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Re: Another Sample Of An Audio Component That Doesn't Measure Well, But Sounds Great.

Hi Tubeguy

“I think deep down we both what the exact same thing, i.e. the most faithful or realistic replication of live music that can be obtained from a given recorded medium via our audio components.”
Agreed

An issue here is the connection to measuring poorly but sounding good.

Clearly some things do correlate, for example a non-flat response vs a flat one.
Some things do not at all like THD % which has little or nothing to do with how something sounds.
Not only that but what frequency range the sound is in and its loudness and duration has a strong effect on how / if audible distortion is. We don’t hear gross distortion at all IF its short enough, while you can hear the difference between with and without side by side..

A problem is that if one designs a speaker by listening alone, then there is only a given level of performance one can achieve. What I found too was that when you evaluate a new driver modification for example, that one could often find one recording that was helped and another harmed by the same mod.
At a given point, you have to depend on the appropriate measurements to point what direction is towards theoretically perfect transduction.

So far as SET amps, I don’t have one but I would bet they are not all the same so far as ability to sound good.
Tube amps can have a unique feature in that they (some) can produce peaks significant grater than the rated RMS power.
Some of the SET amps (based on supply voltage etc) appear to have a rated power which is well below conventional voltage clipping and even at the on set of clipping, only clip one side.
Given the peak powers in live music and in some recordings, it seems logical to assume peaks above the rated power are produced and with increasing level, then rounded off and finally half clipped.
That is much more benign than the SS style symmetric hard clip.
For example, if one had a 5 Watt (rated) amplifier, that could produce a peak +6dB larger and had 6dB of compression at clipping, then this could sound more like an 80 Watt amplifier.
Unlike the 80 W amp, at the average signal level, the SET might have a “less rich” harmonic spectrum.

Now, at the same time, I know some of these amps are also “tuned” for “sound” as opposed to a conservative linear design. I have no idea what yours is.

Part of what I’m trying to say is that a measurement is not a pronouncement of Good / Bad, more like a photograph of a running engine with its covers removed.
To see anything useful, you need many photographs taken at different speeds, from different angles.
Then you need to sit down and stare at them all and figure out what do you see.
It is a marketing ploy to stand fully on or now fully reject measurements as more than what it is being measured.
There is no “rule book” for this, far less than you would think is written in stone, its mostly conditional shades of gray and “folk lore” so far as I see it.

It is sad the audio community has split into two camps mostly.
Having seen it happen, I would point my finger at the engineering side initially for using measurements to sell instead of measure.
When the earliest “comparatively great measuring” SS amps came out, many noticed they liked there old HK or Mac better “but these were new” and weren’t so darn hot.
This turned into a “.001% VS .0005%” quality debate.
The eventual backlash was to begin to reject measurements.
Seizing on a “new” market, the scoundrels tapped that sentiment and have proliferated.
The “trusted magazines” the consumers “depend on” live off of advertising, if an ad salesman sells a package to a company promoting a bottle of rocks, you have to have review that at an absolute minimum advises the possible benefits if not an endorsement.
Really though, they are no worse than any of the endless supply of other scumbags in our society who don a cloak of respect (scientific, political, legal, medical, religious etc) in order to better screw his fellow man for his personal gain.
The kind of folks who ideally would take up walking down train tracks with their walkman on full blast as a hobby.
Best,

Tom Danley


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