No disrespect to you
I have always thought there is actually not enough measurements on diyA.
I've been using my ears my whole life. I'd still prefer to use data to assess fidelity of an amplifier.
As Tom pointed out the Crown calculator is per speaker.
Cross reference with his preferred calculator (for two speakers):
Pro-Audio and lighting Calculators. Calculator page
Love it!!
Shake up the objectivist establishment on diyaudio! 
Here are links to my own subjective-leaning comments about Modulus in this thread, plus some of my favorite subjectivist-leaning posts from others too. Fwiw, I am a musician, I appreciate accurate and musical tone, and I know this is often difficult to achieve with any SS amp, much less ICs. But Modulus avoids most of the pitfalls of the plug and play IC amateur approach. It is highly optimized for the specific parts used.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-7.html#post4209360
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-7.html#post4209453
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-10.html#post4210787
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-11.html#post4211912
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-12.html#post4212043
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-16.html#post4217953
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-17.html#post4226598
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-18.html#post4226701
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip-amps/267802-modulus-86-build-thread-18.html#post4226710
In recent weeks I have continued to listen to it powering my passive, 85dB sensitive 8ohm 2way speakers. I love the detail but I was missing some meat with only 6.5" woofer and such low distortion so I added a Audio Research "Reference 1" fully balanced tube preamp and that really brought everything to life. I have found that the stock 20dB of gain is not enough for me so I'll be modding it to 26dB as described in the design doc. Overall, Modulus continues to be extremely enjoyable to listen to. I have another pair of Modulus PCBs and parts waiting to be built to make 3way active speakers. My engineer looked at the schematic and had favorable comments about Tom's feedback HF phase compensation, which agreed with his own 3886 research over the years. He said "this guy knows this chip and knows how to tame it."
No disrespect to you either, but how exactly do you define a "REAL subjective review"?
The problem I have with subjective reviews is that they are ... subjective. In many cases, the verbiage is basically fluff with no meaning at all. What does it mean when a hifi component has "good tempo" or is "musical" or "melodic"? Will my car stereo have better tempo if I drive faster? It makes no sense at all. Then you add all the cases where people describe exactly the same thing but one person will use a positive laden term and the other a negative term. For the same sound. For example, cone breakup will lead to a rise in THD an an uneven spot in the SPL curve (objective data). The resulting sound is described by some as being "precise" (positive) and by others as being "harsh" (negative). It's the same sound! Which of these REAL subjective reviews would you trust?
The "tests" and "experiments" leading to the subjective reviews are also, generally, poorly controlled. A common trick in the hifi showroom is to turn up the volume on the more expensive stereo when the customer is comparing two stereos. The louder stereo will sound better. Even a change of a few dB is more than enough to cause this effect.
I want write pages on the human perception side of things as well. Our senses are nowhere near as accurate as we think they are and are easily fooled.
Measurements, when performed under standardized conditions, can be compared. Someone who knows what kind of sound they prefer can also from measurements and graphs deduce whether a particular hifi component will sound pleasing to their ears. After all, there is a good correlation between measurements and perceive sound quality, as documented by Sean Olive and Harman Kardon.
Boards are available for purchase on my website. Feel free to buy a pair, build them up, post your building experience to this build thread, and write up your review.
Cool. More power to you. I'd love to hear your input on my amp.
~Tom
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Hi Tom,
Leads coming from this transformer are insulated with a length of PTFE (ie Teflon or polytétrafluoroéthylène). This material is quite resistant.
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Hi,
How does this amp sounds ?
- First of all, very clean ! But, the bass are somewhat light and treble are a little sibilant. So, voices seem to be acetic and doublebass is skinny.
I use to listen an Audio Note SE 300B Quest. As we say in french, to compare tube amps and solid state amps is like to compare towels and dishcloths.
- So which one is a towel and which one is a dishcloth ? It is obvious that this is not the way to compare. I am a little bit disappointed.
Tom,
You are aficionado with 300B. So I am sure that you made some comparisons between this two amps. How do you experiment their differences ?
How does this amp sounds ?
- First of all, very clean ! But, the bass are somewhat light and treble are a little sibilant. So, voices seem to be acetic and doublebass is skinny.
I use to listen an Audio Note SE 300B Quest. As we say in french, to compare tube amps and solid state amps is like to compare towels and dishcloths.
- So which one is a towel and which one is a dishcloth ? It is obvious that this is not the way to compare. I am a little bit disappointed.
Tom,
You are aficionado with 300B. So I am sure that you made some comparisons between this two amps. How do you experiment their differences ?
"the bass are somewhat light and treble are a little sibilant. So, voices seem to be acetic and doublebass is skinny"
Trust me, you need a good (or two) DC blocking. First the big electrolytic capacitors should be burned.
I have improved the sound dramatically in AV Marantz SR4500 after adding two Schaffner filters (EFI/EMI), one Würth ferrites (150 Khz) and now two DC blocking.
Trust me, you need a good (or two) DC blocking. First the big electrolytic capacitors should be burned.
I have improved the sound dramatically in AV Marantz SR4500 after adding two Schaffner filters (EFI/EMI), one Würth ferrites (150 Khz) and now two DC blocking.
-> Pro-Audio and lighting Calculators. Calculator page
Near field, center (in phase)
Two meters from left speaker, lateral (random phase)
Near field, center (in phase)
Two meters from left speaker, lateral (random phase)
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Near field, center (in phase) 1m
How SPL I need (KEF Q100, 86 dB at "8 ohms") for 95 dB? => 2W
PD: I usually listen music with an SPL well below 95 db in near field. I have considered the worst case.
How SPL I need (KEF Q100, 86 dB at "8 ohms") for 95 dB? => 2W
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
PD: I usually listen music with an SPL well below 95 db in near field. I have considered the worst case.
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I am not surprised by the dry bass comment, especially coming from a 300b tube amplifier. However the sibilant treble is unlikely to be caused by the amplifier, if it operating correctly.
The well extended treble (not heavily rolled off) could be exposing weakness in the treble units of your speakers, or simply revealing how harsh some of your recordings really are.
I have used several tubes amplifiers (and my father - for whom I am building the amplifier - is using one now) typically moving from solid state to valves (push pull, single ended, whatever) it is like applying a niceness button. Bass warmth and treble sweetness at the expense of resolution and accuracy.
I like valve amplifiers and good solid state but I feel no need for tubes with active operation. When going to quality active loudspeakers those benefits I have mentioned diminish. The world should have gone fully active by now.
Member
Joined 2006
Could you elaborate this interesting point a bit? Thanks!
Here is not the place to restart the active versus passive debate.
Firstly I am not saying that every active is better than every passive, that would be deeply silly.
Passive crossovers are inferior to active crossovers. In an active system the amplifier is connected directly to the drive units, hence better control. That's just for starters. I recommend you read Linkwitzlab:
Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design
Also read this:
http://www.atcloudspeakers.co.uk/technology/active-amplification/
Passive crossovers rule the roost for numerous commercial reasons, non of them to do with quality and everything to do with real world compromises, because the Hi-Fi market is small the world hasn't moved on.
I believe that if Hi-Fi was still truly mainstream and the world cared as much about music reproduction as their mobile phone technology big players would have rendered passive crossovers obsolete by now.
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My reason for building the mod-86 is to go active. I think active in the marketplace is finally starting to take off with desktop systems, but for the hairy chested man rig you want to be able to see the billet unobtainium monster amp, with speaker cables hand rolled on the thighs of virgins. Active is not sexy and upgradeable.
The chipamp solutions are cheap and good these days, so active makes a lot more financial sense. But each to their own.
The chipamp solutions are cheap and good these days, so active makes a lot more financial sense. But each to their own.
to keep this short you may never "get it"almost all and every engineer type have no clue what i am talking about and your showing it here its ok i was not expecting you to understand what i am saying as most engineer types think inside the box!
Now there was one engineer that knew music..... his now long gone company went with him when he died Robert Fulton of FMI....this man had it all upstairs engineer, conductor, trumpet player, recording engineer, inventor, he made some of the best live recordings of all time!
getting back to the REAL evaluation as i have said as you can see most if not all of your clients have very bandwidth limited systems ...There is no bandwidth limiting in real live music...there is no highs ...no lows no slam no whatever everyone seems to quantify what they may here none of this comes about when you listen live...there no 3d sound or height or width ...its just there never a thought comes to mind about these foolish thoughts listening live!
I have a very wide bandwidth system and if your up for a REAL evaluation I will do it for you but you need to send me your amps as there will no issues of something i may have done wrong to discredit my REAL evaluations....
up to you sir i would like the chance
Lawrence
Member
Joined 2006
Quite so, this is the traditional viewpoint but even that is short sighted.
If you want to sell die hard audiophiles extra boxes and cables etc. the world is your seafood creature.
In an active speaker system the amplifiers do not have to be integrated, they can be external if desired. Then you could potentially have more sales avenues!
Imagine: More cables, more PSU options, more amplifiers to swap around, even the crossover itself becomes upgradeable; in the case of DSP you could sell the latest firmware/software as well as hardware options.
Get the customer thinking like this and the drive units would be in the crosshairs too. So the customer gets to keep his existing (wife approved) boxes and can upgrade them too. Often in ways that are invisible to the spouse if desired.
Active could mean integration, less boxes, smaller heatsinks, smaller transformers as a fit and forget solution or it could be used as an ever upgradeable audiophile fiddlers paradise.
If you hear a good active system then perhaps you will know why too.
I use Linkwitz LX Minis.
I came to the realisation of the superiority of active systems from subjective listening, most of my exposure to loudspeakers has been passive speakers. I then read up on the technology aspect of active and discovered exactly why they are superior.
My LX minis are using Linkwitz's Pluto amplifiers which also use rather more ordinary LM3886 amplifiers. From a sound quality perspective I would take them over every single valve system I have ever heard, this includes systems that cost more than most peoples homes.
Member
Joined 2006
You don't instill me with confidence that your 'review' will tell me anything, sorry.