Audiophile?

[TrevC]

I think the benefits of Class A topology are indirect and may not have anything to do with the reduced crossover distortion old men claim they hear louder than turkey matting calls.

When you build a class A amp you really can't cheapen out on components and do a sloppy job. The margins are very tight, components need to be closely matched and everything overengineered to put up with the abuse of constantly being turned fully on at oven baking temperatures. Good luck building a 30W JLH or Hiraga amp otherwise.

It's the same when building an 845 Valve Amp.

The output transformers have to be pretty special.

 

[Infiniteloop]

I think the benefits of Class A topology are indirect and may not have anything to do with the reduced crossover distortion old men claim they hear louder than turkey matting calls.

When you build a class A amp you really can't cheapen out on components and do a sloppy job. The margins are very tight, components need to be closely matched and everything overengineered to put up with the abuse of constantly being turned fully on at oven baking temperatures. Good luck building a 30W JLH or Hiraga amp otherwise.

It's the same when building an 845 Valve Amp.

The output transformers have to be pretty special.

And that is part of the reason why the S8 weighs 30kg!

 

[shado]

An audiophile should be able to appreciate vinyl, Reel to Reel, cassette, DAT, compact disc, SACD, mp3, DVD audio etc plus FM to DAB formats in relation to how it affects the person at a given point of time. The other fun part is through trial and error matching up the ancillaries to create that sound you are after, now that is trickier.

 

[Infiniteloop]

An audiophile should be able to appreciate vinyl, Reel to Reel, cassette, DAT, compact disc, SACD, mp3, DVD audio etc plus FM to DAB formats in relation to how it affects the person at a given point of time. The other fun part is through trial and error matching up the ancillaries to create that sound you are after, now that is trickier.

Blimey. - You're brave.

Hope you're wearing a Tin hat or have very thick skin......

 

[lindsayt]

Which are? (at 1 micro-watt to 1 milliwatt)

If you're going to be scientific in your hi-fi selection, you might as well base your decisions on proper science.

And what are the distortion figures of your speakers? And what's the size and nature (IE oscilloscope plot) of the distortion when you feed your speakers with a single cycle 60 hz test tone?

Valve amplifiers are generally inferior to SS ones. It's like insisting a Morris Minor is as good as a Ford Focus to suggest otherwise.

Absolute Rubbish.

Nope. Easily demonstrated proven fact. Valve amplifiers guzzle energy, require frequent replacements, and have far higher levels of distortion. That's not to say they can't sound nice, by the way.

How many times do I have to ask this?

Please refer to my earlier post in this thread where I asked you to provide evidence to properly back up you statement.

Evidence which, so far, you have not provided.

And, by the way, would you like to hazard a guess as to how many watts my 8 watt SET Monoblocks consume. If your going to make a statement like "Valve amplifiers guzzle energy" let's at least be scientific about this and state how many watts a variety of amplifiers actually consumes.

It's approximately double the maximum audio power output plus the heaters. For distortion look at the specs of your amp and compare with any budget SS amp. A SET amp can't even reproduce an accurate sine wave at any sort of power. Have you tried your speakers with a budget amp?

Thank-you. By twice declining to answer my question about distortion measurements in the micro to milli-watt power range you have, in effect answered my question.

I think it's fair to say that you don't know whether your or my solid state amplifiers have more, less or about the same THD+N at those power levels.

I don't know either.

But when it comes to midrange clarity / purity / realism my SET amplifiers are better than my solid state, with my main speakers and my ears. So it wouldn't surprise me if my SET amplifiers measured better in some ways than my solid state amplifiers. With my kitchen speakers at very loud volumes, my main solid state amplifiers sound overall more realistic than my SET amplifiers - which stands to reason as in that application the solid state would measure better in some ways.

You say "For distortion look at the specs of your amp". I say they tell me nothing about how realistic my amplifiers are when compared to other amps with my speakers. The production version of my 8 watt SET's have "less than 1%, 20hz-20khz (Ref. Output)". I don't know the specification for my 2 watt semi-custom made SET. My main solid state amplifiers "produce less than 0.1% THD at rated power output for 8 ohms and less than 0.2% THD for rated power at 4 ohms". These figures tell me nothing about comparative distortion when I am doing my A/B SET vs solid state listening tests.

It's quite possible that at 1 microwatt, my SET amps can produce more accurate sine waves than my solid state amps. At those power levels my SET amps sound more realistic with music than my solid state amps - in the midrange with my speakers and my ears.

As for budget solid state amps. It depends what you mean by that. I have a Creek CAS4040 that I bought new in 1983 for £99. I also have a couple of JBL 6290's that I bought for £150 each. However, in terms of production costs and price when new, there's nothing budget about the JBL's.

My Creek into my EV Patricians sounds several notches better than my JBL or SET amps into my Linn Saras. Swapping to a JBL amp into my Patricians indicates that the Creek is a bit less good at clarity / low level detail. IE it sounds more like there's an amplifier sitting between my source and speakers. Swapping from the JBL to my SET amplifiers provides the icing on the cake for vocals, guitars, pianos etc sounding more like what they are on a regular basis, time after time, recording after recording and a bit less like those instruments fed via a hi-fi system.

And on the "power guzzling" thing, my 8 watt SET monoblocks consume 80 watts of power each. This means that my valve based system will be using less power than the PC I'm typing this message on.