So if I described my Pioneer amp as "transparent, coherent and with impeccable timing", while my DAC has a "truly organic sound" what do I really mean?
altruistic.lemon said:
I have no idea. This sounds like the start of a joke. Whats the punchline?
We do know that WHF does subjective reviews, not objective. It is therefoe not possible to pin anything down to a specific, measurable technical characteristic if that is one is looking for. The recent case with HDMI reviews challenge has demosntrated that.
Personally, I do not like subjective reviews, especially when they are instead of objective evaluation - because they are not of much practical use and can be misleading. If they are in addition to objective evaluation, subjective reviews can add sence, if you know the personal values of the reviewer.
Personally, I do not like subjective reviews, especially when they are instead of objective evaluation - because they are not of much practical use and can be misleading. If they are in addition to objective evaluation, subjective reviews can add sence, if you know the personal values of the reviewer.
altruistic.lemon said:
If you truly believe that, then you've just been lucky enough to never own a cr*p amp. Feel free to browse through my back-catalogue of budget low-grade trash from the likes of JVC and Akai that I owned as a teenager in the 80s. They lit up like a Christmas tree, they had more dials and knobs than the cockpit of a 747, and at the time I thought they were the bee's knees. You'd soon change your mind.
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MeanandGreen said:
Timing is, probably, the wrong word. It has nothing to do with the 'time' between beats on the track. When we talk about timing in hifi, there are really two quite different things we mean. One is digital timing errors, known as 'jitter,' which refers to errors in the timing of the digital signal. But with amps, we really don't mean timing.
With amps, there is the expression PRA...I mean, Precision, Rhythm, Accuracy, and Timing. Not one of these four words, taken by itself, is a decent description of what people are talking about - which is that some amps seem to bring greater 'rhythm' to the music (which is impossible literally, but that's the impression). If I do an A/B test between my Naim Nait 5 and my NAD C326, the main difference that I hear is that the Naim seems to boogie a little more - the bass feels tighter, stronger, faster....something. That quality is what people mean by timing.
Someone (I think it was Ben Law) wanted to know if this was something that can be measured. I think the answer, sort of, is yes. The specification of an amp you are asking about is called the 'slew rate' (a measure of how fast an amp recovers from the end of playing a signal. An amp designer faces many trade-offs - do not allow anyone on this forum to convince you that, somehow, all amps below a certain noise floor are basically the same (because they are relaying the recording 'perfectly'). Perfect doesn't exist. This is engineering, and all engineered products - speakers, amps, race cars, airplanes - involve making compromises.
In the case of the slew rate, it's a designer's decision. The trade off is between an amp that sounds 'fast' and an amp that has a lot of 'air.' These are subjective experiences of hearing a sound and different people hear different things. But the slew rate is real. You can find some inexpensive Japanese amps that have tons of air and sound amazing, especially with light speaker cones. Switch to something like my Naim, and suddenly it sounds more rhythmic and like the bass line has improved. Partly this is the higher current, controlling the drivers more precisely. But listen to the Naim for awhile and you start to realise that it really doesn't have much air around the vocals - you don't have the shimmer on the highs that your old Yamaha receiver has, even though you're more likely to tap your foot to the song.
This isn't mystery-hifi-review-speak, it's a design decision based on, among other things, the targeted slew rate. You could talk about this instead of timing, but WHF prefers to avoid the technical-speak. So they talk about PR*T.
(Does it really make sense to filter this word on a hifi forum?)
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Humans are incapable of hearing differences in slew rates of modern amplifiers as these slew rates are high enough to not affect the signal in the audio frequency range.
Frank Harvey
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Humans are incapable of hearing differences in slew rates of modern amplifiers as these slew rates are high enough to not affect the signal in the audio frequency range.
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BenLaw said:
Yes. When you feed an amplified music signal to an electronic network of soldered-together parts that tears it apart and sends parts of the signal to two different drivers with different moving masses, radiating areas, impedences, shapes, and location on a baffle, you simply are not going to get something coming out which is exactly like what you fed in. Common sense here folks.
I keep running into people on this forum who want to debate whether high-end gear is really just 'all marketing' - the accusation is that, above a certain level, everything sounds the same because it has reached some 'perfect' level of transparency, and how can it sound better than the original?
Most people here love music, so here's my advice if you are confused about transparency: Go see some live music. Go to a rock concert, at a venue bigger than a bar but no bigger than the Royal Albert Hall. Go to a jazz club that is established enough to have a big sound system. Go to a symphony. I suspect that basically everyone here has done this, but I also suspect that for some of you, it's been awhile.
Go and do this and listen to the sound:
1. This is what is meant by transparency.
2. Note how effing good it sounds.
3. Accept that your system does not sound this good and cannot and will never
Hifi is about trying to get the maximum out of:
1. A recording which is never perfect and often highly flawed
2. Source components which are recreating sound where none really exists
3. Amplifiers which ALWAYS change the sound based on decisions made by its designers
4. Speakers which cannot ever perfectly reproduce any sound.
Hifi is the art of creating a fake audible image of something that isn't really there. It will never sound 100% right! 100% right would be 100% transparent - i.e., the stereo kit disappears completely. It's every designers goal but it isn't achieveable.
So it's legitimate to judge kit on transparency, since no one is at 100%, and it's a primary design goal. At a given price level - especially 500 quid - we will be very far indeed from 100% so there is plenty of room for a new model to come in and redefine what is 'good' at that price. I don't see the knock.
Recent venues at which I have been to see amplified music (I guess what you are referring to as a 'rock concert') include Manchester Apollo, Manchester academy and the cockpit in Leeds. Compared to my system, none of these is more transparent than my system, nor do they comparatively sound effing good. Over the years the same goes for a variety of venues and nightclubs in different UK cities and abroad. Where do you go that sounds so great?
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SpursGator
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This is what they said with Redbook CDs. Yes, it does not contain data about 22khz, but no worries, science tells you that humans can't hear above this point.
But then CDs weren't 'perfect' after all (perfect...ha). It turns out that the third harmonic of, say, 80khz is 10khz. People can't hear the tone in a test, maybe, but LPs are still going strong 30 years later because people still perceive the analogue signal to sound more natural (even with the extra noise from vinyl).
Maybe these people are all mentally ill, or part of a conspiracy led by John and Andrew and their devious team. Or maybe the science of how people perceive complex mixes of sounds is still evolving. Maybe there are large differences, perhaps genetic, that make different people perceive sound differently (certainly this is the case with the other senses, especially vision).
If you delve into the world of DIY amplifiers, there are many articles out there for builders on how to tune the slew rate to get a faster or airier sound from your amp.
History is filled with people who are excoriated with what current science can 'prove.' Take Barry Marshall, Australian doctor who discovered that peptic ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection. He was ridiculed by the world medical establishment for a decade (despite isolating the bacterium and successfully treating hundreds of ulcer patients with antibiotics). But the medical community ALREADY KNEW that bacteria could not live in the stomach. It had been PROVEN repeatedly. How can you have a bacterial infection in a sterile environment. It isn't possible.
Well...it is possible and today, most ulcers are treated with antibiotics. Even at the time, many doctors were already using them with ulcer patients - doctors whose perception was not skewed by what they thought they knew. They saw their patients getting better and they took that data, rather than the data that said what they were clearly seeing was 'impossible.'
But then CDs weren't 'perfect' after all (perfect...ha). It turns out that the third harmonic of, say, 80khz is 10khz. People can't hear the tone in a test, maybe, but LPs are still going strong 30 years later because people still perceive the analogue signal to sound more natural (even with the extra noise from vinyl).
Maybe these people are all mentally ill, or part of a conspiracy led by John and Andrew and their devious team. Or maybe the science of how people perceive complex mixes of sounds is still evolving. Maybe there are large differences, perhaps genetic, that make different people perceive sound differently (certainly this is the case with the other senses, especially vision).
If you delve into the world of DIY amplifiers, there are many articles out there for builders on how to tune the slew rate to get a faster or airier sound from your amp.
History is filled with people who are excoriated with what current science can 'prove.' Take Barry Marshall, Australian doctor who discovered that peptic ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection. He was ridiculed by the world medical establishment for a decade (despite isolating the bacterium and successfully treating hundreds of ulcer patients with antibiotics). But the medical community ALREADY KNEW that bacteria could not live in the stomach. It had been PROVEN repeatedly. How can you have a bacterial infection in a sterile environment. It isn't possible.
Well...it is possible and today, most ulcers are treated with antibiotics. Even at the time, many doctors were already using them with ulcer patients - doctors whose perception was not skewed by what they thought they knew. They saw their patients getting better and they took that data, rather than the data that said what they were clearly seeing was 'impossible.'
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BenLaw said:
Well, these days I feel like it's a brilliant night off when I manage to have a beer anywhere but indoors, so nowhere in awhile. The Borderline in London has nice sound.
Of course there are other issues in a live venue - it's too loud, too much other noise, massive back wave from the huge subs. You can tweak your system at home to be just how you want it. But if you are trying to say that recordings of this type of music sound better (or just as effing good) than live unrecorded music, then I don't believe you. You have nice kit but I really don't buy that your living room sounds better than Manchester Academy, especially with the massive sofa back between your listening position and just one of your speakers. I do accept that you can set your own system up for a better listening experience, for you, on a given day (especially with those ATC SCM 40s - love those).
Not everyone is going to agree with me since we all hear different things and have different tastes. But for newbies and neutrals, who are trying to sort this all out - I will leave it to them to decide whether recorded music or live music sounds better. I did suggest that people go see some music and decide for themselves.
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SpursGator said:
Yes but...
I accept your argument if the jazz club has NO sound system. If it does then you're comparing their sound system in the mix as well. Might as well say "does my system sound the same as a Marshall amp into a 4x12?" or "Has my lounge got the acoustics of Ronnie Scott's?"
End of the day what matters is do you like the way your system sounds in your setting? If yes, leave it alone. If no, identify what you don't like and look for a specific solution. Arguing semantics, like resistance, is futile.
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visionary said:
Sure, you might have better kit than the club. But you are still listening to (and reconstructing) a recording. A recording of an artist playing at Ronnie Scott's can't sound better than the artist playing at Ronnie Scott's. (Yeah, I too could argue against this - if I had a soundboard recording and high-end kit, it would be a very different listening experience in my small room than at Ronnie Scott's. Okay, fine, but don't overthink this. Perhaps 99.9999% of the time, and logically 100% of the time, the recording won't sound as good as the original.)
The second half of your post I absolutely agree with, Visionary. It's just that we hear a lot from people who do like the way their system sounds in their setting, who instead of proclaiming that, proclaim something very close to nothing possibly CAN sound better than my (or some other) system, and I can prove it with measurements. Your statement is solid hifi advice. The second statement is absurd.
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