Ok, now we are on the way to hornspeakers - low mass of diaphragm and low distortions. But it's a synergy of both, amplifier and speaker, because of interaction.
Anyway, we shall not ignore that the combination of parts will give the amp a sonical signature as well.
An interesting amp that I mentioned a few years ago that I have something in making, but only 1/3 credit, is now undergoing audio auditions across the country. It is 'revolutionary', patented, low weight, non switching,(except in the power supply) all IC, except for the output devices. You can carry 250W per channel under your arm.
This should hint that I have not stood still, but keep an open mind to ALL real inputs.
Every comparison, except one, we have been very successful, and we continue to improve the product. (A hi end tube design beat us) Trust me, even our own designs do not sound the same as we make improvements. Someday, one of you may hear this amp design. Right now, it is being A-B compared to my Parasound JC-1's at a musical conservatory in their control room.
NOBODY can accuse me of not using IC's, while preferring some over others, however, OR staying away from negative feedback. It is in this amp, in bunches, BUT it has more than feedback, and that is where the patents are. (I think Jack Bybee owns the patent, at least one of them)
This should hint that I have not stood still, but keep an open mind to ALL real inputs.
Every comparison, except one, we have been very successful, and we continue to improve the product. (A hi end tube design beat us) Trust me, even our own designs do not sound the same as we make improvements. Someday, one of you may hear this amp design. Right now, it is being A-B compared to my Parasound JC-1's at a musical conservatory in their control room.
NOBODY can accuse me of not using IC's, while preferring some over others, however, OR staying away from negative feedback. It is in this amp, in bunches, BUT it has more than feedback, and that is where the patents are. (I think Jack Bybee owns the patent, at least one of them)
Hi,
How can you argue about the audibility of harminics if you do not know the playback SPL?
Say we combine we the Cayin Amplifier (or a more upmarket version) with a pair of Avant Garde Trio Omega connected to the 16 Ohm Taps giving us 112dB/1W/1m, what you are saying is that at a SPL of maybe 100dB SPL 0.2% 2nd HD and 0.01% 4th HD are audible?
Are you CERTAIN that this would be the case?
I would suggest that based on research going back to the 1950's and more recently updated by a number of sources suggest in fact that such levels of HD are inaudible with both pure tones and music at the SPL's stated.
Do you have any references that demonstrate this audibility using music as stimulus?
And if these results for the Amplifier are SO BAD, how can you even live listening to speakers?
Ciao T
How can you argue about the audibility of harminics if you do not know the playback SPL?
Say we combine we the Cayin Amplifier (or a more upmarket version) with a pair of Avant Garde Trio Omega connected to the 16 Ohm Taps giving us 112dB/1W/1m, what you are saying is that at a SPL of maybe 100dB SPL 0.2% 2nd HD and 0.01% 4th HD are audible?
Are you CERTAIN that this would be the case?
I would suggest that based on research going back to the 1950's and more recently updated by a number of sources suggest in fact that such levels of HD are inaudible with both pure tones and music at the SPL's stated.
Do you have any references that demonstrate this audibility using music as stimulus?
And if these results for the Amplifier are SO BAD, how can you even live listening to speakers?
Ciao T
The accuracy is something quantifiable, but from an engineering point of view all we can conclude would be if a device is perfect or not. And in this regard the mentioned amplifier is not perfect.
If we are discussing if its accuracy is nevertheless already sufficient then we relate the performance to human perception.
That is the main distinction in our discussions about sound quality it only makes sense if we take into acount the psychoacoustics.
Your question "how could it sound awful if the measurements...." implies that the set of measurements already allows a definitive conclusion about the percepted sound quality for a human listener.
I totally agree, there no voodoo in there, but perceptive evaluation is still needed because no really sufficient accurate model of human perception is available. Otherwise we would not need to rely on controlled listening experiments.
As long as this accurate model is not available we are measuring something and have to relate the results to our understanding of psychoacoustic mechanism (which is still in progress, see for example our short recent discussion of Kunchurs studies).
I don´t know where this "magic or voodoo thing" takes place; it is presumable an oversimplification, but engineering is a way to get the best under real world constraints out of an theoretical model, science tries to model realitiy to better and better accuracy, and as long as model and reality are not identical, there is a lot of "grey" left.
To quote Richard Heyser:
"One of the most belittling experiences is to deride the 'black art' of a craftsman who gets consistent results by a certain ritual which he cannot explain and then to discover that his actions in fact held a deeper technical significance than we understood at that time from our simplified model."
Richard Heyser, Time Delay Spectrometry
BTW, "sounds awful" might be an exaggeration (Richard Moulton once wrote a nice article about the description of differences).
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Dear Pavel,
I find it disappointing that you feel there is no merit to discussing distortion audibility.
Let me ask again, you as well as others, given the gross distortion levels in speakers, even the ones with the lowest levels of HD, is there any sensible ground based upon which one could argue that similar but generally lower levels of distortion generated in some Amplifiers is a greater problem?
And secondly, let me ask that if these significant but lower levels of distortion are a problem in Amplifiers, are the larger levels of distortion in speakers then not a by far greater problem (and don't get me started about microphones)?
I have repeatedly asked in this thread for those contributing to "keep it real", that is with reference to things that happen and how they happen in the real world.
In the real world several percent of low order HD are inaudible with music at highish SPL's, based on a variety of studies of the matter over a period of something like 70-80 years (starting to my cognisance with research in the 3rd Reich on how to improve realism of propaganda broadcasts, or as so to wit, how to put a little realistic Goebbels or Hitler into every living room to better deceive das deutsche volk)!
In the real world real speakers have levels of distortion that would be considered to indicate severe functional defect in almost any given amplifier yet this distortion does not make the music un-listenable or even objectionable to listen to.
It is worth to note though that this distortion in the speaker is nearly completely free from any application of looped feedback...
Now if these simple facts are not "Noteworthy" and worthy of debate, as well as consideration, why are we even bother with audio?
And if they are worthy of note, why do we keep debating low distortion in Amplifiers while studiously ignoring the herd of pink elephants dancing cha-cha in the room?
Ciao T
I find it disappointing that you feel there is no merit to discussing distortion audibility.
Let me ask again, you as well as others, given the gross distortion levels in speakers, even the ones with the lowest levels of HD, is there any sensible ground based upon which one could argue that similar but generally lower levels of distortion generated in some Amplifiers is a greater problem?
And secondly, let me ask that if these significant but lower levels of distortion are a problem in Amplifiers, are the larger levels of distortion in speakers then not a by far greater problem (and don't get me started about microphones)?
I have repeatedly asked in this thread for those contributing to "keep it real", that is with reference to things that happen and how they happen in the real world.
In the real world several percent of low order HD are inaudible with music at highish SPL's, based on a variety of studies of the matter over a period of something like 70-80 years (starting to my cognisance with research in the 3rd Reich on how to improve realism of propaganda broadcasts, or as so to wit, how to put a little realistic Goebbels or Hitler into every living room to better deceive das deutsche volk)!
In the real world real speakers have levels of distortion that would be considered to indicate severe functional defect in almost any given amplifier yet this distortion does not make the music un-listenable or even objectionable to listen to.
It is worth to note though that this distortion in the speaker is nearly completely free from any application of looped feedback...
Now if these simple facts are not "Noteworthy" and worthy of debate, as well as consideration, why are we even bother with audio?
And if they are worthy of note, why do we keep debating low distortion in Amplifiers while studiously ignoring the herd of pink elephants dancing cha-cha in the room?
Ciao T
In a rare burst of agreement, I said several pages back that the task of getting a clean electrical signal from mike to speaker (i.e., between transducers) is a solved problem, assuming one wants the problem to be solved. Playing with the electronics is interesting- for me, it carries an intellectual satisfaction- but that's not where the real gains in technology are to be made.
Transducers are easily distinguishable by ear, electronics not so much.
My comment was taken slightly out of context. I was refering to Nelson's comment about his customers preferences. I took that he was speaking about low order seconds and thirds exclusively and the balance between the two. How would one prove that something else caused their preferences?
BTW I agree with almost every point you make about the THD of the speakers and the general irrelevance of low order THD, and I have liked Nelson's amps for years (it's a zen thing). I mentioned this before when I bothered to transfer LP's to CD I used exclusively an open-loop JFET RIAA. OTOH I have listened to tonally pure music (gamelan) where the distortion of a high end tube amp was easily audible.
One of Earl's posts a long time ago compared two amplifiers but from the spectra one of them had a horrible power supply (all the tones had visible mains sidebands) so how to factor that out? Certainly any conclusions based on the distortion spectra alone are questionable.
I dabble in zen painting myself I donate any proceeds to Habitat For Humanity.
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Hi Sy,
Please do not do this again, it nearly gave me a heart attack.
Yes, so thankfully I found that you do not agree at all with me, what a relief.
I merely use the Distortions of the Speaker to illustrate my point that THD and HD measurements are greatly overrated as measure of quality and that the problems that cause two amplifiers which measure very similar and yet sound subjectively rather different, when amplifying music played through such grossly distorted speakers, will not be found by THD & N Measurements with steady state signals and using 10KHz square waves...
Of course, I happen to know that such differences do exist in reality, which is something you choose to disbelieve, which is of course your perogative.
I also had some suggestions for such measurements and a few cute anecdotes in a post that seemed to offend though for the life of me I cannot imagine why, I cannot be bothered to type it again, it involved noise loading testing, FWIW...
I do not find this the case, neither, as it so happens I believe does John Curl, Charles Hansen, Ed Simmons and many another poster.
Actually, a UK HiFi Comic used to print endless comparisons between 200 Pound (cost) Amplifiers, CD-Players and Speakers that where done fully blind in the 1990's.
They eventually stopped this (it made for extremely tedious and dreary reading), but it may surprise you that they DID find material differences with all the above items and perhaps more telling, their listening panels had reliably patterns who would prefer what kind of sound...
Ciao T
Please do not do this again, it nearly gave me a heart attack.
Yes, so thankfully I found that you do not agree at all with me, what a relief.
I merely use the Distortions of the Speaker to illustrate my point that THD and HD measurements are greatly overrated as measure of quality and that the problems that cause two amplifiers which measure very similar and yet sound subjectively rather different, when amplifying music played through such grossly distorted speakers, will not be found by THD & N Measurements with steady state signals and using 10KHz square waves...
Of course, I happen to know that such differences do exist in reality, which is something you choose to disbelieve, which is of course your perogative.
I also had some suggestions for such measurements and a few cute anecdotes in a post that seemed to offend though for the life of me I cannot imagine why, I cannot be bothered to type it again, it involved noise loading testing, FWIW...
I do not find this the case, neither, as it so happens I believe does John Curl, Charles Hansen, Ed Simmons and many another poster.
Actually, a UK HiFi Comic used to print endless comparisons between 200 Pound (cost) Amplifiers, CD-Players and Speakers that where done fully blind in the 1990's.
They eventually stopped this (it made for extremely tedious and dreary reading), but it may surprise you that they DID find material differences with all the above items and perhaps more telling, their listening panels had reliably patterns who would prefer what kind of sound...
Ciao T
Interesting turn of discussion. Amp harmonics certainly make a difference to me, despite all the harmonics of the loudspeaker. Are there any studies that show the audibility (or not) of amp harmonics thru the higher distortion of the speaker?
I don't think that harmonics are the only factor affecting amp sound, but they do play a large role. Ditto with speakers and drivers.
I don't think that harmonics are the only factor affecting amp sound, but they do play a large role. Ditto with speakers and drivers.
Are you sure that the amp harmonics are the reason of sound difference that you hear?
Correct. You were the first to get it. (This was actually meant as humor, but it seems humorectomies were the rage for quite a few around here.) You win the prize, please send me your credit card numbers so we can ship it to you!
Now if I have an amplifier fed a pure sine wave at 1,000 hertz and it puts out 10 volts at 1000 hertz and 1 volt at 2000 hertz what is its' distortion?
(10% of course... is that 20 log(.1) or 10 log(.1) ?)
Power distortion would be 20 log(.1) because we assume that for the voltage distortion we have the same current distortion. That is only true for resistive loads!
So it is possible to have less than 1% 2nd & 3rd order distortion from a loudspeaker. I haven't seen any measurements of 7th or 9th from loudspeakers.
I have seen folks use 10 Log(V2/V1) for distortion results! Of course the best that can be said is it was marketing or just ignorance. But then there was a loudspeaker manufacturer who averaged 6 db and 10 db to get 8 db!
Demian,
I just gotta try those antennas, directional silver wire, wow! I wonder if I just use my ordinary silver wire and stick it to a speaker terminal if I will get the same results?
(This symbol is included for the humerectomy fadists to identify humor)I suspect that if you do stick an antenna to your power amplifiers output terminals it really might change the sound quality! But not from the mechanism suggested.
T
if you mean me, I make no claims to superior hearing, I only charge as if I have it!
Ed Simon
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