Its really not that difficult to record an amps output connected to a pair of speakers and then do a proper ABX test (its easy to do it wrong and/or cheat) with the ripped cd you used for the recording.
Here are some links:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/solid-state/12752-blind-listening-tests-amplifiers.html
ABX Double Blind Comparator Data
ABX Double Blind Test Results: Power Amps
Boston Audio Society - Wishful Thinking article
And we have the vast amount of data from psychoacoustics on audibility of artefacts. For that I refer to the archives of the IEEE, ASA and AES
Perceptual testing is difficult for even the best scientists in the field. Doing it at home will very often result in meaningless results. But if your honest with yourself and follow protocol ABX and ABC/HR testing can be done at home with good results. The difficult bit often is accepting the results.
I agree completely. Transparent audio amplification is more or less a triviality to achieve these days, and is the rule rather than the norm in even a modest SS amplifier. Some people don't like the results that follow from transparent amplification, and so they prefer to add colouration to the sound. Nothing wrong with that, except that some of them elevate particular sound-colouration devices, known as SET amplifiers, to some sort of mystical status.
And I agree also that if one truly wants transaparency, the loudspeakers and the room design are a far more worthwhile focus for attention.
Chris
To those thinking that some tube amps amount to just "sound effects" I'd say that recorded music is even more so. Listen to even the best of it and it is no-way close to live music. Some pop music is such that no human vocalist could ever sound like the recording. But so what they are NOT even trying to create the sound of a live performance. Even recording of solo piano works or small jazz combos don't even try. They are making RECORDS that have a sound of their own. Painting and even photography is the same way, none are intended as re-creating the original.
If you look at HiFi system this way, as thinks that create sounds that we like without attempting to be an exact recreation of anything then we can justify al kinds of thinks, even SE amps with zero NFB. We just like the way they sound.
That said, in my opinion in 2014 there is nothing left to do in the world of tube HiFi stereo. We can build amps that exhibit great workmanship or that evoke nostalgia but no one is going to invent a new tube amp that has a "new sound" that no one has yet to hear. This is why I think instrument amplifiers are SO MUCH more interesting. There is still the possibility of new ideas and new sounds not just with guitars but bass and e-piano. In this world amps and speakers don't need to be and should never be "perfect" but should add character to the sound. There is still a huge room for creativity because there is NO RIGHT ANSWER a there is for home HiFi Stereo.
So I encourage tube amp builder to move on and see what you can do for pianos, bass and such. For example see in this photo what Yamaha has done. The speaker system in this digital piano is a horizontal plane open baffle with a heavy/hard reflector above the baffle. Think about this but with multi-channel tube based amplifier. Could this be made more portable with a self contain wheeled shipping/stoage case? There is HUGE room for creativity and yes "sound effects"
re-buildng these 50+ year old designs is OK but there is more to be done.
Photo of Yamaha's piano
http://data.yamaha.jp/sdb/product/image/main/raw/n/n3/199CEF8DF06C44FFA122E200489D4A1B_12073.jpg
If you look at HiFi system this way, as thinks that create sounds that we like without attempting to be an exact recreation of anything then we can justify al kinds of thinks, even SE amps with zero NFB. We just like the way they sound.
That said, in my opinion in 2014 there is nothing left to do in the world of tube HiFi stereo. We can build amps that exhibit great workmanship or that evoke nostalgia but no one is going to invent a new tube amp that has a "new sound" that no one has yet to hear. This is why I think instrument amplifiers are SO MUCH more interesting. There is still the possibility of new ideas and new sounds not just with guitars but bass and e-piano. In this world amps and speakers don't need to be and should never be "perfect" but should add character to the sound. There is still a huge room for creativity because there is NO RIGHT ANSWER a there is for home HiFi Stereo.
So I encourage tube amp builder to move on and see what you can do for pianos, bass and such. For example see in this photo what Yamaha has done. The speaker system in this digital piano is a horizontal plane open baffle with a heavy/hard reflector above the baffle. Think about this but with multi-channel tube based amplifier. Could this be made more portable with a self contain wheeled shipping/stoage case? There is HUGE room for creativity and yes "sound effects"
re-buildng these 50+ year old designs is OK but there is more to be done.
Photo of Yamaha's piano
http://data.yamaha.jp/sdb/product/image/main/raw/n/n3/199CEF8DF06C44FFA122E200489D4A1B_12073.jpg
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Hahaha , I wish you a good sleep (although I'm sure you sleep like a baby) and Happy Holidays.
I'm reminded again and again why I like DIY audio so much.
Best, L
So do you think you would be the exception to the usual finding that listeners in double-blind tests turn out to be remarkably unable to discriminate reliably between sound differences that they claim to exist?
Chris
Try to listen of mono recording from 50's -60's of small Jazz ensemble playing live in the club on nice record player . You can almost smell the cigars and bourbon fumes. How come we lost it?
No , probably not. But to me it doesn't matter that much really. You're probably aware that when Edison presented his first recording device most people were convinced they heard a real person? Also trough the Hi-fi history there were countless presentations with real musicians playing along with playback behind the curtains and the audience was unable to discern who or which was playing when? I think the comparisons began as early as in the late 40's 50's. It would mean the playback was already perfect back than.
You probably are also aware that when I serve to American used to eating plastic every day a real bread he will think it tastes like sh...t (this one is a real life experience😉
I told you: The difficult bit, often, is accepting the results. Its called cognitive dissonance.
To add: No one is claiming ALL amps sound the same.
Happy Holiday's/New Year.
OK but the claims are that except tube amps and especially SET's which are "fX boxes" most of other available amps on the market (they must be SS amps consequently ) are transparent, therefore they should sound the same correct?
PS. Thanks for the link .
It helped me to realize that what rules this forum is "Rationalization"
"no I won't spend the Summer digging ditches to buy good Output transformer because they all sound mostly the same crappy"
" No , I won't take after hrs janitorial job to buy better amp because i feel comfortable among community which believe it's all bollocks and smoke & mirrors and cleverness of outside world
" No , $200 dollar bottle of wine is for rich idiots since it can't possibly taste that much better than $7.99 Costco wine"
No, why should I buy that $4 loaf if $0.59 buys me perfectly transparent product.
and on , and on ...
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There are tubeamps that are transparent and solid state amps that are not. What matters is if their artefacts are audible or not. To design a transparent amp is not very difficult these day's, if we believe the psychoacoustic data and level matched double blind tests. Of cause everyone is free to think science is wrong.
LOL
But a bunch of funny strawman arguments doesn't make the science go away.
Btw I do think that transformers can make a huge difference in sound, that a 200 buck bottle of wine can taste better than a 8 buck bottle. But not always. And I need real proof before I buy.
But, I think there is substantial evidence supporting the notion that some people can discriminate between the $200 wine and the $7.99 wine in double-blind tests. So some people, at least, genuinely appreciate the difference.
When it comes to audio amplifiers, the evidence in actual double-blind tests seems to show that, once trivial effects associated with inadequate frequency response are nulled out by simple compensating networks, then listeners, even the pretentious audiophile ones, cannot tell amplifiers apart, unless one of them is distorting grossly.
You should not extrapolate genuine differences in other examples to imagined differences in the audio case.
Chris
It's all good fun . Psycho science , tests and believes are fine with me as long as we're not reaching for the guns over the roses. Hard to comprehend sometimes that even the biggest composers essentially wrote their pieces for our entertainment and yes , simple pleasure . I'm listening to decent SS amp as I write this. It's still Mussorgsky's music and I enjoy it a lot even though the system it's not very evolved. I think it's important to have a little distance and be careful not to judge or dismiss by default things one really had no chance to experience.
As to my personal bias , yes good SET amp (or any good amp for that matter ) is definitely worth 2 months of digging ditches which I can't really say about any car 🙂
As to my personal bias , yes good SET amp (or any good amp for that matter ) is definitely worth 2 months of digging ditches which I can't really say about any car 🙂
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Chris
scientific experiments aside the line your're presenting here is your real life experience in your own home , with your own equipment over fairly extended period of time?
Please tell me that all good amps you had in your system all else being equal sounded the same to you so you lost the desire to chase them any more. =Correct??
Well, a long time ago I concluded that, unless there is a gross defect (which would easily be revealed by FFT analysis or frequency response measurements), I can't in all honesty say that I can hear much difference between one amplifier and another. I keep making tube amplifiers mostly for nostalgic reasons, I suppose. I have a bit of an obsession with making OTL amplifiers, simply because of the "absurdity" of it's even being possible.
But I am very much aware of the fact that people can easily imagine things that are not there (look at the "tweakers' forum" on Audio Asylum if any further proof is needed!). I have to say that if an alleged effect cannot be demonstrated by measurement, and if it also cannot be demonstrated in rigorous double-blind listening tests, then I am willing to dismiss it as imaginary. I don't deny that SET amplifiers may well have their own characteristic sound, because of genuine, verifiable and measurable distortion and frequency-response effects. If people like that, it is absolutely fine. As long as they don't claim the SET amplifier is giving a more faithful magnification of the input signal.
Chris
You hear the cigars and bourbon fumes because the recording engineer decided to keep the room acoustics and some of the ambience noise. He chose a microphone and microphone placement that captured that. Or he might have used a room mic up high and added some of this into the other tracks. He maybe only had a four track tape machine.
But you DON'T hear those "cigars and bourbon fumes" because the recording exactly reproduces the live recording it doesn't come close to doing that.
It is not just distortion in the process that makes a recoding sound recorded. There are a thousand other factors. In fact it is so easy to detect a real live band that most people with zero skills can know if a club is plying recorded music or has live music while standing on the sidewalk outside of the club before they go in. It is that obvious.
Forget about the which topology is best argument, it's an endless melee that can't be won in a meaningful way other than a personal choice based on experience.
What's missing with your present setup? Maybe if we knew why you're are wondering about other amps we could make suggestions that would be more directly helpful.
I'm a different "Chris". He's right. The only time people are able to tell which they are listening is if they are told. If they are not told which amp is which they are as good as a deaf person flipping a coin. It's not that they are being dishonest it's a physiological effect we cannot avoid.
We are talking about tests here that are controlled, for example maybe using a SPL meter to adjust the volumes equal.
The trouble with extended tests inside your own home is that very few listeners would be wiling to have their equipment hidden from view for weeks at a time while someone flips a coin then flips a switch (or not) every couple days.
If I'm allowed to answer to:
No, not all good amps I ever listened to sounded the same. When I knew one amp was much more expensive, the more expensive one sounded a lot better. Or the amp with the, in my mind better technology, sounded better. I'd swear there was a world of difference and all amps sounded different.
Until I did level matched testing, not knowing what amp was playing...
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