[MINI GAN 5 Amp] Impressions, videos and pictures inside )

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TNT

TNT

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Joined 2003
Paid Member
tmuikku said:
This is exactly what happens to all of us. This is why reviews without controlled blind listening situation there is little value to anyone other than the manufacturer who gets the latest good review. Change in the system sounds always good, be it reversed cable or gold plating of the volume pot or bit more SPL than the other, the louder wins. Basically, it is very hard not to be biased even though tried how hard with how good intentions. That is why the controlled blind listening tests are rare, they are expensive to execute properly to get meaningful results.

It is nice to see the innards etc. so thanks for your hard work publishing these daniboun! But everyone should take the sound evaluation with grain of salt, like with any other hifi magazine, add or website.
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+1
 
tmuikku

tmuikku

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Joined 2004
off topic, thinking about the easy biasing a bit. This is the salt for the whole hifi business/market. Anything can be sold as better. If we could reliably hear which one is sonically better there would be only good sounding products in the market, at least not so much of the snake oil variety.

Aha, and reasoning from this there actually is not too much difference between the amps because we have the easy bias! Turn your existing amplifier louder to get better sound and there is no need to buy new one! Good amp is: low hiss and enough wattage to be able to get louder. Add in good speakers to be able to play loud, and the amp shouldn't matter much because of the mind trick. I mean, when the measured performance shows problems are below audibility one should be happy. Otherwise it is just chasing your own tail, unless your amp is broken and you really need a new one.

Have fun ya all!:)
 
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tmuikku

tmuikku

Member
Joined 2004
One more sentence to add: there might really be audible difference between amplifiers even though the measurements say the difference is inaudible. One should participate in controlled listening test to find the best one(s) out. I guess many wouldn't, because the test doesn't support the bias :D

Everyone, remember to have fun! It is all about having fun, the whole hobby of audio, be it consuming for new amps or enjoying the existing one. After all it is your brain that wants a satisfaction. Biased or not doesn't matter as long as you reach what you are looking for. It is not the amplifier fault if you are not happy with it, it is your way of looking at things. Chasing the tail is preventing finding the best one, and this keeps the market alive. Cheerios!:)
 
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S

sychan

Member
Joined 2019
tmuikku said:
It is nice to see the innards etc. so thanks for your hard work publishing these daniboun! But everyone should take the sound evaluation with grain of salt, like with any other hifi magazine, add or website.
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I should say that I find daniboun's reviews useful, so long as there's also some source of more objective data (like ASR's quant nerd reviews). If gear does well on the ASR style reviews, then at least you know there seems to be solid engineering (in terms of design and implementation) for the unit, then it comes down a matter of taste.

On the Volumio forum, they had been getting together to do blind DAC comparisons (pre-Covid) and it seems that even among DACs that should have inaudible differences, people still had preferences. But in the Hamburg Soundcheck blind comparisons, a preference for a the newest and most novel can't arise, because you don't know which is which, just that you seem to prefer one over the other.
 
daniboun

daniboun

Banned
Joined 2019
Hi amigos,

Just talked to Tom from ClassDAudio when I read this from Amir / ASR :

I had trouble getting the amplifier to function initially. It would simply not output anything. I played with grounding as I have seen some very low end amps cause AP to not be able to capture their output due to high level of noise (despite my use of AES-17 filter). This didn't work at first so I switched inputs to RCA. That did not work either. After some fiddling and switching back to balanced input, the amp all of a sudden started to work. Not sure how much of this is interaction with Audio Precision or design issue. Either way, it is an exception to the rule of 95% of amplifiers I have measured.
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I tried to figure out what was wrong with this amp ... specially with the balanced inputs arfffff
However, I hypothesized, was the Mini Gan 5 on loan to ASR working well?

here are our exchanges :

 
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