make something "boring" ?
( I guess the answer is: You like a challenge 😉
Why does simplicity of design make something "boring" ?
( I guess the answer is: You like a challenge 😉
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Because the illusion of dynamic range brought on by the distortion is less. So, Goldilocks; to little, too much, just right.
It is actually rather easy to get .1 or .01% without the heat.
Typical topologies with simplified class A second gain stages.
Do it there not the output stage.
After that the name doesn't defy anything.
Neither does the operating class
Done and heard a zillion spongy 10 watt JLH.
Steam efficiency is irrelevant to me.
They changed it to horses so people vaguely understood.
With a heavy cone and a 6 to 3 ohm coil for real bass.
Boring would be not enough current or voltage to hear what I wanna hear.
With a planar or metal dome, I know what .1% sounds like
And I know what it sounds like with a .001% bargain buy at a pawn shop.
With 10x the voltage.
Mystic magic gets tossed in the dirt.
Why even bother making high res tape or even better mics
or digital recordings.
We just need " dynamic" wire recordings at .1% distortion.
The signal path is a chain and ends with the speaker.
Typical topologies with simplified class A second gain stages.
Do it there not the output stage.
After that the name doesn't defy anything.
Neither does the operating class
Done and heard a zillion spongy 10 watt JLH.
Steam efficiency is irrelevant to me.
They changed it to horses so people vaguely understood.
With a heavy cone and a 6 to 3 ohm coil for real bass.
Boring would be not enough current or voltage to hear what I wanna hear.
With a planar or metal dome, I know what .1% sounds like
And I know what it sounds like with a .001% bargain buy at a pawn shop.
With 10x the voltage.
Mystic magic gets tossed in the dirt.
Why even bother making high res tape or even better mics
or digital recordings.
We just need " dynamic" wire recordings at .1% distortion.
The signal path is a chain and ends with the speaker.
Because they are most often evaluated by introduced / tested into an already existing and "tuned" system. When such a clean amp is used instead of an muddy, distorting amp, by load FR affected, the system result will be boring because the only way to get the system with the old amp to sound anywhere good is to compensate for the anomalies in the bad amp by choices in the rest of the system.
If we reversed the situation just for the sake of discussion - now we have a system with a "boring perfect amp" but the system sounds perfect, clean resolved - now you instead put in a "good ol good sounding amp" - what do you think would happen to the sound of this system?
Perhaps you say - there s no way to build a super sounding system with a super measuring, boring, amp? Here I must state quite frankly that it is wrong - it is absolutely possible - and in my experience, necessary, as keeping an "ol amp" in a system makes it a SQ anchor which will see to that the system performance is always limited by this amp whatever you do to the rest of it.
//
As far as I know, aside from tube stuff and trasducers (and design errors or building defects), which piece of equipment measures poorly these days (but even many years ago it was the same)?
Little or nothing, I guess.
So what are exactly we talking about here?
It's common knowledge that there is something still unknown that these measurements do not tell us or that the discovery of a new measurement of a new characteristic still unknown will be necessary.
Maybe the way it was designed makes a difference, I guess, by highlighting or reducing a certain (sound) characteristic like negative feedback or damping factor.
But those wouldn't be poor measurements anymore, they would be design choices.
And, like any other audio stuff out there, it might sound "good" or "bad" to your ears in your system, that is, you might like it or you might not like it.
I've never checked the manufacturer's measurements for any audio device or transducer I have ever bought, nor have so-called "independent labs" provided.
I've taken a guideline from reviews in the specialist press by people I consider/ed trustworthy and then taken the leap of trying that particular device in my own system.
If I liked it I bought it, without even thinking to take a look at the measurements, if not for electrical compatibility (if any).
IME & IMHO
(The question mark I added in the quote, and I'm just an amateur not an expert.)
If you are talking to me, I think it is primarily a question of knowledge, not of skill.
However, even without knowledge one could perhaps continue to think "something" about a topic if within his reach and at a higher level of knowledge.
Of course, for a degree in electronics you just have to study.
But even this will not make you automatically skilled, in my view.
Anyway, the ability to talk BS belongs to the human race regardless of the level of knowledge.
However, even without knowledge one could perhaps continue to think "something" about a topic if within his reach and at a higher level of knowledge.
Of course, for a degree in electronics you just have to study.
But even this will not make you automatically skilled, in my view.
Anyway, the ability to talk BS belongs to the human race regardless of the level of knowledge.
Here too:Do we measure what we claim to measure?
Or do we measure the wrong thing at the wrong place?
By the way: hearing, audio is also measuring. However, the understanding of this fails due to insufficient knowledge regarding methods for the collection of complex facts, due to the unwillingness of the majority to carry out more complex methods, the unclean definition and separation of objective and subjective, of concept and object and much more.
I call this thread: If I like the measuring in the audio way, it does not matter how it does measure in the stare way;-)
Attachments
The continuum of hifidelity (sic) from worst measuring to best measuring doesn't necessarily track with preference in how gear sounds.
If I like it, it does not matter to me how it measures. Or, what anyone else thinks of it, for that matter. I have high frequency hearing loss, an imperfect listening environment, a lot of the source material is, at best, marginal quality, and do not have unlimited resources to chase measurable perfection. All of those shortcomings are realities so, if I like the way my system sounds, I'm happy.
ASR-style measurements do not determine sound quality, because music is endlessly dynamic, which confounds easy measurement. Music reproduction is technical, but it is also art. I like to know how an audio component measures, and measurements play a role in deciding where to spend my money, but listening is my main and final criterion.
"Such a great question, the "Power" that sites like ASR are gaining is really concerning and detrimental to the end sound quality IME. The trouble with the guys on ASR is that they ONLY judge a products performance via "simplistic" technical measurements and IME this does a massive disservice to the general HiFi community - especially those who are scared to listen for themselves...
Take for example the little ProJect S2 Prebox DAC (which is still one of the best selling DAC's at its price point), I was essentially forced by my "Concern" of such technophiles as ASR to include user selectable modes - Best measurement and Best quality... Having such a mode on one of my designs, I get decent feedback from a large number of users and apart from the predictable "Narrow Minded" Technophiles I know of no one who prefers the Measurement mode for listening..."
"Such a great question, the "Power" that sites like ASR are gaining is really concerning and detrimental to the end sound quality IME. The trouble with the guys on ASR is that they ONLY judge a products performance via "simplistic" technical measurements and IME this does a massive disservice to the general HiFi community - especially those who are scared to listen for themselves...
Take for example the little ProJect S2 Prebox DAC (which is still one of the best selling DAC's at its price point), I was essentially forced by my "Concern" of such technophiles as ASR to include user selectable modes - Best measurement and Best quality... Having such a mode on one of my designs, I get decent feedback from a large number of users and apart from the predictable "Narrow Minded" Technophiles I know of no one who prefers the Measurement mode for listening..."
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Do you know why that happens, in my opinion?
Because no one invests money in a venture like that nor does he have any intention of doing so and if things are going the way they are it's okay for anyone who sells "audio".
After all, those who make a lot of money selling audio equipment should invest part of their money in that, right?
But as long as it's enough to "sell" a flat frequency response and a large transformer and level capacitors in a nice case, who would want to invest in more of that?
In another thread we were talking about imaging and the impossibility of measuring it.
I don't expect imaging to be measured, it's enough for me that an honest reviewer says about that, who obviously can very well be a member of this forum, to mention that fact to get me to try that device and find out if it's true for me too, if I was interested just in that.
In my opinion, the real limit is that no measurement tells me even the little that would be useful, for example if the highs are sibilant, dry and strident or not.
Which should be the bare minimum, don't you think?
Obviously the same also applies to the mids and lows...
I think that just these three things above should be the minimum one needs to know before one can even think about trying out a piece of audio equipment at his home.
So, in my view, the paradoxical thing is that measurements cannot say how a device sounds just because they cannot and neither can the ears of those who listen to it say it because "two equal brains do not exist" and "they would just be your preferences".
I guess that there is no other field with these contradictions and yet with turnovers of this level.
Is it all skill?
Is it all knowledge?
Or is it simply all a business based on people's passion for music and little else?
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My experience already shows that there is an objective part: there are sometimes such clear differences between, for example, amplifiers that everyone, really everyone involved says: amp A: clean and amp B: unclean. But there is ALWAYS the subjective part: 50% like the clean sounding one more, 50% the unclean sounding one.
The usual visual measurement methods have never been able to show the clean-sounding or the unclean-sounding amplifier reliable. Which is why I have been doing without visual measurements altogether for about 15 years and sold the equipment: ZERO statement regarding audio.
What I hear within 5 seconds, I can't prove after hours of seeing.
The usual visual measurement methods have never been able to show the clean-sounding or the unclean-sounding amplifier reliable. Which is why I have been doing without visual measurements altogether for about 15 years and sold the equipment: ZERO statement regarding audio.
What I hear within 5 seconds, I can't prove after hours of seeing.
I'm willing to believe about your experience that you report, but my mind is wondering: what does "clean" mean and what does "unclean" mean?
And why are there fifty-fifty preferences?
I do not exclude that there may be preferences, but no one has yet detailed where they reside.
Starting from the simple, I wonder if there could ever be someone who likes the highs that are croaking, shrill and dry, the mids that are backward, muffled and confused and the lows that are soft, long and rumbling.
Can there ever be?
We perceive the world contrastive: In the example of contrasting of these two amps, A was described as clean and B as unclean. It may well be that amp A sounds unclean in contrasting with amp C, and amp B sounds clean in contrasting with amp D;-)
I chose 50/50 here because the preferences seem to have nothing to do with anything. You could investigate further: Milieus e.g. Or level of education or age or biography or drug behavior or...
... what the kids have to hear to at home;-?
I chose 50/50 here because the preferences seem to have nothing to do with anything. You could investigate further: Milieus e.g. Or level of education or age or biography or drug behavior or...
... what the kids have to hear to at home;-?
I've heard the phrase "all the gear and no idea" in cycling circles, and I think it transfers to other ventures, my favorite bike my steel framed single speed, chain guard and marathon plus tyres, great fun to blast past carbon super bikes on the hills.
A while back, I was messing around with a TDA 2822m chip amp, about 3 watts and lots of distortion over about 1/2 a watt, after listening to it for a while I went back to a Musicfidelity Electra 10, but it just sounded boring by comparison, the "feeling" of the music wasn't being conveyed, so I went back to the TDA2822m, and all was well again -surely the Musicfidelity must measure MUCH better, so it should sound better. I'm starting to think DMN and NVA might be on to something, and metal around an amp isn't a good idea.
Generally speaking, I see your point, but it starts interesting (to me) and then gradually fades into vagueness (to me).
My mind would need more explanation, more etails, more knowhow, although from what I guess I've realized I agree with you quite a bit, despite never having had your experiences and your experience.
At the end of the day, no one ever buys something without first trying it at home, so what is the problem in the reliability of the listening experiences reported or in personal preferences (if any) that do not necessarily have to please everyone?
You read about a narrative of a listening experience and then, if you were interested in buying that device (of course DIY too) you try to find it and try it.
If you confirm what was reported and you like how it sounds, you buy it, otherwise you return it.
Don't we all do and have always done this?
My point is: why ask (maybe not you here, but in another thread they done) for the 100% reliability and repeatability of what was listened to if not even the measurements tell you how that device sounds?
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