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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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In Reply to: Re: Good Response Soundmind. posted by andy19191 on June 14, 2006 at 15:49:45:
"For most people an ideal amplifier is not supposed to have a "sound" whether good or bad. It supposed to be neutral and this will be achieved when the distortion is inaudible."Tre' asked you which amp this was. I would like to know too so I can also get one.
"Now many audiophiles do not seek such amplifiers and prefer ones with a more pleasing sound. However, they do not describe such amplifiers as sounding more pleasing but use words like natural, life like, or similar positive sounding adjectives. There is not much wrong with this until they use words like accurate which have a well defined meaning when applied to amplifiers and tends to cause a few people to object."
Isn't it reasonable to assume that more natural would also be more accurate unless you think real instruments playing music isn't natural? People with a good knowledge of live unamplified instruments respond to natural reproduced sound. Why do YOU assume that this is in some way "euphonic" or "enhanced".
The reason you assume that it can't be what is really on the recording is from your past experiences with recorded music...likely from inexpensive SS electronics and inferior speakers (we all started there...at least those of us born in the last 30 to 40 years). If your experience with live unamplified music is not extensive you don't even realize what is missing from the playback. Then as you developed as an audiophile (hopefully) you heard more live music and you heard gear that suddenly made the music more vibrant dynamically and colorful (not the same as colored). THis is what is meant by natural.
The other part of experience is the measurements. Now you have seen the measurements and this makes certain expectations as a result. You EXPECT the better measuring gear to sound more accurate (ie. more like what was on the recording). THat is not what many people's ears are telling them; however, and it causes a lot of dissonance in the industry and among audiophiles. To many listeners if you swapped tube amp measurements with SS measurements many people would say the measurements have a pretty good correlation with the listening tests!
"Most competently designed solid state amplifiers fall into this category when driving speakers with reasonable loads and operating well away from clipping."
What does this have to do with audibility of distortions? WHat if the distortion is audible at all power levels below clipping? No one knows how low of distortion is low enough and it depends strongly on the harmonic content of that particular distortion.
"For example, most people are familiar with the sound of valve amplifiers and will often prefer the sound of a voice recorded through such amplifiers even though they have audible levels of distortion compared to that of a solid state amplifier"
This should make you wonder very much about why? Mr. Howard (see stereophile article of his about added distortion to recordings and "euphonic" results) has found that ALL added distortion is a degradation. So if voice sounds better its because the tube amp is doing LESS to degrade the sound of that recorded voice. The other thing you have to realize is that at low power, many tube amps with little or no feedback have LOWER distortion, especially in higher harmonics, than SS amps. This is because noise and distortion decrease rapidly with reduction of power in SET amps, for example, and do not decrease at all (in fact often they increase, relatively) at lower power.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Good Response Soundmind. - morricab 06:22:14 06/15/06 (1)
- Re: Good Response Soundmind. - andy19191 11:34:48 06/15/06 (0)
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