Seriously considering doing an OTL (leave aside which one for now) , but
one of the biggest strengths of a good OTL is a midrange without euphony, but very clear transparent, alive with fine detail -- but may be a two edged sword.
On 60 - 70s (or other) pop or rock recordings which are ‘poorly recorded’, eg close miked, are they too revealing?
one of the biggest strengths of a good OTL is a midrange without euphony, but very clear transparent, alive with fine detail -- but may be a two edged sword.
On 60 - 70s (or other) pop or rock recordings which are ‘poorly recorded’, eg close miked, are they too revealing?
Have I got this right - you are concerned that your proposed amp will be too good for the source material you have?
Leaving aside the veracity of your suppositions about the "strengths" of an OTL design, doesn't your amp selection criteria guide you toward reinforcing mediocrity?
I do have some CDs that I listen less and less with the improvement of the system. Those are of course badly produced records. I think this is inevitable.
There are some songs I do like in those bad recordings. Digital EQ comes in handy at these moments.
And, you don't want to play them loud, so it's good to leave them in the late night when you listen quietly.
So, why worry? Ultimately, you can use ear plugs if there's no cure to those records.
There are some songs I do like in those bad recordings. Digital EQ comes in handy at these moments.
And, you don't want to play them loud, so it's good to leave them in the late night when you listen quietly.
So, why worry? Ultimately, you can use ear plugs if there's no cure to those records.
{{ Leaving aside:
transparent midrange “alive with fine detail” aren’t suppositions. they’re common observations from those who’ve heard them.
Have you heard OTLs (or read reports on them?) }}
Clearly you are a purist.
I would be too, if the music I often liked, was as pure as eg well recorded string quartets.
I’m a realist who wants to spend time n money on things with a good probability of enjoyment.
Yes you have it right. This is not Madness
As much of my listening is 60 - 70s rock, I’m thinking maybe some SE euphony *might be better.
This is the 1st time youve heard this idea?
Constructive comments please, preferably from people whove listened to OTLs quite a bit, including with 60 - 70s rock, 50s blues, etc.
transparent midrange “alive with fine detail” aren’t suppositions. they’re common observations from those who’ve heard them.
Have you heard OTLs (or read reports on them?) }}
Clearly you are a purist.
I would be too, if the music I often liked, was as pure as eg well recorded string quartets.
I’m a realist who wants to spend time n money on things with a good probability of enjoyment.
Yes you have it right. This is not Madness
As much of my listening is 60 - 70s rock, I’m thinking maybe some SE euphony *might be better.
This is the 1st time youve heard this idea?
Constructive comments please, preferably from people whove listened to OTLs quite a bit, including with 60 - 70s rock, 50s blues, etc.
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I don't think many people will find your question an easy one to answer - it's very subjective and depends a lot of personal taste. Even if you did get answers, I'm not sure they would be what you need.
my thoughts... build the best amp you can that will give you the best sound for well recorded material. Anything less will be, well, less.
if you have music that *you* prefer listening to without a revealing amplifier you can always 'dumb it down', perhaps at the flick of a switch ?
my thoughts... build the best amp you can that will give you the best sound for well recorded material. Anything less will be, well, less.
if you have music that *you* prefer listening to without a revealing amplifier you can always 'dumb it down', perhaps at the flick of a switch ?
imho major concern would be speakers safety unless coupled to electrostatic ones in DIY case especially.
I am owning Graaf 13.5 preamp (manufacture that was famous for it's OTL amps) it improves everything. I believe better amp sounds more natural so any record might benefit from it.
Galvanic decoupling (good OT) is a nice stuff however.
I am owning Graaf 13.5 preamp (manufacture that was famous for it's OTL amps) it improves everything. I believe better amp sounds more natural so any record might benefit from it.
Galvanic decoupling (good OT) is a nice stuff however.
My opinion:
- there are two unrelated issues here
The first issue is the system sound, the result
The second issue is the effect (generally speaking ) of an OTL, usually with significant feedback, in terms of sound using a typical dynamic speaker.
While the two things are interrelated in this case, they are actually somewhat separate.
What a given system will sound like depends a whole lot on things other than any single component. In my experience it is impossible to "tailor" any given component or series of components more than just a little bit and end up with something that will sound "right" across a broad spectrum of recordings. IF the source is a CD then in most cases (again my experience) nothing in the following chain will be any better than that CD player/DAC no matter what you do. Sure you can make it sound somewhat pleasant, but again that sort of system then seems to fail in some way with some percentage of source material.
The OTL amp is very sensitive to the impedance vs. frequency of a given speaker, feedback tries to cure this but is never quite sufficient. So the OTL "likes" higher Z and "dislikes" lower Z, whereas your typical brute SS amp is the opposite (generally speaking in broad terms).
There is no "tube sound" per se, and one can configure tubes to give a wide range of subjective sounds... Otoh, it is not easy to get SS to sound like tubes, but you can make tubes sound pretty much like SS, if you know how... but most are not going that way anyhow, so that's only important in terms of speaking of a range of subjective impressions.
My general view is that trying to set up "euphonic colorations" to "correct" a system just won't work. And, the greater the differential that is used to make the corrections the worse the result. In other words, you can not "filter" a "filter" and make it correct.
So, will an OTL sound good or "correct" or "euphonic" or "accurate" in your system? Impossible to know without really knowing and understanding the complete system - and maybe even hearing it. On paper, in theory, it is unknowable.
Just my 2 cents worth.
_-_-bear
- there are two unrelated issues here
The first issue is the system sound, the result
The second issue is the effect (generally speaking ) of an OTL, usually with significant feedback, in terms of sound using a typical dynamic speaker.
While the two things are interrelated in this case, they are actually somewhat separate.
What a given system will sound like depends a whole lot on things other than any single component. In my experience it is impossible to "tailor" any given component or series of components more than just a little bit and end up with something that will sound "right" across a broad spectrum of recordings. IF the source is a CD then in most cases (again my experience) nothing in the following chain will be any better than that CD player/DAC no matter what you do. Sure you can make it sound somewhat pleasant, but again that sort of system then seems to fail in some way with some percentage of source material.
The OTL amp is very sensitive to the impedance vs. frequency of a given speaker, feedback tries to cure this but is never quite sufficient. So the OTL "likes" higher Z and "dislikes" lower Z, whereas your typical brute SS amp is the opposite (generally speaking in broad terms).
There is no "tube sound" per se, and one can configure tubes to give a wide range of subjective sounds... Otoh, it is not easy to get SS to sound like tubes, but you can make tubes sound pretty much like SS, if you know how... but most are not going that way anyhow, so that's only important in terms of speaking of a range of subjective impressions.
My general view is that trying to set up "euphonic colorations" to "correct" a system just won't work. And, the greater the differential that is used to make the corrections the worse the result. In other words, you can not "filter" a "filter" and make it correct.
So, will an OTL sound good or "correct" or "euphonic" or "accurate" in your system? Impossible to know without really knowing and understanding the complete system - and maybe even hearing it. On paper, in theory, it is unknowable.
Just my 2 cents worth.
_-_-bear
Regardless of what you're designing the question becomes: do you want an amp or an FX box? Granted, there is no such thing as a perfect amp, but it's an ideal I definitely shoot for.
It is a problem: a good amp will definitely reveal the sonic defects of a horrible recording job. Sometimes it's purely accidental, others by design. I have a lot of early 1980s CDs that sound "off", not quite right. Sometimes, a "hideous" recording is by design: 8-tracks were recorded to sound good in car audio systems, CDs are often mastered with the assumption they'll be listened to with standard, solid state Big Box systems, and so try to compensate for SS deficiencies. These don't necessarily play well with any decent hollow state -- or solid state -- amps.
Sometimes, you can play around with feedback (I include adjustable gNFB) or EQ, but there's a limit to how much damage you can undo. An unfortunate side effect of fancier tech is deteriorating sonic quality.
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I mean you can intentionally reduce the technical performance of the amplifier so that it works better for you on certain music. You might do this by introducing more distortion for example. The extreme viewpoint might be to think of it like a guitar amp, a clean channel and a non-clean channel.
1++ what Bear said. This is all too subjective. I have speakers that are almost too reveling and speakers that level everything and still sound good. Yep a well built OTL will show everything and a poorly built (I mean designed) OTL will not. There are LPs I just can't listen too on my system as it shows all the flaws, but there are LPs that I just like too much not to listen to even though they are sucky recordings.
I think the least expensive OTL to build is Tim Mellow's. Build it and see if you like it. If you do a good job on the build and don't like it, you can sell it for more than you have in parts. Just a thought.
I think the least expensive OTL to build is Tim Mellow's. Build it and see if you like it. If you do a good job on the build and don't like it, you can sell it for more than you have in parts. Just a thought.
What Bear said is the most thorough and clear.
In the end, like what I said, I just turn them down, or simply avoid them. Loud is only worsening those bad recordings.
What I use is nothing special, Behringer DEQ2496. Most of the time, harshness in many pop CDs can be smoothened somewhat by turning down 2~4kHz, or too much sibilance might be tamed by turning down 6~8kHz. There's no beautiful details anyway. Nothing to loose, and save your hearing.
Sometime the overly boomy bass can be cured by EQ, too. Say, in the last DVD of Micheal Jackson "This is it" - WTF is happening to that bass!? 40~50Hz range is almost 10dB higher than average. Gosh, how can one listen through that materal without EQ? (good film, though)
In the end, like what I said, I just turn them down, or simply avoid them. Loud is only worsening those bad recordings.
What I use is nothing special, Behringer DEQ2496. Most of the time, harshness in many pop CDs can be smoothened somewhat by turning down 2~4kHz, or too much sibilance might be tamed by turning down 6~8kHz. There's no beautiful details anyway. Nothing to loose, and save your hearing.
Sometime the overly boomy bass can be cured by EQ, too. Say, in the last DVD of Micheal Jackson "This is it" - WTF is happening to that bass!? 40~50Hz range is almost 10dB higher than average. Gosh, how can one listen through that materal without EQ? (good film, though)
The only thing I’d disagree with bear’s comments, is
“My general view is that trying to set up "euphonic colorations" to "correct" a system just won't work”
My idea is to induce mild euphonics to "correct" recordings
I'm probably going to use a miniDSP.
maybe they can have say 2 or 3 settings(?): normal, harsh pop, and limited FR old blues recordings . .
Micheal Jackson may be a spacial case
“My general view is that trying to set up "euphonic colorations" to "correct" a system just won't work”
My idea is to induce mild euphonics to "correct" recordings
I'm probably going to use a miniDSP.
maybe they can have say 2 or 3 settings(?): normal, harsh pop, and limited FR old blues recordings . .
Micheal Jackson may be a spacial case
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slightly different perspective
Perhaps my perspective is slightly different than most. It may be that I have now amassed decades of experience with the "art" of high fidelity reproduction. That time includes being involved with or "sitting in" on major artists in the studio and getting to hear the before and after. That being the live, the mixdown and then the commercial release. Also having auditioned far too many home and salon systems.
What I come away with is that IF you imagine a system where the speakers are perfect (none are) and then you apply electronics and cables, you've moved away from the theoretical perfection. So, if you imagine every move away from perfection as some sort of vector in 3 space it starts to make a conceptual sense what happens when you daisy chain a system together...
Similarly one could make the assumtion that the point at the center ("perfection") is formed by the source material, etc. The conceptual result is the same.
The idea is that the greater any single vector is the bigger the imaginary "surface" (a balloon of sorts) that will then be formed in 3 space. That surface formed by joining these imaginary vectors is "your system". The smaller the balloon, the closer to perfection is that system. The larger the vector(s) the more volume is held inside the balloon.
Continuing with the idea, a largish but even surfaced balloon will sound "even" like "perfection" but be flawed (therefore) equally in all regards. (whatever that means in practice, eh?) So, smaller but even surfaced balloons are what is desirable.
A small balloon (for example) with a single large vector will be sonically dominated by that vector. Large balloons with absolute differences that are actually large will still appear somewhat even due to their size. In a small (almost perfect) balloon small differences in absolute vector amount start to appear to make big differences (they are audible).
Now, since no system is perfect, the goal is to minimize vector amplitudes and also to keep any large vector differences from being present. This is difficult, and requires the knowledge of some subtle specifics of the way things work to choose amongst certain compromises (vector amplitudes - to keep the terminology consistent), permitting some, and not others because of their known sonic contributions.
So, if one looks at it this way, the idea of using any component(s) to "correct" a flaw or series of flaws can be seen to be quite problematic.
Furthermore, I have seen where systems that get very close to having a very very little "balloon" (the 3 space surface connecting the vectors) often permit one to "listen through" recordings that are found to be lacking or problematic on many or most systems... of course horribly bad recordings can't ever be found to be enjoyable, and in those cases maybe artificial methods can be employed to good advantage.
The flip side of this is that expecting quality sound with limited source material or limited source equipment simply isn't a realistic expectation.
It's all a compromise, the question is how much and which ones, when and why. That's the game.
This is what I've found over the years... just my opinions.
_-_-bear
PS. OTLs are fun, nice and a good build. Go for it!
PPS. oh, they get hot, eat electricity and are expensive if you use enough tubes!
Perhaps my perspective is slightly different than most. It may be that I have now amassed decades of experience with the "art" of high fidelity reproduction. That time includes being involved with or "sitting in" on major artists in the studio and getting to hear the before and after. That being the live, the mixdown and then the commercial release. Also having auditioned far too many home and salon systems.
What I come away with is that IF you imagine a system where the speakers are perfect (none are) and then you apply electronics and cables, you've moved away from the theoretical perfection. So, if you imagine every move away from perfection as some sort of vector in 3 space it starts to make a conceptual sense what happens when you daisy chain a system together...
Similarly one could make the assumtion that the point at the center ("perfection") is formed by the source material, etc. The conceptual result is the same.
The idea is that the greater any single vector is the bigger the imaginary "surface" (a balloon of sorts) that will then be formed in 3 space. That surface formed by joining these imaginary vectors is "your system". The smaller the balloon, the closer to perfection is that system. The larger the vector(s) the more volume is held inside the balloon.
Continuing with the idea, a largish but even surfaced balloon will sound "even" like "perfection" but be flawed (therefore) equally in all regards. (whatever that means in practice, eh?) So, smaller but even surfaced balloons are what is desirable.
A small balloon (for example) with a single large vector will be sonically dominated by that vector. Large balloons with absolute differences that are actually large will still appear somewhat even due to their size. In a small (almost perfect) balloon small differences in absolute vector amount start to appear to make big differences (they are audible).
Now, since no system is perfect, the goal is to minimize vector amplitudes and also to keep any large vector differences from being present. This is difficult, and requires the knowledge of some subtle specifics of the way things work to choose amongst certain compromises (vector amplitudes - to keep the terminology consistent), permitting some, and not others because of their known sonic contributions.
So, if one looks at it this way, the idea of using any component(s) to "correct" a flaw or series of flaws can be seen to be quite problematic.
Furthermore, I have seen where systems that get very close to having a very very little "balloon" (the 3 space surface connecting the vectors) often permit one to "listen through" recordings that are found to be lacking or problematic on many or most systems... of course horribly bad recordings can't ever be found to be enjoyable, and in those cases maybe artificial methods can be employed to good advantage.
The flip side of this is that expecting quality sound with limited source material or limited source equipment simply isn't a realistic expectation.
It's all a compromise, the question is how much and which ones, when and why. That's the game.
This is what I've found over the years... just my opinions.
_-_-bear
PS. OTLs are fun, nice and a good build. Go for it!
PPS. oh, they get hot, eat electricity and are expensive if you use enough tubes!
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in my book its all about having max possible solution
it will be exstremely revealing
and with proper balance its also very pleasing
to get that your amps must be revealing
and its up to your speakers to do the balance act
multi way speakers can work like that
may be very different with "fullrange" drivers
it will be exstremely revealing
and with proper balance its also very pleasing
to get that your amps must be revealing
and its up to your speakers to do the balance act
multi way speakers can work like that
may be very different with "fullrange" drivers
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