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

@doubleblindtest

Maybe your goal is to reproduce that kind of sound it would not, however, be the goal of many others.

A consensus goal here among this community is likely to be able to reproduce the human voice accurately, to reproduce unamplified acoustic instruments accurately and to do both with proper texture, tone and dynamics. Next, another goal would be to reproduce the acoustic space as well as can be accomplished in the home. I have found if you can get these things accomplished to a reasonable degree, then amplified music seems to come along for the ride reasonably well. If you haven't been to Disney Hall in LA, Carnegie Hall in NYC, The Village Vanguard (with all its acoustic faults), etc, etc then you haven't experienced really fine music played within a very special acoustic space, largely without amplification.

The examples you cite are out of context. In a recording studio electronics serve a different purpose. In better studios, the microphone to the recording chain is not typically compromised with equipment like you describe although it depends on the engineer and the artist and their goals (and budget). The playback chain in many studios is determined by who they think their audience will be and that market's playback method. If it is likely car stereos or iphones(think podcasts), they may master a certain way. So why not Crown amplification and Yamaha monitors? (those white coned weapons of mass destruction!). The attitude follows the line of thinking that if you can make it listenable on that gear then you have something you can release to a wider audience that will likely sound ok through the wide array of playback channels. Never forget its the music BUSINESS. They want to sell things the work among a larger buying base.

Now, to your specific example. If something sounds ok at your local stadium concert where Crown amps are used to drive pro monitor horns to 120db of shrillness, knowing the acoustic environment there will tame the deficiencies in the electronic chain where volume trumps sound quality then consider yourself lucky. I am one of the unlucky who can't stomach that. I also believe if the Crown type of gear is 80% of the good stuff and you have 3 different Crown type pieces in your playback chain then the cumulative loss through the playback chain is too great. My 2 cents and you pay your money to get what you want. If Crown gear and the like gets you there, congrats.

Very interesting post. Why is it that you think that the DBX folks won't even consider the type of amp your are suggesting in a DBX trial? 

@daveyf  because the difference is instantly audible and they inherently don't like amps that aren't perfect voltage sources. This could be a made up story on my part, but so far that's been my experience. No matter how hard we humans try to be objective, in the end we fall well short. 

While I agree many amplifiers sound different, they all should sound the same if done right.

This statement is problematic- correctly stated this needs to be added: '...if the intention of the designers were the same and with that in mind also correctly engineered'.  Seehttp://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.phpfor more information.

I too would be interested to know which amps are typically excluded and why. I agree that seems to be a gap in the discussion, and also an interesting point in general about design (would you call it optimizing knowingly inaccurate artifacts for real world listening?). I’d still be curious where the threshold of audibility is for some of these characteristics, and whether listeners can distinguish consistently between characteristics that are harder to measure. These seem like important design questions.

We have the ability to measure what is important IME. What I find problematic is a refusal on the part of the industry in general and 'objectivists' in particular is to do the homework- which is to correlate what we hear with what we measure (for example, a weighting system is needed for the harmonic spectrum of distortion, placing less weight on the 2nd-4th and more weight on the higher orders, since the ear uses the latter to sense sound pressure). But if we did that, then amplifier spec sheets would tell you how they sounded, and the industry doesn't want that!

So, the question that keeps coming up in my demented mind is, if the goal of high end audio is to reproduce the sound of live performances, why isn’t the high end defined by the likes of Crown, JBL, ElectroVoice and other pro audio items of reproduction? After all, unless you are sitting in the first 10 rows of a concert venue, what you are hearing is coming from the pro audio world. I can buy a lot of Crown amplification (substitute any pro audio product here) for the cost of A Gryphon or Dartzeel amp. Just wondering.

The reason for that is simple- sound reinforcement is meant to be loud enough and reliable. The last nth degree of resolution is unimportant. I have done a few stage shows were we did install a high end system though (which was a royal pain); people kept asking us when we were going to turn it on. I'd then turn the volume down and they would sort of stand there with a surprised expression and say 'Oh.'.

In a nutshell pro audio gear for sound reinforcement is usually lower performance than good high end or even mid fi home gear.

Hi,

I’ve never responded or been active on this forum, but enjoy reading the questions and answers. How far has SS come in the last 20 years?... It really comes down to how that particular power or pre/amp is designed and the circuitry and quality of components that it’s created from. It needs to be designed for task at hand, be it high current for driving more demanding speaker systems, then an appropriate match must be chosen.  I think SS designs are great but must be far more complex than typical tube amps to reproduce music faithfully and listenable. The easy answer is that you generally get what you pay for. 

@czcharlie I don’t think that really answers my OP. Unfortunately, IME in high end ...a lot of times you really do NOT get what you pay for. As the pricing structure in the hobby has escalated, the fact seems to be that you more often do NOT get what you pay for as the price rises!
IMHO, a lot of manufacturer’s now depend on fancy casework to attract the hobbyist and to justify the very high pricing structure. This seems to be a little less prevalent in the tube sector than in the ss sector. Not saying that all of the ss manufacturer’s are going down this road, but a lot are. They seem to know where their customer base is and design the casework appropriately...regardless of the technical merit..or the actual SQ. All IMHO.

a lot of manufacturer’s now depend on fancy casework to attract the hobbyist and to justify the very high pricing structure.
They seem to know where their customer base is and design the casework appropriately...regardless of the technical merit..or the actual SQ. All IMHO.

Ditto.
And there’s a lot of these "Glitz Queens" in audio, they think if it looks the goods it must sound the goods, and ignore even if if their ears are telling them different (or they can’t tell).
They’re usually the same ones that put these "glitzy" components up on just as "glitzy pedestals" in between the speakers (unknowingly ruining the stereo imaging) so they can gaze at them in wonderment and awe at what they've purchased while "trying/pretending" to listen to music.

Cheers George