How far have ss amps really come in the last twenty years?

Mr decibel,

the problem with those two designs, is that they were only partially V-fet, as the transistors were not available to make them fully v-fet.

thus.. the chain of signal manipulation and amplification was inherently non-linear in gain, even though the V-fets in situ, were linear gain.

the whole chain must be linear gain v-fet, otherwise it will be colored enough that it is notably more difficult to discern what good the v-fets were bringing to the table.

Of the two, the Yammie was probably the better unit, as it had some middling sized v-fets in the driver stage, IIRC... and then the output stage was all v-fet.

Only ONE Sony unit had a second and singular ’small signal’ V-fet in it other than the final output transistor stage, and that is the Sony TA-5650 integrated amp. It had a set in the phono section.

the most important thing of all, I’ve come to find in over 30 years of looking at the technical side and the esoteric side and then flipping for another side and looking at how enjoyable the music is and how ’natural’ it is presented....

..well..the most important thing to come about is the return to what Sony did.

Which is the ’linear gain curve transistor’. In the case of Sony, the V-Fet transistor.
That’s it. nothing else matters. Just that.

Everything else is literally like trying to make rulers and measurement devices out of mold infested mud on crack.

If one is not pursuing or trying to get the V-Fet transistor (small and large signal) manufacturing process up and going, and to issue amplifiers on that vector, then IMO, one is just following market demands.

Demands which are based on ignorance. Based on lack of exposure to V-fet and linear gain in transistors... and then being ’normalized’ into thinking that BJT and FET transistors are actually doing anything that sounds like music.

The reality, unrealized, unheard and not compared...is that..THEY ARE NOT.

This was noted by a few in the late 70’s and early 80’s..but...the then emergent FET transistor manufacturing process was so much cheaper..that V-Fet died off. And the actual direction forward..was lost. We wanted peaks and the demand and desires of the middle of the bell curve ..threw it away..as they did not know what they had in hand. Money and desires for financial success..threw the way forward..into the trashcan. V-fet was too expensive. The fanfare for the common man shot the pursuit of the best...in the face... and buried it face down in a shallow grave. And no one noticed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I keep wanting to buy a new amplifier or try this or that technique in mods and such..but then..I realize again, that it is not V-fet ...and that I’m trying to move forward here..and if it’s not V-Fet ..then, I’m wasting my time. As the effort will be wasted on inferior technology, where the inferior technology all (every last transistor) misses a critical difference, where that critical difference is on a different plateau.

It’s all a circular dead end, when it is compared directly to V-Fet (on any basis).

That - there is another path.
The only thing worth pursuing when searching for the peak of audio, is V-Fets and tubes. The rest is limited by what it is. Which is..inferior in the most critical aspect. No emergent transistor technology, like Gan or class D or class D via GAN... can do this simple, fundamental, utterly critical thing..which is one of: linear gain.

wolf,
Non linear gain transistor (all fet and BJT): odd order harmonic distortion generated.

Linear gain transistor (Just V-Fets): Even ordered harmonic distortion generated.

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A general note:
the human ear: incredibly sensitive to non linear transient distortion. That’s pretty well all it does, is detect that. This is how the ear works, fundamentally. Down to the less than a few hundred thousandths of a second on a pair of transients.

Never mind the sensitivity to harmonic mixing and levels, and added in is that this is all done by the world’s most sophisticated FFT analyzing hardware: the human brain.

since this is directly tied to learning, discernment, intelligence neural connectivity and so on, it varies among people as much as the human IQ range.

So we can get to audio intelligence on a rarefied level and then back to the other end of the scale, where rudimentary hearing could be the description.

so we can’t let Mr rudimentary hearing yell at us that ’it is all the same’.

It is all the same..sure... if your hearing takes the shape of the IQ of a gut shot open sore covered pear on skid row.

These are indisputable established facts about human minds and human hearing.

One should not try to debate it, unless one wants to show everyone how little one understands and little one knows. To do so, is to come onto an audio forum and say something akin to : ’I just peed my pants’.

If a person can accept even just a whiff of that, then they’ve bought the whole thing as it’s like pregnancy, there is no ’just a little bit’ pregnant. If it is real at all..even in the slightest... then so is the rest.

Thus, stay out of the cable debates and out of the fuse debates and whatnot, as one’s place is not there. Leave it to the people who hear it as they are like high end physicists in debate - when it comes to hearing. It’s their area, let it go. If you don’t have the chops, STAY OUT OF IT.

This is why cable debates and whatnot are being banned at forums. For all the right reasons. All of those reasons are human, logical, scientific, and utterly real.

Well, I may have "peed my pants" but I know an empty argument to authority when I see one..

It’s not an appeal to authority, It’s a notice about dunning-kreuger and how it creeps into the knowledge base re human hearing and audio electronics.

How that ignorance chooses to express itself as authority, because it is built out of an internalized and then projected -- unrealized ignorance. (a mildly oxymoronic word pairing, but ultimately--applicable)*

The kind of ignorance that cannot be surmounted because the capacity to do so is not in evidence.

I wish it were otherwise.

The vast number of times the folks who do hear the differences simply keep their mouths shut and tolerate the intrusion of the ignorance. After all, it is the thing that decent folk do.

Most of the time I do the same. But every now and then, I state the case and the facts clearly and openly.

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*I’d be happier if some folks would realize they simply don’t have the hearing chops and thus -- let it go. Instead they fall back on book learning and numbers... and attack via dogma. If they had the hearing chops, then they could investigate the why of the differences, but no....so it’s blunt objects on the terror march for everyone -as the standard playbook...

No matter how hard we humans try to be objective, in the end we fall well short.

(Just rant, not directed at anyone in particular) 

Of course, objectivity cannot and does not exist anywhere in the human world.

By all possible forms of human logic (as all that exists is human logic) Objectivity is a figment of human imagination. 

Subjectivity is the only thing we know is even potentially real, but we cannot describe reality, that can only be done from outside of it.

And if we did manage to do so, there is nearly perfect odds that the result would be unfathomable to the entire reality humans are subjected to and try to reason from within.

Objectivity, in it's worst 'disconnected from scientific reality' (which is most pundits who are not trained scientists) aspects, is almost purely illiterate projected dogma.

Most frightening of all, they don't know or recognize the insanity, which is the nature of insanity....

..they just keep on persecuting reason... cuz the dang bible of facts keeps getting smushy and smeary at the edges which they explore.

So, a person can carry, think, etc... and attempt to utilize the tool of objectivity, but it is a simple state of mind and does not otherwise exist.

Proper objectivity is a state of balance, more than anything else.