Somebody on this forum said something like:
Since I got my UCD 180's running I've become a believer. I've had to redefine my idea of what amp ratings mean.
Man, SPL isn't everything. The UCD's aren't as loud as other power amps I've owned but they are most defintely the most pleasing (with the possible exception of the NAD C270 - which I rate, over time, as the listenable amp I've ever heard).
Well, there it is.
UCD's are just plain lovely, even right out of the box. Bruno is a genius.
All you guys who mod (with skill) are so fortunate to be able to do that because improving this is something! The Mona Lisa with tweaks!
No wonder the CI amps go for such a pretty penny...
Regards,
Tom
Since I got my UCD 180's running I've become a believer. I've had to redefine my idea of what amp ratings mean.
Man, SPL isn't everything. The UCD's aren't as loud as other power amps I've owned but they are most defintely the most pleasing (with the possible exception of the NAD C270 - which I rate, over time, as the listenable amp I've ever heard).
Well, there it is.
UCD's are just plain lovely, even right out of the box. Bruno is a genius.
All you guys who mod (with skill) are so fortunate to be able to do that because improving this is something! The Mona Lisa with tweaks!
No wonder the CI amps go for such a pretty penny...
Regards,
Tom
I suspect your UcDs output all the watts you paid for. Cleaner music is easier to listen to louder. For instance, how loud does an AM radio playing @ 93dB subjectively seem? Way too loud! 😱
Maybe it has something to do with age
I would have never gone for a 'chip amp' in my youth. It was always about SPLs and frequency extremes back then.
I think as I got older I taught myself to listen better. I notice way more nuances in music now, even on material I'm overly familiar with. No, this didn't just come about with the purchase of a T-amp. I think it started when I became interested in nuances in general. Like when I listened to an old boombox at one of my jobs, in a large wharehouse, with all kinds of noise around, I could still enjoy the music coming from that old boombox, but put that same old boombox in my living room; it sucked. And mind you, these nuances I was picking up on at work weren't being heard on my main rig.
To make a long story short, investigating psycho-acoustics on the internet lead me to fullrange/single driver theory, t-lines and Voigt pipes. Soon after, I was buying up every Radio Shack 1354 (5.25") driver I could find. It wasn't until a few months ago that I became interested in a little amp I saw on E-bay, the Sonic Impact 5066.
I would have never gone for a 'chip amp' in my youth. It was always about SPLs and frequency extremes back then.
I think as I got older I taught myself to listen better. I notice way more nuances in music now, even on material I'm overly familiar with. No, this didn't just come about with the purchase of a T-amp. I think it started when I became interested in nuances in general. Like when I listened to an old boombox at one of my jobs, in a large wharehouse, with all kinds of noise around, I could still enjoy the music coming from that old boombox, but put that same old boombox in my living room; it sucked. And mind you, these nuances I was picking up on at work weren't being heard on my main rig.
To make a long story short, investigating psycho-acoustics on the internet lead me to fullrange/single driver theory, t-lines and Voigt pipes. Soon after, I was buying up every Radio Shack 1354 (5.25") driver I could find. It wasn't until a few months ago that I became interested in a little amp I saw on E-bay, the Sonic Impact 5066.
Hi,
I'll proudly take full credit for having said that. Words to live by when it comes to high end audio.
What roll would age play exactly? I think it varies. Some people can appreciate the finer things in life at a younger age. Older folks tend to dislike "loud", I honestly can't say they'd also dislike clean power, since so few have it.
Now in my view, I'm not all that old at 28, and my interest in quality audio is not all that new, going back at least 12 years. This is perhaps why I realized that class d was the only real answer, because they have the potential to be at least as good as class A in terms of linearity, if nto better, yet at far greater power levels, and I love SPL... clean power, what it's all about!~
Also I think it's important to realize that those little nuances you hear on better amps that you could never make out before, are not at all guaranteed to be there simply by having clean power, but the cleaner it is the more you'll hear. So at what point does it cross over from clean power to loud? It depends, some are so loud at even low volume it seems loud, the little AM radio was a good example, but it hasn't reached painfully abusive yet. The real threshold of loudness in my view is the point it begins hard clipping.
What irks me is when people who don't, or pretend to not know any better try to show off a system by cranking it up well beyond what it can do cleanly, and it's not all that clean in the first place..These days, I've reached a point where I tell them to turn it the hell down because it's a piece of **** and I don't mind saying so.
I admit to being entirely spoiled by my current system, compared to what most people have, and I do love SPL, but I will never turn it up beyond clipping. Spoiled by it as I am I also realize what a rarity clean power really is. You start to be amazed with how people are so conditioned to think that clipping=loud=good times .
A fine example if not an extreme one is going to your usual cinaplex, the THX cert. ones, where they think the audio is a part of the experience everyone paid for (because it is being THX and all) and often crank the cheapest possible system they could get away witht well beyond what they can do cleanly. Usually this sounds like speakers of 110dB efficiency on a 15W amp that's trying to run at 30W. You hear the distortion in the voices, and the LFE are just a blurbling mess. Makes me want to leave, and it makes most people want to not go back, or stay home and download
I brought this up before and some have informed me not all places are this bad, but I'm willing to bet the vast majority can relate to that experience.
Anyway I just want to make the point very clear that you can in fact have what most might consider to be insane SPL, and of extreme quality, but it only comes in the form of clean power. Loud is a vulgar word, having no relation whatsoever to quality sound. May this become the gospel truth!
I very much enjoy the high efficiency of my speakers, and the cleanlyness with which the UCD powers them. I don't usually enjoy it unless I feel it thumping in my chest, and the level that happens you can still talk to a person across the room without a raised voice. Turning it up beyond that becomes an amazing experience.
There's one song I like to freak people out with, by Hans Zimmer, called beneath alrischa. With the right setup (a very efficient set of 15" UCD powered) it's a complete assault on the senses. Given a virtually black noise floor and dynamic range of hell, I can turn it up to what I know is just on the verge of clipping, and let it play out. No one expects what's in store. I've seen people jump a foot out of their chair from it, while others know enough to expect anything from me and are still shocked.
You dont' normally ever hear or feel the kind of bass it hits with unless it's with a type of music where clearity is a non issue, and maybe in an SPL on wheels fast and furious type jukebox. Certainly, never intermingled with orchestral music, on a system of such audiophile caliber. The orchestra building up on top of an unearthly brown note, you instantly see how holographic, tightly imaged, clean and fully controlled it is.
That's just the UCD for you, doing it's thing, stunning such as it is. It's one of the first and certainly still the finest example of what class d is capable of.
Because it is so clean and natural, it really doesn't seem loud at all even though everything around you is dancing around all over the place. From what I gather of a quick search it seems there's strong correlation between perceived loudness and distortion.
Regards,
Chris
I'll proudly take full credit for having said that. Words to live by when it comes to high end audio.
What roll would age play exactly? I think it varies. Some people can appreciate the finer things in life at a younger age. Older folks tend to dislike "loud", I honestly can't say they'd also dislike clean power, since so few have it.
Now in my view, I'm not all that old at 28, and my interest in quality audio is not all that new, going back at least 12 years. This is perhaps why I realized that class d was the only real answer, because they have the potential to be at least as good as class A in terms of linearity, if nto better, yet at far greater power levels, and I love SPL... clean power, what it's all about!~
Also I think it's important to realize that those little nuances you hear on better amps that you could never make out before, are not at all guaranteed to be there simply by having clean power, but the cleaner it is the more you'll hear. So at what point does it cross over from clean power to loud? It depends, some are so loud at even low volume it seems loud, the little AM radio was a good example, but it hasn't reached painfully abusive yet. The real threshold of loudness in my view is the point it begins hard clipping.
What irks me is when people who don't, or pretend to not know any better try to show off a system by cranking it up well beyond what it can do cleanly, and it's not all that clean in the first place..These days, I've reached a point where I tell them to turn it the hell down because it's a piece of **** and I don't mind saying so.
I admit to being entirely spoiled by my current system, compared to what most people have, and I do love SPL, but I will never turn it up beyond clipping. Spoiled by it as I am I also realize what a rarity clean power really is. You start to be amazed with how people are so conditioned to think that clipping=loud=good times .
A fine example if not an extreme one is going to your usual cinaplex, the THX cert. ones, where they think the audio is a part of the experience everyone paid for (because it is being THX and all) and often crank the cheapest possible system they could get away witht well beyond what they can do cleanly. Usually this sounds like speakers of 110dB efficiency on a 15W amp that's trying to run at 30W. You hear the distortion in the voices, and the LFE are just a blurbling mess. Makes me want to leave, and it makes most people want to not go back, or stay home and download
I brought this up before and some have informed me not all places are this bad, but I'm willing to bet the vast majority can relate to that experience.
Anyway I just want to make the point very clear that you can in fact have what most might consider to be insane SPL, and of extreme quality, but it only comes in the form of clean power. Loud is a vulgar word, having no relation whatsoever to quality sound. May this become the gospel truth!
I very much enjoy the high efficiency of my speakers, and the cleanlyness with which the UCD powers them. I don't usually enjoy it unless I feel it thumping in my chest, and the level that happens you can still talk to a person across the room without a raised voice. Turning it up beyond that becomes an amazing experience.
There's one song I like to freak people out with, by Hans Zimmer, called beneath alrischa. With the right setup (a very efficient set of 15" UCD powered) it's a complete assault on the senses. Given a virtually black noise floor and dynamic range of hell, I can turn it up to what I know is just on the verge of clipping, and let it play out. No one expects what's in store. I've seen people jump a foot out of their chair from it, while others know enough to expect anything from me and are still shocked.
You dont' normally ever hear or feel the kind of bass it hits with unless it's with a type of music where clearity is a non issue, and maybe in an SPL on wheels fast and furious type jukebox. Certainly, never intermingled with orchestral music, on a system of such audiophile caliber. The orchestra building up on top of an unearthly brown note, you instantly see how holographic, tightly imaged, clean and fully controlled it is.
That's just the UCD for you, doing it's thing, stunning such as it is. It's one of the first and certainly still the finest example of what class d is capable of.
Because it is so clean and natural, it really doesn't seem loud at all even though everything around you is dancing around all over the place. From what I gather of a quick search it seems there's strong correlation between perceived loudness and distortion.
Regards,
Chris
Thank you. I think you have just convinced me to develop my big speakers as opposed to my cute and surprisingly capable for what they are little ones.
Hell yeah, go for it! Mine don't exactly blend in with the surroundings, take up a good amount of room, and are a total pain when they need to be moved, but when it comes to "feeling" the music.. I seriously enjoy taking it that step further.
No need for a sub though 😀
No need for a sub though 😀
classd4sure said:Hi,
I'll proudly take full credit for having said that. Words to live by when it comes to high end audio.
What roll would age play exactly? I think it varies. Some people can appreciate the finer things in life at a younger age. Older folks tend to dislike "loud", I honestly can't say they'd also dislike clean power, since so few have it.
Now in my view, I'm not all that old at 28, and my interest in quality audio is not all that new, going back at least 12 years. This is perhaps why I realized that class d was the only real answer, because they have the potential to be at least as good as class A in terms of linearity, if nto better, yet at far greater power levels, and I love SPL... clean power, what it's all about!~
Also I think it's important to realize that those little nuances you hear on better amps that you could never make out before, are not at all guaranteed to be there simply by having clean power, but the cleaner it is the more you'll hear. So at what point does it cross over from clean power to loud? It depends, some are so loud at even low volume it seems loud, the little AM radio was a good example, but it hasn't reached painfully abusive yet. The real threshold of loudness in my view is the point it begins hard clipping.
What irks me is when people who don't, or pretend to not know any better try to show off a system by cranking it up well beyond what it can do cleanly, and it's not all that clean in the first place..These days, I've reached a point where I tell them to turn it the hell down because it's a piece of **** and I don't mind saying so.
I admit to being entirely spoiled by my current system, compared to what most people have, and I do love SPL, but I will never turn it up beyond clipping. Spoiled by it as I am I also realize what a rarity clean power really is. You start to be amazed with how people are so conditioned to think that clipping=loud=good times .
A fine example if not an extreme one is going to your usual cinaplex, the THX cert. ones, where they think the audio is a part of the experience everyone paid for (because it is being THX and all) and often crank the cheapest possible system they could get away witht well beyond what they can do cleanly. Usually this sounds like speakers of 110dB efficiency on a 15W amp that's trying to run at 30W. You hear the distortion in the voices, and the LFE are just a blurbling mess. Makes me want to leave, and it makes most people want to not go back, or stay home and download
I brought this up before and some have informed me not all places are this bad, but I'm willing to bet the vast majority can relate to that experience.
Anyway I just want to make the point very clear that you can in fact have what most might consider to be insane SPL, and of extreme quality, but it only comes in the form of clean power. Loud is a vulgar word, having no relation whatsoever to quality sound. May this become the gospel truth!
I very much enjoy the high efficiency of my speakers, and the cleanlyness with which the UCD powers them. I don't usually enjoy it unless I feel it thumping in my chest, and the level that happens you can still talk to a person across the room without a raised voice. Turning it up beyond that becomes an amazing experience.
There's one song I like to freak people out with, by Hans Zimmer, called beneath alrischa. With the right setup (a very efficient set of 15" UCD powered) it's a complete assault on the senses. Given a virtually black noise floor and dynamic range of hell, I can turn it up to what I know is just on the verge of clipping, and let it play out. No one expects what's in store. I've seen people jump a foot out of their chair from it, while others know enough to expect anything from me and are still shocked.
You dont' normally ever hear or feel the kind of bass it hits with unless it's with a type of music where clearity is a non issue, and maybe in an SPL on wheels fast and furious type jukebox. Certainly, never intermingled with orchestral music, on a system of such audiophile caliber. The orchestra building up on top of an unearthly brown note, you instantly see how holographic, tightly imaged, clean and fully controlled it is.
That's just the UCD for you, doing it's thing, stunning such as it is. It's one of the first and certainly still the finest example of what class d is capable of.
Because it is so clean and natural, it really doesn't seem loud at all even though everything around you is dancing around all over the place. From what I gather of a quick search it seems there's strong correlation between perceived loudness and distortion.
Regards,
Chris
Wow, that was a long story, fun to read. Fully agree with everything said about "loud". I wish I had a listening room where I could generate chest pounding bass as in the old days when I went to rock concerts every now and then, not a good thing to do if you want to keep your ears in resonable shape 🙂
If I turn things up pretty high, just my room starts to generate distortion. The room I have my speakers in is now quite small. And everthing is wood (Japanese anti earthquake wood construction 🙂) so all kind of panels/doors etc start to resonate creating bizarre amounts of higher order clipping like distortion.
Hope to have a better room someday.
Gertjan
I don't mean to overpost but now I'm mad!
My ENTIRE library of nearly 7000 MP3's is now useless!
Useless!! The damn UCD's have somehow magically rendered them all NASTY! And you're all guilty for this...
Especially you C.
If I'd just never built this thing I'd still be... Well wait a minute, where was I before I could actually hear this stuff?
I let all the magic blue smoke out of my first set but it's still CLEARLY in the new set.
LOL.
Seriously though - I have a wonderful DAC on my big-fast computer - an Onkyo 24/196 - clean as a whistle and sweet as anything. Same as their consumer electronics. Only available in Japan, real hard to get.
The big iso rips are immaculate but most sources are just unlistenable. The 320 sources are still nice but anything below - to my ears - forget it.
Still...
Anybody with a huge digital library who's thinking of building a UCD to play it ought to think about it seriously. Be stupid, fat, and ignorant and forget it. If you do this thing - your library is wrecked. (I'm joking - but wouldn't go back on a bet!).
Trust me...
Wow, anybody know where I can buy a decent turntable?
Regards,
Tom
My ENTIRE library of nearly 7000 MP3's is now useless!
Useless!! The damn UCD's have somehow magically rendered them all NASTY! And you're all guilty for this...
Especially you C.
If I'd just never built this thing I'd still be... Well wait a minute, where was I before I could actually hear this stuff?
I let all the magic blue smoke out of my first set but it's still CLEARLY in the new set.
LOL.
Seriously though - I have a wonderful DAC on my big-fast computer - an Onkyo 24/196 - clean as a whistle and sweet as anything. Same as their consumer electronics. Only available in Japan, real hard to get.
The big iso rips are immaculate but most sources are just unlistenable. The 320 sources are still nice but anything below - to my ears - forget it.
Still...
Anybody with a huge digital library who's thinking of building a UCD to play it ought to think about it seriously. Be stupid, fat, and ignorant and forget it. If you do this thing - your library is wrecked. (I'm joking - but wouldn't go back on a bet!).
Trust me...
Wow, anybody know where I can buy a decent turntable?
Regards,
Tom
Chris,
Most interesting.
"Anyway I just want to make the point very clear that you can in fact have what most might consider to be insane SPL, and of extreme quality, but it only comes in the form of clean power. Loud is a vulgar word, having no relation whatsoever to quality sound."
So you're saying loud is not a function of SPL, but of the speakers being overdriven and/or the amp clipping.
What about your ears? I know a guy built a system using pro drivers, B&C 15HPL75 with BMS 4552ND compression driver on Eighteensound XT1086 horn/waveguide.
He thought they had found their limits, but when he backed far away enough from the speakers the sound was crystal clear - his ears had gone into breakup.
Not that I'm against your philosophy, I'm working on a system similar to what I just described 🙂 Same top end, but Eighteensound 12ND710 for the woofers.
Where can I find a description of your system?
Thanks
Most interesting.
"Anyway I just want to make the point very clear that you can in fact have what most might consider to be insane SPL, and of extreme quality, but it only comes in the form of clean power. Loud is a vulgar word, having no relation whatsoever to quality sound."
So you're saying loud is not a function of SPL, but of the speakers being overdriven and/or the amp clipping.
What about your ears? I know a guy built a system using pro drivers, B&C 15HPL75 with BMS 4552ND compression driver on Eighteensound XT1086 horn/waveguide.
He thought they had found their limits, but when he backed far away enough from the speakers the sound was crystal clear - his ears had gone into breakup.
Not that I'm against your philosophy, I'm working on a system similar to what I just described 🙂 Same top end, but Eighteensound 12ND710 for the woofers.
Where can I find a description of your system?
Thanks
Hi,
Gertjan, My room is nothing special either, far from it. However where I currently live used to be a court house/library/jail. Walls are nice and thick, plus I'm half underground, and this is the first time ever where I can blast it and not hear much vibrating.
Noah,
"So you're saying loud is not a function of SPL, but of the speakers being overdriven and/or the amp clipping."
Yeah, I think those are some of the main factors in perceived loudness. I've no doubt you can really blast a clean system even to the point that your vision is blurred, yet it's not offensive, you can actually sit there with a smile on your face, while on systems that aren't capable of clean power, you tend to find them loudly offensive even though they've no hopes of impressing you with SPL.
You guys mentioned a few other very likely factors that come into play in terms of perceived loudness.There's most likely alot more still, and I'm no expert here, but alot of the ones brought up already are really only a concern at the very extremes, and it without doubt took you some nice clean power to get it up to that extreme and still want to go further 🙂
My system currently consists of:
Cerwin Vega VS-150's, 400W continus, 102dB efficiency, 15" sub, 6.5 mid, 1" soft dome tweeter, far from audiophile caliber but I love them, hard to beat for the money and I've had them since I was 16.... it took this long to get an amp that could drive them with authority 🙂
Stereo UCD amp 500VA plitron toroidal with 32 volts AC secondaries, dual IXYS 600V 68amp FRED bridge rectifiers, snubbed with a single RC each, paralleled Jensen 4 pole caps, 15 000uF X 2 per rail. (supply was originally for UCD180's)
UCD400AD's, stock other than DC coupled, wired in bi-phase differential from an EMU 1820M soundcard/ audiodock, which is also still stock...... for now, I plan on modding it soon too, along with the UCD modules, plans the UCD's include aux supplies, opa627's, caps.. the audiodock will also receive some upgrading in the near future, but I want a bitscope first.
So it's not all out by any means, but it's getting there slowly.
Once I've pushed the electronics as far as I can afford to go I might look into DIY speakers 🙂 These will do until then.
Tom,
320 is not always the answer. You find alot of CD's sound like hell too, so you may as well blame the real source first. I've also found some at 192 to be very decent, and VBR is right up there with 320 if not better.
Lossless formats are fun, big hard drives are cheap these days, go crazy! DVD players for the PC are also cheap.
Gertjan, My room is nothing special either, far from it. However where I currently live used to be a court house/library/jail. Walls are nice and thick, plus I'm half underground, and this is the first time ever where I can blast it and not hear much vibrating.
Noah,
"So you're saying loud is not a function of SPL, but of the speakers being overdriven and/or the amp clipping."
Yeah, I think those are some of the main factors in perceived loudness. I've no doubt you can really blast a clean system even to the point that your vision is blurred, yet it's not offensive, you can actually sit there with a smile on your face, while on systems that aren't capable of clean power, you tend to find them loudly offensive even though they've no hopes of impressing you with SPL.
You guys mentioned a few other very likely factors that come into play in terms of perceived loudness.There's most likely alot more still, and I'm no expert here, but alot of the ones brought up already are really only a concern at the very extremes, and it without doubt took you some nice clean power to get it up to that extreme and still want to go further 🙂
My system currently consists of:
Cerwin Vega VS-150's, 400W continus, 102dB efficiency, 15" sub, 6.5 mid, 1" soft dome tweeter, far from audiophile caliber but I love them, hard to beat for the money and I've had them since I was 16.... it took this long to get an amp that could drive them with authority 🙂
Stereo UCD amp 500VA plitron toroidal with 32 volts AC secondaries, dual IXYS 600V 68amp FRED bridge rectifiers, snubbed with a single RC each, paralleled Jensen 4 pole caps, 15 000uF X 2 per rail. (supply was originally for UCD180's)
UCD400AD's, stock other than DC coupled, wired in bi-phase differential from an EMU 1820M soundcard/ audiodock, which is also still stock...... for now, I plan on modding it soon too, along with the UCD modules, plans the UCD's include aux supplies, opa627's, caps.. the audiodock will also receive some upgrading in the near future, but I want a bitscope first.
So it's not all out by any means, but it's getting there slowly.
Once I've pushed the electronics as far as I can afford to go I might look into DIY speakers 🙂 These will do until then.
Tom,
320 is not always the answer. You find alot of CD's sound like hell too, so you may as well blame the real source first. I've also found some at 192 to be very decent, and VBR is right up there with 320 if not better.
Lossless formats are fun, big hard drives are cheap these days, go crazy! DVD players for the PC are also cheap.
noah katz said:
This is like the old trick in the live sound biz. If the system is so loud you hear distortion - put your fingers in your ears. Does the distortion go away? Then it's your ears, not the system that is overdriven.
Pretty scary. (That's why I liked to mix with earplugs.)I do think that the sensation of loudness has a lot to do with distortion, as mentioned in the AM radio example. I've heard a number of good mixes on P.A.s that made me turn to the person next to me to say "sounds pretty good!" only to realize that I need to shout as loud as possible to be heard. It sure didn't sound that "loud".
My father, who was a hi-fi nut back in the 50s, used to tell this story.
One of his Hi-Fi buddies had a big, clean system. The neighbors used to complain that his music was too loud. So one night they called the cops. Cops arrived and asked to hear the "loud music." So he obliged. But the system was so clean, especially by the standards of the day, the cops didn't think it was "loud" at all. They left and told the complaining neighbor that the music wasn't loud, stop calling the cops
. The cop's reference for loud was overdriven and distorted, of course. And most of us are still like that.
I always surpassed me how loud live acoustic music is, without sounding loud.
Same principle of clan sound, I suppose.
That's kind of what I meant when I was saying how amazing it is to see how people are basically conditioned by so many years of listening to such poor systems that loud = ... loud. 😀
Then again on the other hand, the opposite is also true. Some feel a little bit of bass in the chest and start to freak out thinking their ears must be on the verge of imploding... and all I can say is "you're joking? Haven't you noticed you didn't even need to raise your voice to say turn it down.... how loud can it really be? Not very."
All this said, the ear break up thing is a little scary. In Pro land I can understand the need, ear plugs are a good idea.. no point in making yourself deaf.
Re: I don't mean to overpost but now I'm mad!
Hehe, have over 200GBs of lossless ripped cds so my digital library is up to good standards 😀
ptwining said:
Hehe, have over 200GBs of lossless ripped cds so my digital library is up to good standards 😀
Re: Re: I don't mean to overpost but now I'm mad!
Wow, you should burn it in case the drive fails!
lucpes said:
Wow, you should burn it in case the drive fails!
classd4sure said:
Classd4sure:
Would you mind providing some additional info concerning "snubbed with a single RC each".
1. Value of the cap?
2. Value of the resistor?
3. Is the RC located across each of the transformer secondaries?
4. Are the cap & resistor conected paralell (=) or series (cap+resistor)?
Thanks much.
Stevenacnj said:
I don't mind helping you, I do mind helping super special super tweakers. Email me.
Hello good people
I thought I would never see this subject brought to the forum.
And what an interesting discussion! I've read these posts with
such a pleasure that I could not resist to append my humble 2 cents.
For years I've seen discriptions of systems rated only in watts
of SPL as being the "ultimate" and I never had the nerve of
say anything being afraid of hurting susceptibilities of these
power angry people. But, ok, people are all different and the
concepts of music and quality are all different, so I thought.
Nevertheless I always talked to myself I said "what about quality"
Watts, watts, watts, tha's all they care about...
Thinking about it they are not the culprits, I think the ones that
gave them the concept of power (and watts) were the industry
in its more vulgar way of marketing. Remember a few years ago
they woud rate, for example, an amplifier by the peak power multiplyied by two as being the only reason to describe it as
the only condition of so called quality? Even today I read this
or that car amplifier described as 1,000 watts or 1,500 watts.
Most of these amplifiers can't reproduce 50 or 70 watts without
being heavily distorted!
On the home front however things are more palatable these
days, power RMS described at what frequency and with a
defined distortion rate.
I too had a Sonic Impact T amp (which I destroyed when I
connect my electrostatic speakers to it) and I was amazed with
its transcendent quality! Power? Not important! Probably I will
buy another D amp in the future because what matters is not
the power, the Spl, it's the cleaniness of the reproduced music
and its inherent quality.
Thanks for reading these two cents of rambling.
I thought I would never see this subject brought to the forum.
And what an interesting discussion! I've read these posts with
such a pleasure that I could not resist to append my humble 2 cents.
For years I've seen discriptions of systems rated only in watts
of SPL as being the "ultimate" and I never had the nerve of
say anything being afraid of hurting susceptibilities of these
power angry people. But, ok, people are all different and the
concepts of music and quality are all different, so I thought.
Nevertheless I always talked to myself I said "what about quality"
Watts, watts, watts, tha's all they care about...
Thinking about it they are not the culprits, I think the ones that
gave them the concept of power (and watts) were the industry
in its more vulgar way of marketing. Remember a few years ago
they woud rate, for example, an amplifier by the peak power multiplyied by two as being the only reason to describe it as
the only condition of so called quality? Even today I read this
or that car amplifier described as 1,000 watts or 1,500 watts.
Most of these amplifiers can't reproduce 50 or 70 watts without
being heavily distorted!
On the home front however things are more palatable these
days, power RMS described at what frequency and with a
defined distortion rate.
I too had a Sonic Impact T amp (which I destroyed when I
connect my electrostatic speakers to it) and I was amazed with
its transcendent quality! Power? Not important! Probably I will
buy another D amp in the future because what matters is not
the power, the Spl, it's the cleaniness of the reproduced music
and its inherent quality.
Thanks for reading these two cents of rambling.
I have just been trying to describe another phenomenon related to this on another forum.
It is always virtually impossible to explain to someone who has very little experience of quality audio reproduction the difference it can make to their appreciation of music.
I have had to change my opinion more than once on pieces of music that I thought I didn't like! simply because it wasn't the music that was bad, but the poor system it was played on.
That is why if I don't hear something on my own system (UCD400ad 😀) I don't feel as keen to make a judgement and say if I like a piece of music or not.
Most people in the world own non audiophile systems that are not clean and have terrible distortion when they turn up the wick.
It is a sad fact that most people in the world will go their whole lives never having heard a high quality audio system.
It is very hard to judge a piece of music properly if you can't hear it cleanly without clipping and the multitude of other nasties poor equipment brings to the party.
No hi fi is perfect, everything is a compromise, system matching is very important, but when you hear a great system that's so good it manages to almost convince you that you are present at a live performance, it is one of the most wonderful illusions I know.
That is why I’m into this DIY hobby, I can’t afford to buy overpriced high end hi fi so I either make my own or seriously tweak the sh** out of something to get as near as I can to great reproduction.
And it is true ears can distort terribly, I was at a Pink Floyd concert in 1994 and by chance got the best position for sound quality (which by the way was phenomenal for a live gig) and as clean as a whistle.
We were just front of centre, however when my friend and I went off to get a drink which was located under one of the pa stacks the closer we got the more distorted it became until it was literally unbearable.
That was proof enough for me
It is always virtually impossible to explain to someone who has very little experience of quality audio reproduction the difference it can make to their appreciation of music.
I have had to change my opinion more than once on pieces of music that I thought I didn't like! simply because it wasn't the music that was bad, but the poor system it was played on.
That is why if I don't hear something on my own system (UCD400ad 😀) I don't feel as keen to make a judgement and say if I like a piece of music or not.
Most people in the world own non audiophile systems that are not clean and have terrible distortion when they turn up the wick.
It is a sad fact that most people in the world will go their whole lives never having heard a high quality audio system.
It is very hard to judge a piece of music properly if you can't hear it cleanly without clipping and the multitude of other nasties poor equipment brings to the party.
No hi fi is perfect, everything is a compromise, system matching is very important, but when you hear a great system that's so good it manages to almost convince you that you are present at a live performance, it is one of the most wonderful illusions I know.
That is why I’m into this DIY hobby, I can’t afford to buy overpriced high end hi fi so I either make my own or seriously tweak the sh** out of something to get as near as I can to great reproduction.
And it is true ears can distort terribly, I was at a Pink Floyd concert in 1994 and by chance got the best position for sound quality (which by the way was phenomenal for a live gig) and as clean as a whistle.
We were just front of centre, however when my friend and I went off to get a drink which was located under one of the pa stacks the closer we got the more distorted it became until it was literally unbearable.
That was proof enough for me
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