Atmasphere: I must be getting tired because I misread your opening paragraph.
Please ignore my response.
cheers |
Any reproduction can only be selections from the original, plus the additions and distortions. I can tolerate loss of information and distortions better than the additions! So low hum and noise go to the top of my list. The distortions and editorializing of tubes often bother me less than the nasty noise of many solid state designs. Oddly, digital amplification seems to distort less and be quieter than much conventional amplification. That said, there seems to still be plenty of room for improvement, especially in getting the amplifier to remain unaffected by the speaker it is driving. |
P.S. As I recall, some interviewer once asked Peter Walker how far he had pushed audio reproduction towards the goal of perfectly accurate reproduction. He said; about 15 per cent!
(I have not looked this up so be kind, it's Christmas) |
To try and answer your rephrased question, triode tube amplification has most often yielded the best result for me across a wide range of speakers, however, since it has also been a giant pain at the practical level, I have looked for alternatives. My Tact digital amp has its own limitations and weirdness, however, in its own, very cool and quiet way, it gets me as close to the music as the triodes, and holds out the hope of improvement. My full range electrostats require a good bit of power plus stability into a capacitive load. |
"IOW understand the rules of human hearing" is surely an overstatement. Hearing evolved along with the brain, and our survival and social needs for eons. We are a very long way from a complete understanding how it interprets information. |
When I go to the symphony I am acutely aware that where I sit in the hall dramatically affects the experience. Under the balcony the bass is emphasized. Seats far away homogenize the sound. Up close the orchestra really does "image" with the violins on the left etc. At all points, however, the dynamics and the texture of the sound make all reproduced sound seem...well..simplified, flat and lacking in a host of important qualities. I think all of us agree on that. As Peter Walker said, like listening through a window. And a smudged window at that. So, what to do? For years I was in the "straight wire with gain" camp. Often that led to highly detailed sound that nonetheless still managed to get on my nerves! I have slowly migrated to the "are we having fun yet" group. A truly accurate map of the earth would have to be...well....the earth. So since we are of necessity in the simplifying and simulation business, I strive to recreate not the most mathematically complete model, but rather use a bit of trickery to recreate a bit of the emotional experience that draws me to music in the first place. |
"We listen to a system not a amplifier"
Yes and we listen to different recordings, so how can we determine anything beyond that we liked a specific song, on a specific system, on a specific occasion?
I maintain that with experience and consultation with others, one can form a reasonable opinion as to what component in a system is causing what result.
I have gotten together with friends gathering a dozen amplifiers in the floor and comparing them. Then I often have borrowed the amp that gave a certain impression and taken it home for a week to evaluate. I have deliberately sought out speakers with
difficult loads like Wilson, Thiel, and Soundlabs. When I get a similar result despite all this, (as I have with Conrad Johnson solid state amps for example) I can say with reasonable confidence that the amp has a certain set of characteristics. Words may fail me, but over time I can hear the difference. |
Tricks: Digital amplification is inherently capable of performing complex processing without causing additional (unintended) distortion. I can compensate for room acoustics, draw and save my own response curves, program various real time corrections for loudness contours, and more. I have no wish to be a commercial for any product, merely to illustrate that we are at the beginning of a total revolution in audio as we marry computers to amplifiers. Preamps will disappear and programmable amps will detect the input requirements (my MacIntosh does) and equalization required for the speakers. Interconnects will disappear. I can't wait! |
Unsound, I agree that it is developing slower than it could. My amp's basic design is ten years old. I have done no marketing research, but I suspect that since all the money is in home theater, the larger HT companies are waiting until that market is saturated before they spend scarce R&D money on sound, which is after, all a mere adjunct to the Video world. Perhaps Steve Jobs will make us a SUPER IPOD!
In the mean time, we audiophiles appear to most folks as just a bunch of old nostalgic guys- like the Radio Amateur clubs- vacuum tubes and all. My only encouragement is now that my daughter is in her thirties, she is willing, on occasion, to unplug her headphones and listen to my speakers. |
" I do believe there is a reality out there that is objective, which defines the real thing"
Ah, to wax philosophic! Well yes and no, perhaps, we'll see. Sound waves are "real" in the material sense, but hearing is not. My teenager will be exposed to the same sound waves as I, but will he "hear" the same thing? How about a person from rural China? (A Chinese "opera", for that matter, is quite an experience). So much of what we hear is made up of learning, plus how our hearing actually works (a remarkable process in itself).
To go out on a limb, recognition is the key factor. We "hear" in the meaningful sense, when we recognize.
As a thought experiment I submit that if one were exposed to "perfect" sound wave patterns in a sufficiently unexpected context, that recognition would be so impeded that it would not take place at all. Our body might respond, but the brain would not "hear". On the other hand, if some one says: da, da, da daaa! the connection to Beethoven's Fifth may involuntarily pop into one's head.
(I hope you guys are having a beer while reading this.)
cheers |
Back to amplifiers: There is general agreement about analog amplifiers. Solid state has the least distortion; the output resembles the input better than tubes. Are the tube folks all crazy? Do they like the sound of distortion? No they are not, but yes they do. Tubes compress the sound and they add harmonic distortion.
It is generally realized that our recordings are highly compressed of necessity. We simply cannot fit the sound waves of live music into our microphones, recording equipment, or our homes, so the recording engineers try to compensate to make the music sound more "natural". Among other topics, this gets us to the masking effect. Fairly slight changes in equalization can result in instruments or voices moving forward or back in the soundstage or even falling into a "hole". Engineers try to "correct" this. At 15% information recreation, recording is simply in the illusion business. Lots of folks like the illusion presented by the added distortion of tubes better than the more literal presentation of solid state. I suggest that the added harmonic distortion masks a good bit of the confusion of multi miking and of the room acoustics, but this is just a thought. |
Pubul57: It's hard to disagree with FVA that we are being marketed to death. I know people in trade need product to sell, but the better approach is usually the evolutionary one you suggest. I am happy to buy affordable new equipment in order to get better results, yet several of my components are old enough to vote.
An RM9 is a tough act to beat! |
