Transients hurting my ears on hifi solid state amps

I don't have the challenge you have.

I would encourage you to give Moon a listen.  

I had McIntosh tube pre and SS amp.  I upgraded to Moon 390 pre-amp/network player and M400 monoblocks.  I notice I feel like I'm listening to music at lower volumes only to realize I'm listening to peaks at 80+dbs and there's a quiet background with undetectable distortion resulting in multi-hour listening sessions several times a week.  

The amps are AB and the monoblocks are A for the first 10 watts.

 

Thanks @holmz for the various very good points and suggestions. Just a clarification on one point, as this is one of the things I’m trying to understand here:

I doubt that the amps are any “faster”, as most amps play 20kHz just fine, and nothing is going to arrive faster from a 2kHz signal, than a 20kHz signal.

With fast I mean that the transients, the typical example being the hit on a snare, are quick and powerful. So in a graph measuring the sound pressure, the peak would be higher and narrower on a "fast" amplifier and lower and flatter on a "slow" amp. The sound is more compressed in a "slow" amplifier and thus the hit of a snare or the initial transient of a piano note will be felt as softer by the ear.

I understand that there are other factors discussed that heavily influence the perception, but I do believe that this is part of the equation. Low powered amplifiers would in my understanding be therefore more suitable to avoid the problems I’ve had. It is not so much sustained notes that cause issues for me, but the percussive sounds and initial attacks on many instruments.

I get the description of the hypothesis.
If the speakers were hard to drive then more instantaneous current would help if, and only if, one did not have enough current to keep up.

It would be like speaker compression, but I suppose for the amp.

And I suppose one could (maybe) see if it shows up in the impulse response of the system.
But it might be easier to have the same snare drum hit recorded from the 4 amps (3 good and one bad one), and compare them in the time domain?
If the bad speaker was high amplitude than the other three, then it would show as you describe.

My hypothesis is that the bad sounding amp likely has more harmonics or IMD.
So I am thinking exactly along the lines of what @helomech mentioned:

I recommend looking into separates. Pre-owned Parasound A21 amps can be found for ~$1200. Their distortion profile is primarily 2nd order, which is very rare among amps below $5K, and output enough power to provide plenty of headroom for nearly any speaker. Pair an A21 with a low distortion preamp like the Topping Pre90 and you’ll have a very smooth and low-fatigue setup that can takes up little more real estate than an integrated.

(And user atmasphere talks about in various threads.)
… So it might be better to take the snare drum recording and do the comparison in the frequency domain.

Of course going to that effort one would want to do both.

I am not sure there is any way to reach an objective conclusion as to what the causal mechanism is for what you are hearing, without doing some measurements, But I also know that I also usually have problems with the SS gear showing up only in those sorts of sounds. And also I find sibilance to be distressing to me ears.

If it is as you say, then I would think that it would show up more in music with has a high dynamic range, where the peak level would be much higher than the RMS level. And then on music that’s more compressed, we would not have the snare drum attacks at the higher amplitude to begin with.

Have you noticed something like ^that^ which correlates with the bad sounds?

Benchmark AHB2

Pushing the budget but just lovely. 

Denafrips Hyperion

I'll be ordering soon.

If it is as you say, then I would think that it would show up more in music with has a high dynamic range, where the peak level would be much higher than the RMS level. And then on music that’s more compressed, we would not have the snare drum attacks at the higher amplitude to begin with.

Have you noticed something like ^that^ which correlates with the bad sounds?

@holmz Yes, I hadn't thought about it in the context of this discussion, but I remember that highly compressed records (DR 5 or 6 for example) were much easier to listen to and in many cases I didn't have any trouble with them. In more audiophile recordings, for example the typical Diana Krall example, the piano notes were uncomfortable. Even in something as calm as Case of You from Live in Paris (ORG 45RPM LP) I was wincing at the initial attack of the notes. I think the compressed music was more a solution in the case with the Arcam than the Sphinx. I did have the latter for less time, but it was quite an extreme version of this issue for me.

Unfortunately, I don't have the two offending amplifiers to do measurements with, but that would indeed have been very interesting.

My issue certainly comes from a combination of things and I'm certain distortion and other characteristics play into this. What I'm not sure is whether a highly dynamic amplifier will ever be acceptable to my ears, whatever the other characteristics.

As mentioned, I'm limited in what I can try out nearby, and also in buying and selling used gear to try them out, and therefore trying to narrow down the options. But I will try to find ways of testing these hypotheses. Of course the ideal result would be that I don't need to limit myself to less dynamic, less powerful and "slower" amplifiers. The downside is that most of the options with the correct distortion profile, etc. are quite pricey, even though some reasonable options seem to exist.

^I think we are making progress.^

Unfortunately, I don't have the two offending amplifiers to do measurements with, but that would indeed have been very interesting.

Don’t worry about the offending amps.

Just take the offending albums and try them with the amp that works well, and use it tio test out candidate amps.