Would You Rather Own A Good SET Amp, Or A Great Push Pull Amp?

@atmasphere  - thank you for your directness and candour, as always, Ralph 🙏🏻🙏🏻

kevin

I do have fond memories of that Dynaco ST35, will have first listening session with the Bendix 6094/EL84 amps this weekend. 

A great push/pull amp is compatible with far more speakers than an SET. And it might not sound as good as an SET on high eff. speakers, but it will still sound pretty darn good. So I guess that's my choice.

Interesting, the analogy to a camera lens, although the vaseline quip not accurate. So, if we are discussing image outlines, I don't like my image outlines drawn overly precise so does that mean lens out of focus, seems I do like it a bit out of focus. And then we can go to resolution and transparency of said lens, I've found varied degrees of resolution with both push pull and SET, SET doesn't inherently suffer here. As per transparency, this where I hear advantage to many SET, rather than looking at performers through a window or at a distance, performers enter my listening room, some may sense this as excessively forward sound stage, this is my preference. I could also describe this as a sense of immediacy, performers so close you get the feeling you can reach out and touch. As for even order harmonic distortion, this has to do with timbre, real live instruments have complex harmonic structure, even order harmonics catch this, odd order is ugly distortion. So some criticize this added even order distortion as inaccurate which connotes inferiority for them, I see it as color, perhaps it could be a bit more vibrant than the real thing, but the degree of this depends much on the individual amp.

It is a two camp showdown one camp being group 1, who evaluate through solely having used their experiences of End Sound produced and the impression made on them.

The other camp, group 2, who are much lesser in their number than group 1, and are using their understanding of Math to influence their assessment of End Sound having been experienced or not experienced for the supply of a description of what is occurring or expected to occur to an End Sound as a result of the Math.

@pindac There’s a third camp of which I’m a member, whose position was clearly stated by Daniel VonRecklinghausen decades ago when he said 

“If it measures good and sounds bad, — it is bad. If it sounds good and measures bad, — you’ve measured the wrong thing.”

lack of distortion e.g. via excessive negative feedback - doesn’t always speak of good sound, but significant levels of measurable distortion can never qualify an amplifier as high fidelity.

@yoyoyaya This is true! An amplifier can sound quite dreadful if the feedback is improperly applied!

In my case I want the amp to be neutral and transparent, but also musical (which it should be if its really true to the signal). 

If the amp has unmasked higher ordered harmonics it can sound less than musical since the ear uses those harmonics to sense sound pressure and so is keenly sensitive to their presence. Since the ear also uses harmonics to sense tone color, obviously these harmonics can cause the amp to sound harsher and brighter than the actual signal. This is a common problem if feedback is improperly applied. 

So the amp design, if it is to have distortion, must have a benign distortion signature such that its innocuous to the ear. SETs do that, but so do a lot of other amps including some solid state. 

I do have fond memories of that Dynaco ST35, will have first listening session with the Bendix 6094/EL84 amps this weekend. 

@sns Make sure its properly refurbished it its an older one otherwise all bets are off. If a newer one, quite often they are assembled from kits and might have errors. I bought one off of ebay that had this problem. It took a bit of work to get it to come around. There are a good number of updates for that amp BTW that are quite worthwhile.