Yes except the tubes in this china amp, apparently, aren't even in the circuit they are simply there for show
Hmm I beg your pardon, someone has tested the tube is in the signal line. But I didn't start this thread to talk about this amp so maybe move on and get back to my question if you will.
Will a 100w amp sound better than a 25w if everything else kept the same?
If everything else is kept the same and the 25 watt amplifier is NOT being driven into clipping or an over current situation then the 25 watt amplifier will sounds exactly the same as the 100 watt one. The same is true for a 10 watt, a 5 watt, or 1 watt amplifier.
Problem is, it is not easy or possible to keep "everything else" the same...
Power is a function of voltage and current, so both V and I must be determined by the high power requirement. But even so there will be consequences of that (on gain etc).
But 100W amp is also a 10W amp depends on the volume setting...
You are talking as if amp quality didn't matter, only "specified" (meaning *unverified*) power rating.
Rather than comparing an ideal 25W amp to an ideal 100W amp, let's compare a crappy "25W" amp to a well made and respected (for good reason) Rotel amp,which clearly has more than 25W to begin with.
Or at least has 25 Real watts.
As of:
Which University teaches that?
Is there an official degree stating so?
Is there a Professional Audiophile Council somewhere dictating Member Standards?
Does the AES hold Seminars and Conventions where Professional Audiophiles read their works?
Is there any Peer Reviewed Magazine where Professional Audiophiles publish articles?
Professional or not, *today* there is *one* Audiophile rising his voice: your Brother.
Whose decision is final, since *he* is the end user and the one who must suffer that EBay amplifier, so if he does not like it, so be it.
From the very first post I wonder about
Was it a Birthday present or something?
Or, as I'm beginning to suspect, you owe him something and tried to get even with the EBay amp?
Which looks like it was not successful, so now you are looking for "authoritative opinion" or something to show and convince your Brother that his ears are wrong?
Even if you got a favorable petition with 1000 signatures on it, if he doesn't like it he still won't.
In fact, I'm counting on Murphy's Law for him to google "Nobsound Ms10D MkII" and reaching this exact thread, quite possible since diyaudio is a popular Forum and has a strong Internet presence, and this thread already has 5 pages (almost 50 posts) and counting.
Just sayin' .
Rather than comparing an ideal 25W amp to an ideal 100W amp, let's compare a crappy "25W" amp to a well made and respected (for good reason) Rotel amp,which clearly has more than 25W to begin with.
Or at least has 25 Real watts.
As of:
Ok, stay there, yours is yours, we respect that, just don't browbeat us trying to say the same as you.
What is a professional audiophile????????
Which University teaches that?
Is there an official degree stating so?
Is there a Professional Audiophile Council somewhere dictating Member Standards?
Does the AES hold Seminars and Conventions where Professional Audiophiles read their works?
Is there any Peer Reviewed Magazine where Professional Audiophiles publish articles?
Professional or not, *today* there is *one* Audiophile rising his voice: your Brother.
Whose decision is final, since *he* is the end user and the one who must suffer that EBay amplifier, so if he does not like it, so be it.
From the very first post I wonder about
What does that mean?
Was it a Birthday present or something?
Or, as I'm beginning to suspect, you owe him something and tried to get even with the EBay amp?
Which looks like it was not successful, so now you are looking for "authoritative opinion" or something to show and convince your Brother that his ears are wrong?
Even if you got a favorable petition with 1000 signatures on it, if he doesn't like it he still won't.
In fact, I'm counting on Murphy's Law for him to google "Nobsound Ms10D MkII" and reaching this exact thread, quite possible since diyaudio is a popular Forum and has a strong Internet presence, and this thread already has 5 pages (almost 50 posts) and counting.
Just sayin' .
Okay great guys I got the answer I need. Yes I gave the amp to my bro as bday present. He doesn't like it, it's fine with me. We were arguing over in order to drive his mission properly he needs a 100w not a 25w. i said its the components of amp made the difference not the wattage. He disagreed. So I can now show him this thread. It would be better if people didn't criticize on quality of that amp because that wasn't my question in the thread.
Next time you give your brother a birthday present, think about this one.
No trouble with power delivery, although there might be with power supply
costs.🙂
No trouble with power delivery, although there might be with power supply
costs.🙂
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My two pence.
In 1977 I bought a set of Klipsch Heresy speakers and a Sony Str-5600SD amp.
After hearing my system, my sister and her husband bought a set of Klipsch Heresy speakers and the next lower amp in the series, the Sony Str-2800SD.
At normal listening levels, I measured peak input to the speakers at 1Vrms, so it was nowhere near clipping even on the 28W amp.
The 55W amp always sounded better. Tighter bass, clearer top end. It might have sounded better because I knew I paid more, but it sounded better.
Sony STR-5800 Manual - AM/FM Stereo Receiver - HiFi Engine
Sony STR-2800 Manual - AM/FM Stereo Receiver - HiFi Engine
Specs are slightly different. How different is enough to hear the difference?
Those are far too different...
A 100W amp might have it's first watt running in class-A. Cannot be compared with 10W amp that it's first watt running in class-B.
And look at the damping factor of that bigger amp, it's twice the damping factor of the smaller amp!
Damping factor is actually what matters in comparing small amp with big amp.
In designing an amp with a given transformer and capacitance, we may have to decide on the bias current. We can choose to maximize maximum power with low bias and high gain, or we can lower the gain and increase the bias with the price of lower maximum power... Maximum power is only relevant with customers/market who do not understand electronics (but that's exactly why it is important...)
For me, the maximum power is not so important, but the common trade-off is indeed in the amplifier ability to drive the speaker, in other words, the damping factor. Lower maximum power tends to give less drive.
Here is a simple case of common trade-off: lower the gain, you may have low distortion but less drive; increase the gain, you may have higher distortion but stronger drive.
But in most cases, low power amps equal to limited budget. As simple as that.
If I understand you correctly. 100w will have higher maximum power than a 25w, therefore it will have higher distortion. So the conclusion would be even keeping all components the same a 100w will sound different than a 25w while listening at the exact same volume. 100w can sound better or it can sound worse than the 25w depending on the distortion.
Yes, but the criteria is not only "distortion". The other one I mentioned was "speaker damping", which is often a trade-off for distortion. In amp design you have to choose between many options because you cannot maximize one variable without affecting other variables.
If they are different designs, normally they sound different (unless may be for very high quality/expensive ones where the differences are inaudible).
If decision to lower wattage is due to cost (cheap transformer), it means it is basically a cheap product, then everything else in the amp will be cheap, including the sound.
If the decision to maximize wattage is due to marketing, it means it is basically cheap but want to "sell" the power rating, then the sound will be cheap. The trade-off is usually very high distortion.
If the transformer and capacitors were given (fixed, equal) before deciding for the wattage, then it MIGHT be fair to compare one option where maximum power is 25W and the other option where power is higher (e.g. 100W).
But yes, it cannot be the same, because there are too many variables, and it is the designer's decision how he wants to "balance" the variables.
And I'm here talking about the same topology, not comparing for example 25W Aleph-J with 120W any subwoofer amp, which is completely different topology.
Given the same production cost (e.g. transformer cost), yes. The other amp uses the transformer to maximize the audio power, the other one might throw away the power as heat and take only 25W for audio.
Damping factor is rarely responsible for sonic differences in amplifiers esp regarding a small low power chip amp (this one) Vs a discrete design (Rotel). Basically all DF tells you is how much negative feedback is used. I'm pretty sure some of the better chip amps have higher DF than many big ole SS amps. When you study speaker design you can realize many other factors can swamp DF out very easily. In fact some bigger tube amps have very little damping factor yet with the right speaker can produce big bass.
Audio like a car designed for a purpose , all the various pieces like horsepower, torque, gearing, tires etc, must join synergistically together or be doomed to fail. Not even to speak of factors of style , reliability, or robustness that cant be analyzed so easily. Sometimes with experience / wisdom you can just take a one look at a car or an audio amp and realize its not fit for the task.
Audio like a car designed for a purpose , all the various pieces like horsepower, torque, gearing, tires etc, must join synergistically together or be doomed to fail. Not even to speak of factors of style , reliability, or robustness that cant be analyzed so easily. Sometimes with experience / wisdom you can just take a one look at a car or an audio amp and realize its not fit for the task.
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Yes, I agree. I think DF is a useless variable. Wrong scale in general. I have my own way to estimate amplifier ability to "drive" the speaker but I'll keep my mouth shut about it.
Don't get me wrong, looking for high DF (negative feedback ) is a good thing but having a DF >100 aint going to make a hill of beans on a 8 ohm multi driver speaker. To me audio amps are pretty simple. it has got to deliver the correct voltages and amperage to the load to match the inputs minus CL gain (ohms law). A single chip amp is limited to lower constraints by the lower allowable V rails and peak currents than a discrete design with a couple of parallel OPT. I figure each parallel device or chip amp is good ~ 5A RMS of sane current drive (within SOA). above all, keep it linear. Do not over drive it, ~ 5V from either rail is a safe estimate.
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Something about what you've written here doesn't sit right, it may be a matter of wording I don't know, but I think I disagree. Maybe I'd add that 25W or 100W amps each used at 1W may sound the same, or either one could be worse.
No this is incorrect. Both amplifiers, if properly designed should have very little distortion. A 100 watt or 25 watt amplifier, it doesn't make any difference. The 100 watt one will be able to provide more watts into the given load though and the clipping point (the point at which the amplifiers DO start to distort like crazy) will be higher than for the 25 watt one.
In fact if you want to really boil it down, the 25 watt amplifier and 100 watt amplifier could be exactly the same. Same PCB, same components, just the 25 watt one is being powered from a lower voltage. So in essence they are the same thing, both will sound identical, up until the point at which they clip.
Only if they are poorly designed or one amplifier is radically different from the other. If you're comparing oranges with oranges then no, they should sound the same.
All well designed amplifiers should have distortion low enough as to be comfortably below audibility. If you've got an amplifier where this isn't the case, then it is an effects box, not just an amplifier.
Even still effects boxes are usually designed to sound nice rather than unpleasant. This is only true of well designed effects boxes however. It is easy to get bad effects boxes if the stuff inside the box has been poorly designed right from the start.
The answers above are technically correct but the questions are still all wrong.
so the remaining clue in my mind, why does the OP hate on the ubiquitous 100W AV receiver and show love for a no name hybrid Chinese chip amp. A 25W one that he cherished so much, that he gave it away. Now he is shopping for a real tube amp. probably spending $600-$800 USD not counting the 200 already wasted, for an even lower powered solution, will he soon find sonic nirvana? nope!
so the remaining clue in my mind, why does the OP hate on the ubiquitous 100W AV receiver and show love for a no name hybrid Chinese chip amp. A 25W one that he cherished so much, that he gave it away. Now he is shopping for a real tube amp. probably spending $600-$800 USD not counting the 200 already wasted, for an even lower powered solution, will he soon find sonic nirvana? nope!
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Many people cannot understand why people have different taste, and in such situation they accuse those with different taste are wrong.
Those who like the 100W are guilty of not understanding "high-end" and those who like the 25W are guilty of not understanding "hi-fi" (the amp should equal a wire, and a wire should has no sound).
they 'the non understanding ones' simply ask the wrong questions and you guys keep talking watts and "Hi-fi"? whatever. I think "Hi-fi" comes down to having a fashion or cooler lifestyle gear. Years ago Playboy magazine told them what to get, nowdays they wander around lost on ebay / amazon.
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