my friend has a pair of quad valve monoblocks, a quad pre amp and you guessed it..quad electrostatic speakers..anyway these bits of equipment have sent off for servicing, except for the speakers.i went round to see him and drink his beer! and he had a naim set up? to keep him going till the quads come back..mr flash! lol..i have never heard naim hifi and was interested in the sound, the naim equipment consisted of power unit, pre amp and power amp..the naim logo lit up when switched on..the power amp was heavier than my quad 909.so i was expecting to be bowled over the sound..naim being vey exspensive and naim owners on the whole are a smug lot who seem to think owning naim kit is the pinnacle of hifi achievement and us poor lot with our mongrel kit are like a bad smell under their nose! hahaha..well the sound of the naim hifi was awful..i couldnt find anything in the sound i liked..the quad trounced it in every way...so there is a difference between amplifiers.a big one in my humble opinion..
steve_1979
Well-known member
Drummerman said:
When amplifiers are clipping they definitely can sound very different.
Maybe we should be asking a different question though:
Do all amplifiers sound the same when they're not clipping and are driving speakers with a straightforward impedance load?
Overdose said:
I think that I've heard small differences between amplifiers. I've got next week off work so I'm going to listen to a few different amplifiers and decide for myself if it's possible to beat the Harbeth challenge. I have to admit that I'm not totally confident that it can be done though. I'll update you all with my findings next week...
steve_1979 said:
Right, probably a better way to put it. My english is unfortunately not perfect.
Wishing you much fun with the comparison and looking forward to your findings but remember it really has to be done under controlled conditions ie. not by yourself and not sighted if you want a fair outcome. Further more, output/volume has to be levelled. Probably best done by measuring the voltage at speaker terminal level with a test tone. I would probably also include a model or two with tone controls to level things further.
regards
Covenanter
Well-known member
It depends what you mean by "sound" doesn't it! Certainly amplifiers will not have identical frequency responses or dynamic ranges or power ouputs and therefore you woud expect to be able to measure differences (all else being equal). Can you hear differences? Well I would expect to be able to hear differences between well designed and poorly designed amplifiers and there should be some price correlation here. I certainly believe that people think they can hear differences.
Chris
Chris
You could blindfold me, intoxicate me, shove cotton wool in my ears and the difference would still be really obvious. Maybe you're right to a certain extent, maybe there is an element of different 'distortion patterns', but it's also true that some amps are just more musically transparent than others, as well as other differences unrelatd to their tonal bias. I once had a JVC AX440 I bought out my mum's Brian Mills catalogue. I thought it was the bee's keens. Then a mate lent me a Cyrus 1 and I couldn't believe how amazing this plastic-lidded shoebox sounded compared to my JVC, even though they were similarly priced. I could have sat there all day twiddling my JVC's tone controls and not get the same clarity and depth. (In fact you kind of had to use the tone controls on the JVC: it sounded flat and lifeless without them).drummerman said:
MajorFubar said:
The whole point of ABX is to determine whether the apparent differences really exist.
If an amp measures the same (THD, watts, noise, linearity etc) it's hard to see how it could sound different from another, no matter whether it's valve, class A or made from vegemite.
That isn't saying they all sound the same, but.
That isn't saying they all sound the same, but.
steve_1979
Well-known member
drummerman said:
Cheers DM.
I don't have any equipment to check that the amplifiers are level matched and aren't clipping so it's far from ideal. I also don't have an A/B switchbox so it'll have to be a sighted comparison too.
The auditions that I'll do next week are only intended to be a preliminary test just to see if it's even going to be worth continuing. To do the test properly would require spending a bit of money on equipment which I'm not willing to do unless I'm 100% convinced that I could pass it. Even then I'd want to contact Harbeth first to ask them if there are any limits on the choice of amplifiers that I use. Would they have to be tonaly matched for example?
altruistic.lemon said:
...but do any two amps from different brands ever measure identically in every area? :shifty:
mickeyjoef said:
Perhaps it is (a silly question) but why do you think they sound different?
regards
Do amplifiers sound the same ... NO, they most certainly do not.
Why... the reasons are complex and go way beyond the basic specs often quoted. But its not magic or some unknown and unmeasurable quantity. Of prime importance are the absolute levels of distortion and the makeup of that distortion, in other words the relative levels of F2, F3, F4 (the harmonics) and so on. That the ear can pick up on these seemingly small differences is amazing... but it does. Also how well (and in what way) does the amplifier respond to signals fed into the speaker output. A speaker is also a microphone don't forget. And that speaker interconnect picks up a lot of easily measurable "rubbish" from the surrounding environment which is applied directly to the amplifiers output "port". Put all that mix and more into the equation and things start to get interesting... and its why some designs absolutley blow the "competition" out of the water sonically, when the "specs" would suggest otherwise.
Trust your ears and what you hear.
Why... the reasons are complex and go way beyond the basic specs often quoted. But its not magic or some unknown and unmeasurable quantity. Of prime importance are the absolute levels of distortion and the makeup of that distortion, in other words the relative levels of F2, F3, F4 (the harmonics) and so on. That the ear can pick up on these seemingly small differences is amazing... but it does. Also how well (and in what way) does the amplifier respond to signals fed into the speaker output. A speaker is also a microphone don't forget. And that speaker interconnect picks up a lot of easily measurable "rubbish" from the surrounding environment which is applied directly to the amplifiers output "port". Put all that mix and more into the equation and things start to get interesting... and its why some designs absolutley blow the "competition" out of the water sonically, when the "specs" would suggest otherwise.
Trust your ears and what you hear.
I don't think that they sound different. They do sound different. I have ears and use them to determine the differences.
Native_bon
Well-known member
Interesting...Humm.. I for one think so much attention to detail is paid to an expensive amp than would be paid to a less expensive one(by this I mean mixing & matching, Amps & speakers, cables.. etc).. The reason being, when an expensive Amp or speaker does not give us the sound quality we expect from it, we willing to go that extra mile to justify the price per ratio performance... When u look at it this way it begins to make sense.
Do amps sound the same :doh: .... Almost...
Do amps sound the same :doh: .... Almost...
BenLaw
Well-known member
mickeyjoef said:
Appreciate that and in all fairness, it is how most normal (think non-nerd) people approach the issue. Actually make that most people full stop.
Question though; Do you know that even a very small difference in volume can change how a product directly compared to another one could be perceived? In this case it maybe an amplifier though it could also be a source component? - For the moment we leave out psychological factors such as expectation or like/dislike of visual appearance or even issues concerning memory if the products are not tested at the same time.
regards
Not needed though. It wouldn't produce different results. The differences are not minor. May as well ask me to compare the difference in taste between an apple and an orange blindfolded.Phileas said:
They're both different. Whether that's good or bad depends on your tastes, the equipment you partner them with and your listening environment. Flawed? Obviously they both are in an absolute sense, as is every other amp in the world.Phileas said:
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