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High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
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In Reply to: You may find this an interesting read posted by Christopher Witmer on April 10, 2007 at 16:05:33:
Or is it just me? -- Did I overlook some huge glaring statement in Elliott's writing where he claims that "all . . . amplifiers sound the same"? Unless I missed something I think someone is putting words in his mouth.The following is lifted from one of his articles at the same site titled "Amplifier Sound: What Are The Influences?" --
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When people talk about the sound of an amplifier, there are many different terms used. For a typical (high quality) amplifier, the sound may be described as "smeared", or having "air" or "authoritative" bass. These terms - although describing a listener's experience - have no direct meaning in electrical terms.
Electrically, we can discuss distortion, phase shift, current capability, slew rate and a myriad of other known phenomena. I don't have any real idea as to how we can directly link these to the common terms used by reviewers and listeners.
Some writers have claimed that all amplifiers actually sound the same, and to some extent (comparing apples with apples) this is "proven" in double-blind listening tests. I am a great believer in this technique, but there are some differences that cannot be readily explained. An amp that is deemed "identical" to another in a test situation, may sound completely different in a normal listening environment. It is these differences that are the hardest to deal with, since we do not always measure some of the things that can have a big influence on the sound.
For example; It is rare that testing is done on an amplifier's clipping performance - how the amp recovers from a brief transient overload. I have stated elsewhere that a hi-fi amplifier should never clip in normal usage - nice try, but it IS going to happen, and often is more common than we might think. Use a good clipping indicator on the amp, and this can be eliminated, but at what cost? It might be necessary to reduce the volume (and SPL) to a level that is much lower than you are used to, to eliminate a problem that you were unaware existed.
Different amplifiers react in different ways to these momentary overloads, where their overall performance is otherwise almost identical. I have tested IC power amps, and was dismayed by the overload recovery waveform. My faithful old 60W design measures about the same as the IC in some areas, a little better in some, a little worse in others (as one would expect).
Were these two amps compared in a double blind test (avoiding clipping), it is probable that no-one would be able to tell the difference. Advance the level so that transients started clipping, and a fence post would be able to hear the difference between them. What terms would describe the sound? I have no idea. The sound might be "smeared" due to the loss of detail during the recovery time of the IC amp. Imaging might suffer as well, since much of the signal that provides directional cues would be lost for periods of time.
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When he says that "a fence post would be able to tell the difference" he is hardly claiming all amplifiers sound the same. Especially when he insists that clipping occurs more commonly than most people suspect.
If I overlooked something where he says essentially what has been attributed to him in this thread, please let me know. I could not find anything like that in Google searches so I strongly suspect that words have been put into his mouth.
By the way, I don't think all amplifiers sound alike but I am frequently amazed by the similarity of sound among transistor amplifiers once a certain level of quality is reached. And to my ears, the amount of money that needs to be spent to reach that level of quality is not that high. I'm talking about my own experience in my own listening environment, but I would tend to agree that at least for well-designed transistor amplifiers using decent components, changing the amplifier is likely to produce much less change in the sound than, say, changing the speakers or changing the signal source equipment. For me, relatively speaking, transistor amplifiers have become somewhat of a commodity item. That's not saying "all amplifiers sound the same" but a lot of amplifiers do sound the same, and they sound pretty darn good too . . . and FWIW I think my own statements just above are if anything stronger than what Mr. Elliott said about amplifiers, so I find the tendency to "diss" him somewhat hard to comprehend.
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Follow Ups
- What are you guys reading? - Christopher Witmer 20:52:52 04/11/07 (1)
- Knee-Jerk - djk 22:39:07 04/12/07 (0)
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