is McIntosh known for good dynamics?

My Mc611's have a low damping factor of 40

@steve59 No speaker made needs a damping factor over 20. Additional damping factor (which is a measure of output impedance) won't give you any greater bass impact.

I didn’t put on material that had large macro changes so I don’t know about the macro. Does your idea about the distortion contributing to dynamic impressiveness apply to micro dynamic presentation as well?

@magon Yes. If the amplifier is generating higher ordered harmonics then the scale of the dynamic contrast isn’t important. The amp will simply contribute to it, making the presentation more ’dynamic’.

When the amplifier power is clean, you’ll find that there is a tendency to use more of it because the amp isn’t generating ’loudness cues’. So to get the sound pressure you’re looking for, you simply need more power. This is why so many SET users say things like ’8 Watts is plenty of power for me’. A sound pressure level meter will verify this.

The mark of the best systems is a relaxed presentation, even if the sound pressure is 95dB. It should not sound loud.

When it comes to SETs, unless that SET has feedback, the distinctive dynamic quality of the amp is entirely due to distortion. You’ve heard it- that is how insidious this is. You don’t hear any harshness (normally associated with higher ordered harmonics) but the additional distortion is there anyway, masked (masking is the ear’s principle where a louder sound makes it difficult or impossible to hear a quieter sound) by the lower ordered harmonics. If you turn up the volume high enough though, the SET will sound loud, even though its not making that much power.

This is a difficult thing to understand until you do that test I mentioned. At that point you really get that the ear has developed in the most efficient way possible. It has trouble gauging the sound pressure of a pure sine wave since they do not exist in nature. That is why it pays so much attention to the higher orders. Many designers didn’t understand this fact in the past, and created solid state amps that had considerably lower distortion than most tube amps, but because the higher ordered content, while low, was not masked, it caused those amps to sound bright. The ear of course assigns tonality to distortion in the same manner that allows you to distinguish musical instruments through their harmonic structure.

Put another way, most of the differences you hear between amplifiers is due to their distortion signature; its not frequency response. If you put the amp on the bench you find out its frequency response is flat, yet one amp sounds bright while the other does not. Since frequency response isn’t why, its easier to understand that distortion is the culprit.

I’ve not heard one of Boyk’s recordings in a long time.

what I call good dynamics are also realistic dynamics when comparing the sound with live classical music, which has the greatest micro and macro dynamics of all. 

@magon 

I’ve no problems with that but I would not use the word ’dynamic’ in its plural version, to avoid its common use when distortion is really what is being unknowingly discussed. 

If you had done the test I outlined then you would not have responded in the way you did. Your belief about SETs is just that. When you take away the distortion SETs make you take away their ’dynamics’. In a typical SET running no feedback, you really only have about 20-25% usable power before higher ordered harmonics are showing up on the leading edges of transients (where the power demands are). Most people use speakers that are far too inefficient to avoid this problem! For example if you have a 7 or 8 Watt SET (likely using a 300b) the speaker needs to be around 103dB at 1 Watt to really show off that amp. That’s a big horn speaker and most people don’t want them taking up the space. So you read online how such amps are so ’dynamic’. Keep in mind that such amps also make typically 10% distortion at full power.

If you get the opportunity to hear a PP tube amp of the same full power rating as the SET (IOW, leveling the playing field a bit by reducing variables) you find out really quickly that SETs have nothing over a properly designed PP amp. Usually when SETs and PP are compared, the class of operation (class A) is ignored along with the power tubes used, use of feedback and the total output power. If you eliminate these variables the advantage of SETs goes away completely using any metric that audiophiles use. But finding a PP amp that is low power, or class A, or uses the same power tubes all at once is nearly impossible.

So we have comparisons of 300bs or 2A3s running class A against KT88s that are running class AB with feedback.

In case its not clear I’ve been designing tube amps for a living for about 50 years.

I find good vinyl to be more realistic than most digital. The engineer might say "vinyl has more distortion, therefore you actually are liking the distortion." But I didn’t say I like vinyl, I said it’s more realistic. The engineer has no explanation for that.

This engineer does...

I ran a mastering operation for about 20 years. My setup (Scully lathe, Westerex 3d cutterhead with 1700 series electronics) employed a 30dB feedback loop around the cutterhead and mastering amplifiers. When you run that much feedback, the actual distortion is quite low and is certainly much lower than the digital community would have you believe. 

The simple fact is that most of the distortion comes in during playback, starting with a poor choice of platter pad (if the LP and platter are resonating all bets are off), problems with setup, problems the arm design and problems with the phono preamp. They are all solvable. The more they are solved, the more relaxed and musical the vinyl becomes.

While I understand what you're saying, that distortion will make the contrast between loud and soft greater, I don't think that is likely to result in realistic dynamics.

I have listened to some good SET  headphone amps, and they had great microdynamic resolution.

@magon  Your comments here describe exactly what I'm talking about, in particular your comment about SETs. This is literally one of the things I have against them! (The other thing about SETs (not so much headphone amps) is they have real problems playing bass, but that's a discussion for another thread.)

Now to understand how this works you have to understand how the ear differentiates sound pressure levels. It does this through the detection of higher ordered harmonics.

This is very easy to demonstrate using simple test equipment: 

sine/squarewave generator, 

amplifier

a speaker and a VU meter. 

You start by connecting the VU meter in such a way (perhaps at the output of the amp) that it can read easily across its entire scale. Then  you put a sine wave through the setup, set the gain to read zero VU on the meter (near the top of its scale). Get a good idea of how loud that sounds to you. Then you turn the volume all the way down, cover up the VU meter, switch the generator to square wave and turn up the volume until it sounds as loud as before. Then uncover the VU meter and you'll see what this is all about.

Square waves are composed entirely of higher ordered harmonics.

If you don't understand that the ear uses higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure, then what I've been telling you would make no sense.

so with no other explanation available to the engineer, they say that it's "euphonic distortion."

Actually the explanation has been available to the engineer for nearly 100 years (I refer you to the Radiotron Designer's Handbook, 3rd edition, published in the 1930s). Here it is: 'Euphonic distortion' is lower ordered harmonics, the 2nd and 3rd.  They are innocuous to the ear in that they are close to the fundamental tone and musically related (the octave above and the 5th above that). So they are unobjectionable and simply contribute to that quality audiophiles refer to as 'warmth' or 'bloom'.

 I’ve never encountered a discussion about dynamics that was "really" about distortion.

@magon  Such conversations can be quite insidious so it might be that was the case without you being aware of it.

What I am discussing, and you haven’t responded to my prior post on this topic

Actually I did, in my first post on this thread, when I said

Actual musical dynamic contrast comes from the signal itself. The amp should have nothing to do with it. 

Yes, the amp can affect the subjective presentation of dynamics.

But this bit suggests my comments about distortion is relevant.

To avoid the problem of the term ’dynamics’ (which is often plural when distortion is a strong possibility in the conversation) I instead use the phrase ’dynamic impact’.

The power supply in a class A amp that won’t make much difference to this since the draw on the supply is constant, but in all other classes of operation the power supply must be beefy enough to have reserve energy on tap when big power drains occur. If not, current will be constrained at higher power levels. The more feedback the amp has, the less effect this will have but it still makes a difference. We see this in class D amps a lot; an insufficient power supply can result in the class D amp sounding ’boring’.

The bottom line is the best amps will have their ducks in a row with respect to all these factors: beefy supply and not generating higher ordered harmonics.

I call B.S. on the idea that good dynamics is a matter of distortion.

@magon I didn't say that! What I said was in 90% of audiophile conversation where the word 'dynamics' is used, you can safely replace that word with 'distortion' without changing the meaning of the conversation.

How this works is the ear uses higher ordered harmonics to tell how loud a sound actually is. This is very easy to demonstrate with simple test equipment. Ask and I'll explain how.

So if the system for whatever reason (in this case, amplifier 'X') adds higher ordered harmonics to the sound, it will be perceived as louder even though a sound level pressure meter (available as an app for your phone) will show that it is not.

If the higher ordered harmonics are a function of power, as they are in SETs, they will be showing up more on transients. Since the ear is hearing the 'loudness cues' on the transients, the result is a more 'dynamic' sound. You can read about this quite a lot with SET amplifiers, where people often comment about how dynamic they are for their apparently low power. Its simply distortion masquerading as 'dynamics'.

Good dynamics (note the emphasis; the kind that apparently both you and I like) comes from the signal and the amp will not contribute more of its own. This requires the amp to be low distortion (or at least higher ordered harmonics are masked by lower orders). A side benefit is the system will also seem more relaxed and effortless.

@faustuss Of course we are off topic. None of this has anything to do with the opening post. 

WRT ’dynamic range’ (I’m speaking from the perspective of a mastering engineer) the actual dynamic range depends on the producer and how much compression they want. FWIW most releases these days are compressed and do not express the full range of either a CD or LP.  

@faustuss Oddly, many digital titles do not have the dynamic range of their analog counterparts for the simple reason that the digital release has expectation of being played in a car while the LP version does not.

Distortion obscures low level detail. The dynamic range you're talking about isn't the same thing as 'dynamics' to which so many audiophiles refer. The latter tends to be caused by distortion rather than actual dynamic range.

So as a result lower distortion amplifiers tend to sound less 'dynamic'. This is simply because the ear uses higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure. If this is coming in the form of distortion it can have the effect of greater 'dynamics'. This has absolutely nothing to do with the dynamic range of the recorded media.

The question is the clarity and musical impact of the dynamics. Take clarity. In a live classical concert, I can hear them varying their dynamics, even when a little bit. If they get suddenly quiet, the intensity of the passage doesn’t disappear.. it’s just as intense and compelling. If they get suddenly loud, it has startle factor.

@magon I would call that transparency, which is a function of low distortion; the lower the distortion the more transparent the amp. If its not low distortion it has less chance of revealing the nuances in the recording.

@magon 'Dynamics' is a tricky word. Most of the time audiophiles use it when they are talking about distortion which can cause things to sound more dynamic; IOW if you replace the word 'dynamics' with 'distortion' in audiophile conversations the meaning of the conversation is usually unchanged.

Actual musical dynamic contrast comes from the signal itself. The amp should have nothing to do with it. You'll find that SET owners talk about the amazing dynamics of their SETs but what they are really talking about is distortion (SETs make a lot of that).

So to answer you're question, its no worries insofar as Mac is concerned!