Voicing an amplifier: general discussion

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#341
yldouright said:
rayma, DrDyna
I am encouraged to see a glimpse of cooperation between you two but may I suggest that DrDyna rate the sound qualities of the amp before and after for the following three criteria:
soundstage
timbral accuracy
PRaT
I know it'll be anathema to you but please humor us. If it makes you feel better, measure the height width and depth from the mental image created by the soundstage. Then give it a rating for stability and resolution.
Identify the timbral accuracy by noting sounds that you haven't heard before, good or bad.
PRaT is harder to do but just listen for any slurring or emphasized accents that have changed in your mind. Note if the music swings or moves you more or less than before.
We know your philosophical predispositions because you stated them openly here. I suggest you do the subjective tests before you measure so they are not influenced by the numbers. Once those subjective impressions are done, compare the measured results and see what changed. This will be how we construct the freamework, make sense to anyone else?
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It makes sense, sure. These are things that I typically listen to almost every day, when I find a new recording I like, while I'm tinkering with speakers, while I'm trying out surround modes (which I don't normally care for) or anything else.

The overarching point is, I've never been able to attribute any such qualities, emphasized or reduced from any of the amplifiers I've ever listened to, so the only logical conclusion I can come to is...if we create an amplifier that does, that's abhorrent and shouldn't be used because it's no longer transparent, it now has it's own story to tell.
 
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#343
DF96
The reason we can use terms like red or green to describe the frequency of light is that most people agree on colour. Not exactly, but close enough for it to be a useful description. Those who disagree, or who cannot see colour at all, are known to be missing retinal receptors. So colour terms like red or green are useful subjective descriptions of phenomena which can be objectively described by giving a frequency spectrum.

Conversely, soundstage is undefined. Therefore it is not useful as a subjective measure.
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Why don't you see I am trying to bring about exactly this kind of common agreement for what we hear. Once that is done, then the tests to identify which electrical attributes correspond most closely to the end result can proceed. The end result could be knowledge that enables us to change a sonic impression the same way we can change a pigment.
 
#344
nezbleu
When I presented the rating numbers on my audio product, they were based entirely on my subjective impression of them. The post above details my method. As for your unwillingness to help inform me and my efforts, that's proof enough of your unfortunate predisposition here.
 
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#347
yldouright said:
rayma, DrDyna
I am encouraged to see a glimpse of cooperation between you two but may I suggest that DrDyna rate the sound qualities of the amp before and after for the following three criteria:
soundstage
timbral accuracy
PRaT
Click to expand...

Or you could evaluate the performance of the amplifier using whatever criteria make sense to you, since there is no evidence that those three terms are especially meaningful.
 
#348
yldouright said:
nezbleu
When I presented the rating numbers on my audio product, they were based entirely on my subjective impression of them. The post above details my method. As for your unwillingness to help inform me and my efforts, that's proof enough of your unfortunate predisposition here.
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I suggested to you to read the stereophile mags, and develop a correlation about how they felt about soundstage and output impedance.

You ignored it....and now you talk about predisposition?
 
#349
yldouright said:
nezbleu
When I presented the rating numbers on my audio product, they were based entirely on my subjective impression of them. The post above details my method.
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But you still won't say what those numbers mean. When you say 28%, is it just a "score" out of 100? If so, what does 100% represent in each of those categories? What is your reference?

Until you clarify that it's pointless to even discuss whether your scores are consistent or repeatable or correspond to any physical phenomena, or whether they constitute a meaningful description of an amplifier's performance.
 
#350
nezbleu
But you still won't say what those numbers mean. When you say 28%, is it just a "score" out of 100? If so, what does 100% represent in each of those categories? What is your reference?
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My apologies, you're right. I used a perfect standard of SS 40%, TA 40% and PRaT 20% as my scoring table.

Nelson Pass
As always, welcomed here and anywhere else on diya.

BigE
Your suggestion of compiling a review database and subjecting it to an analysis is a good one but it requires a good deal of faith in the Stereophile reviews and I'm sure that would be problematic for many here.

DF96
You stated:
I don't think you do understand. In the early days of sound reproduction people did experiments to determine what level of performance was required from the electronics in order for reproduced sound to be indistinguishable from live instruments. As in all other areas of analogue electronics this was posed in the form of distortion, frequency response etc. The experiments gave a result. You seem to want to sweep away all this genuine science and invent your own, based on marketing terms used by people spreading FUD for commercial purposes. Surely much better to refine the existing data than invent new fuzzy concepts such as Prat or soundstage?
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I don't want to sweep them away but I do wish to correlate them to a universally acceptable and predictable audio result. An end user can purchase two amplifiers with the identical stated specifications and end up with two entirely different sound experiences and this is a problem that my framework can solve in my opinion.

bonfis
bonfis stated:
The first problem is we don't all agree (on my audio postulates) and the second is that even if we did it would be meaningless unless we all agreed that we were hearing them while listening together. In short you have no chicken.
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That will require a demonstration that the proposed sound qualities are reliably heard and discriminated by said musicians and technicians (plural not singular). That task alone would be a major psychoacoustic undertaking and should logically precede any attempt to correlate the purported qualities to design difference among amplifiers. In the absence of such demonstration we are left with the singular impressions of individuals and their various attempts to translate those impressions into language. In other words without a way to reliably measure the big 3 we have no hope of ever correlating them with the design variations among amps.
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I have submitted a method to assess the audio postulates, if it is inadequate, another can be offered. Being in the same room would help, having an anechoic chamber would be better but the ultimate goal is less an amplifier rating system than a method of gaining knowledge about how to tie in the postulates to electrical attributes. This is what I thought you were missing and forgive me for not addressing your post earlier.
 
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#351
yldouright said:
I suggest that DrDyna rate the sound qualities of the amp before and after for the following three criteria:
soundstage
timbral accuracy
PRaT
Click to expand...

I'm glad I'm not involved in this because while I (think I) can hear differences between amps it would be impossible for me to use any of those three to describe any perceived differences.

Soundstage is to me the same as imaging which IME depends on the recording and the speakers but not the amp unless it has ridiculous amounts of crosstalk between channels.

I would not be able to say anything about timbral accuracy because for that I would have had to have been present during the recording as I find the differences between amps tends to be smaller than the differences between two cellos (insert any other instrument of your liking).

Pace, Rhythm and Timing are ingrained in my brain as descriptions of music. I have never once come across any replay system which makes any changes whatsoever to those, regardless if music is played through a cheap transistor radio, a PA system, studio monitors, high or low $ home stereos.

The differences between amps I do perceive are that at the extremes the bass is either 'mushy' or 'tight' and treble can be 'harsh' or 'smooth'.
A good amp to me sounds 'clean', 'detailed' and 'effortless', a bad one 'smeared', 'harsh' and 'strained'.
I am not under the illusion that those terms would work equally well for everybody though as at times I struggle with my own descriptors.
 
#353
Fact is, the real challenges , huge differences and imperfections still lie in the "mechanicals": speakers, pickups, vinyl, tape, tape heads, cartridges, cabinets, rooms, earphones, padding, you name it.

WASTING time arguing about the most transparent piece of equipment, the amplifiers, truly "pieces of wire with gain" is useless and stupid, when SO MUCH remains to be corrected in the other elements.
 
#354
I don't think all opamps sound the same.
I use two BSS FDS360 xovers. At first I had a terrible time to get the L-R balance right, it was practically impossible. Turns out that one of the 360s was populated by TL072s while the other one sported LF353s.
I changed all of them to OPA2134s and not only can I easily get the balance right now but pretty much everybody noticed immediately and without prior knowledge that I changed anything at all. The sound is now smoother and more detailed.

That said I'd struggle to tell differences between transistor amps unless I can switch between them almost immediately provided they are both run without clipping.
 
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#355
Charles Darwin
Welcome. Yes, imaging works too but sound stage seems more accessible to me and connotes better the concept of depth. No one is disputing the contribution made by the loudspeakers and room effects but the amp is where we can most accurately observe and control the resulting changes so that is where we are likely to learn the most about what does what. If an amp is so resolving and truth telling that it exposes (and possibly enhances) all the defects of your recordings, is it a better amp? These are the kind of questions a consumer needs to assess if he is going to be happy with his purchase. In my case, I would like my amp to forgive as many recording defects as possible while keeping me as close to the music as possible. I submit you cannot do this without voicing an amp.
 
#358
yldouright said:
In my case, I would like my amp to forgive as many recording defects as possible while keeping me as close to the music as possible. I submit you cannot do this without voicing an amp.
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Do you really realize how nonsensical this is?
Are you looking for an amp that somehow decides what to let through, what not, what to change, depending on what the amp 'thinks' is a 'recording defect' or not?

Any more popcorn in the house?

Jan
 
#359
jan.didden, DrDyna
Is it nonsense to try and strike a balance between resolution and auditory satisfaction by design? Is it nonsense to divide the resolution into three specific areas of emphasis? If the answer to those questions are yes to the majority of the readers here then congratulations, there is nothing of interest here for you and you are free to ignore this thread.
 
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