Anyone has a reference system where amplification is SS ?

I dont have the great experience some here have with tubes versus S.S. at all levels ...

I think helomech post make sense...

Anyway my S.S. is the best amplifier i owned , the Sansui alpha, and the power transformer quality and the pre-amplification are critical ...

This is why his headphone out can beat one of the best headphone tube amplifier on the market because of synergy too for sure , this headphone amplifier i tried was very good and of the highest quality but synergy is the basis of component pairing ...😊

Then i discard anything nor any choices , nor tubes nor S.S. nor any other class A or D or hybrid etc nor any solutions...It is all up to synergy , costs and needs ...

Generalizations claims as rule are generally childish ...One thousand factors cannot be reduced to a rule or two about components choices ...

My rule, for the sake of contradicting myself here , 😁 was going for the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold at the best quality/price ratio ...For that we need to be creative, purchasing gear upgrades will not be enough ...Money dont buy meaning, even acoustical meaning ...

By the way the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold is enough for  me and  for most and it is in no way a mere stop-gap as some think not knowing acoustics fixated on gear price tags 😁... To reach the maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold is not given to all anyway , it ask for a very great amount of money and a more importantly a great deal of acquired  knowledge ...

It is way more easier and more affordable for all of us since Dr. Choueiri revolution for sure ,... We are lucky as music lovers to be here to profit from all gains in design and acoustics ... Thanks to Dr. Choueiri the distance separating the minimal satisfaction threshold and the maximal one has decreased for the benefit of all , asking less of us in works and money ..

The aural memory and the attention focus are heavily contextual dependant ...

Out of my own acoustic created environment i know for sure that i am more prone to be confused ...Even stress modify the results ..

It is why blind test has a meaning statistically but not so much in an artificial setting in an individual case ... And observe that the room acoustic of someone is not the acoustic theater where the test is done doubly blinded ruled by other people .. And our acoustic perception are acoustic dependent by a trained habit somewhere where there is our familiar specific acoustics conditions ... The ears must not be uproot from his familiar life milieu and acoustic context ...

Evaluating the emotion behind a new spoken language , a new acoustic is impossible because of that... We do it easily trained in our own speech ..

I am sure i could fail to pass some blind test in a new acoustic  environtment  i had pass in my environment where all is familiar, under my control because i designed it ...I am sure of that ...

Anyway i know nothing about this Mike blindtest on Asylum and i am not interested by double blind test anyway ... The only blind test that interested me are those i did in my environment ,simply blind, and in a relaxed mode not as a debunking tool but as a tool to improve my optimization process one step at a time and it worked well ...

I am not against blind test, i am against the way some people use them for an ideological goal ...

Including Mike’s concession that he could not distinguish between his turntable and a digital copy.

I am naive to think that all people can train their ears in acoustics ...Some are ideologically deaf and need double blind test to say anything ...

Now mocking someone about an alleged failed blind test is the last argument it seems ...😁

I hate ad hominem attacks on credibility ... With or without blind test ...

You are right ...

But we cannot hear without an aural memory biases set, trained or untrained, engrammed in the body metabolism and not only in the brain ...Our focussed attention is like a children on the back shoulders of our giant aural memories history so to speak which walk always with us ... Even babies had one in the womb ... the focus of attention is not born from a virgin without father so to speak ...😊

It is because of these trained set of biases that musicians can beat more than 10 times the Fourier limits or Gabor limits about signals localization between frequency and time ...

Then supposing an ideal pure "sound" out of any biases is preposterous and an ideological proposition by objectivist crowd ...

By the way placebo does not means deceptive and illusory as in the vocabulary of the objectivist, in the opposite placebo work on the same neurological locus than a drug on the nervous system to help the self healing process ...It is a fact in medecine ...

Then using placebo concept as an illusion or aside effect compared to a real drug is a simplistic ideology or an interessed bias to favor and /or prove statistically that a drug can be effective or not ...Placebo is a very complex concept used by mothers , wise doctors, publicist, but also statisticians in the drug industry or any other industry etc because it work really as a drug work and must be eliminated to asess the power and effectiveness of other contributing factors as a drug etc ...

In the same way the sound qualities are perceived in the context of an aural history ... We can artificially disconnect this aural memory from the direct momentaneous sound experience but it is artificial and did not disprove the existence of a perceived quality always and in all case ... It just put them aside for the ideological standpoint that allege that sound quality are ONLY  subjective biases that must be eliminated ...It is not even wrong ... And it is not right either because sound qualities  may also convey objective information as qualia  ... Then blindtest  dont tell all the story there is to tell about sound experience...

When audiophiles perceive audible differences where non exist in casual non level matched non time synchronized comparisons it isn’t due to a placebo effect. It is due to how we hear, process and remember sound. We can not effectively compare an aural memory to real time sound. So while it may seem the same as a placebo it is not. The aural memory is incomplete and was filtered by steered focus

You are right , you never accused any subjectivist audiophiles of placebo effect in the posts i read from you ...As do most objectivist audio tech ...But double blindtest is precisely a means to eliminate placebo effect or any other biases ...😁

But for the rest my description correspond to your opinion it seems ...

Transparency for me is not only a notion associated with gear design ( distortions or not) but also a notion associated with the room translation of the acoustic perceived information coming from the recording ...The gear design is a factor at play for sure , with or without pleasant or disruptive distortions, but for me acoustics as with the BACCH filters or the room /speakers/ears relation as in room acoustic play a great part in the information retrieval and the more transparent possible acoustic translation ...

Simply said we can imagine that the best amplifier will or must or may disapear and will only convey transparently the acoustic recorded information, but in stereo system we need more, we need the room acoustic positive addition and contribution and we even need the BACCH filters as you already know yourself owning them ...

In one sentence : we cannot exclude acoustics experience and concepts from the definition of "transparency" and limited the experience of transparency to mere gear design ... Than using blindtest and  only gear supposed  to be  distortionless as wished by some, is not enough to understand "transparency" as an acoustic experience ... Because the recorded information must be retrieved and convey for some specific ears and specific head in specific room ...

I am not an expert for sure ... This is only my opinion ...

The interpretation is not an accurate account of my beliefs. So I guess I should make myself more clear at this point. Transparency in audio is an utter lack of any *audible* distortions between a component’s input and output. ABX DBTs are an effective way of determining real audible differences. I have never made any reference to a placebo effect.

You did not read correctly my post...

I said that your definition of transparency is made in a negative way methodologically by using double blind test as an absolute standard which make possible to eliminate any distortion audible level as something added by an alleged  "defective" design or by a subjective deceptive placebo illusion ......

Defining by the negative is not being negative in a psychological way ...

My own definition of transparency using acoustic, nevermind the presence of illusory or real distortion, is a positive way methodologically related to the way recorded information is translated acoustically in some other acoustic t context plus or less transparently relatively to the initial recorded acoustics conditions ...It is why as an example of transparent translation of acoustic information i refer to the BACCH filters which you own yourself...This is an example which explain my positive definition of transparency... This definition is positive because it appeal only to the presence of positive acoustics factors ( as timbre and spatial information etc ) not to an eliminative selection test as double blind test ...

I dont try to speak for you ...

I added the posts where you vouch only for double blind test against subjectivist audiophiles and the posts where you vouch for "transparency" in gear design ... If i add these two posts of you together, my last post is my interpretation of your position ...

Correct me if i interpreted you wrong ...

Please don’t try to speak for me. I don’t define transparency. It has its own definition. And there is nothing “negative” about it.

scottwheel defines transparency not in a positive way...He believes in double blind test only, for sound qualia definition , then he defines transparency only in a negative way: Below a distortion limit if someone could not hear a difference this is transparency and all the rest is useless distortions or subjective illusions ...Any tube lovers is out for sure ...

I myself defines transparency in a positive acoustical way instead  : it is the way the gear/system/room/ears let the recorded acoustic live event be correctly and convincingly translated from playback to your acoustic conditions ( with more or less some kind of distortions nevermind )  ... My definition is relative ...

Transparency in a negative definition by double blind test is absolute, because it ask for a threshold of distortion so low no human can hear it ...Said otherwise the best amplifier dont add anything by itself to the signal...

It is the way objectivist define a good sound without need to refer to acoustics, psycho-acoustics but only electrical measures of the gear ...

it is not even wrong ... It is why objectivism in audio is preposterous ideological position being not even wrong ...

But the great acoustic discovery in the last decade is about the way any stereo system  is flawed by the crosstalk destructive effect on the spatial qualities of the recorded information of the live event for the ears ... Than transparency will be also related to a way (BACCH filters ) these spatial information could be translated in our room/ears for our brain ... Transparency is then not only and mostly an electrical notion about measured distortion it is mostly also the way the recording is translated in a room without loosing any of  the recorded acoustic information even if some distortion is added 😊 ...

Scottwheel must know better then , he own the BACCH filters ...😁

«A non paradoxical man does not exist»-- Anonymus thinker🧐

if the amp is transparent, which most modern SS amps are if they aren’t clipping then all of the musical attributes encoded in the audio signal will be passed through to the speakers. By definition that’s what transparent does.

Very well said ...

Thanks...

transparent is not enough for a solid state amplifier, musically complete, grain less and flowing are the challenges. these are relative things. not absolutes.

however transparent does seem to satisfy many solid state amplifier owners.

it's about expectations. i'm a tube lover who owns solid state. i don't want to settle.

An excluding slogan as S.S. cannot be high end reference  dont reflect the necessary  designs trade off in all design cases ..

But reflect a yelling partiality as a magic simplistic  formula to be polite and i will stay polite ...

great videos ...

Jay is generous and intelligent ...

Tube and /or S.S. is an embeddings environment contextual choices as it must be ...

The only thing i will claim : the room acoustic is way more important than the choice between tube or S.S. in all case ...

I will not comment about Jay room because i am not there ... But it is certainly not my prefered room ... His microphone are very good though ...

Thanks to him for his videos ...

You know also than a sand hourglass is very precise ... All vintage are not useless design...😁

A hourglass can beat a Rollex in some task,. make it easier...

But the best vintage is the sun dial as hour design ... You can track the sun  and compute even the tilt  of the earth...

Most people put their prefered fetish over synergy, acoustics, electrical and mechanical controls of the system and even over the evident trade-off implied by each design specifics be it tube or S.S. ...Or class D  or hybrid etc ...

Acoustics science  ignorance, and engineering  trade -off complexities choices  ignorance  goes hand in hand with one prefered  fetischism  advocacy for all ...

If we want to be drunk or acoustically transported we are not in the obligation to impose our own alcool ingestion method or our own tubes or S.S. system ... All is good for each different metabolism and all may be good for each own system synergy and acoustic room ...

To be drunk, i prefer champagne to everything else or whisky over beer ...

In audio acoustics rules not so much the gear choices , if the gear choices for sure is very good to begin with ...

I am drunk with cheap beer by the way and i live happy with a low cost system acoustically well implemented ...

I dont feel frustrated because frustration cannot be there when knowledge rule and drive instead of obsession ...

Feel free to mail me a box of champagne bottles ...😊 Instead of a tube amplifier pay me the BACCH filters box system ...And i will call it my reference system drinking to your health best wishes ...Promise...Cross on my heart ....

If not, i will stay happy with my beer and low cost system  ...Creativity make us happy not money ...

We cannot generalize ONE experience as a rule for all system...

I myself own a powerful Sansui Alpha 607i to drive my picky headphone from the headphone out ...It is my reference system over my small speakers so good they are now ...

I never experienced a mid range blooming so beautiful and realist in my life with anything i heard with speakers and headphones save with the K340 well done and optimized because it is the most hard to figure out headphones there is , being the more complex with his dual chambers, and his hybridration crossover point  for his 2 different  cells, electrostatic and dynamic ,  and 5 tuned  passive resonators ... and  with a complex  demand and hard to drive sensitivity of 87 dB/mW and 2 cells of 400 OHMS impedance each ...

I tried to upgrade the S.S. Sansui with one of the best regarded tubes technology in the world ... I returned it the same day ...This blooming of the mid range was lacking and the out of the head headphone soundfield so characteristic of my optimized K340 was no more there ...

Could i say the reverse opinion of ghdprentice and pretend that my experience is a universal fact and a future rule for all ears, all systems ? No ...I must be as cautious as ghdprentice here ...

Even if i believe completely the testimony of ghdprentice , i had the reverse experience ... No design rule alone , it must be implemented acoustically, electrically and mechanically , and be synergetical with the other components ...

The concept of reference system is a relative not an absolute ...

It depend of implementation of acoustic, mechanical (vibrations/resonance) and electrical noise floor control among others factors ... It depend not only of each specific parts , tubes or S.S. but it depend of their synergy as perceived in a room designed for the system ...Not a show room ...

Then reducing the concept of reference system to S.S. versus tubes or class D is misunderstanding the great number of factors at play for the experience ...

And by the way psycho-acoustics rule the gear design and experience not the reverse...

Audiophiles or consumers programmed  obsession by marketing  is not knowledge ...

Repeating the same false assumption after being corrected by others many times is a symptom of illness at worst or of obsession at best  ... Sorry...