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Re: What are you somking?

I don't prefer higher distortion as a general rule but I prefer higher distortion that I cannot hear than lower distortion that I can hear very easily.

When the interface is an oscilloscope, which within its limitations is impartial and objective, then the lower distortion wins every time. As a scientist working in a laboratory where objective measures matter the most, then I am in complete agreement with you.

When the interface is the human ear/brain auditory system, which within it limitations is not impartial and highly selective (evolutionary pressures have made us hear the way we do), then the absolute amount of distortion is not the critical parameter but the KIND of distortion takes precedence. Don't you get it?? The TYPE of distortion!!!

Are you such a narrow minded engineer that this flies right under your radar (if in fact you are an engineer). As a scientist I can tell you that when doing experiments it is often the little phenomena,the anamolies that are often the most interesting. If everything went according to plan it would be pretty boring, wouldn't it? The same goes for listening, you hear an anaomly and you begin to ask what causes that? You hypothesize and then set out to find out if it is a false hypothesis or not.

The human brain is one big pattern recognition machine and it is tuned to "natural" sounds and harmonic patterns. I use my brain to recognize patterns in data all the time...sometimes with surprising and unpredictable results. Mess with those patterns and the difference is easily discriminated. Most electronics mess with those patterns sufficiently that even at trace levels (and yes the human sense are capable of better than 1 part in a thousand with the right signal...look at how the nose can be used as a gas chromatographic detection device but only with certain compound types) the sonic consequences are clear.

" Can you hear one part in a thousand? NO vacuum tube power amplifier in the world that I have ever seen can come remotely close to matching that performance."

The simple answer to the question is Yes you can if the distortion is in the wrong place (ie. high order harmonics). As to the absolute distortion, again I will say it is the type of distortion not its amount (within limits of course). The 1970s ultra low THD amps sounded bad, bad ,bad! why? Simple they lowered the distortion alright but pushed what was left to the worst possible places for human audibility!

The important fact of the amps I showed was twofold 1) The distortion rises sharply with frequency 2) THis rise happens at HIGH Frequencies.

" would be far more impressed if you were a PHD in electrical engineering arguing within your field of expertise. I have dealt with people before who assumed and had other people believing that because they had great depth of knowledge in one technical area, they had considerable knowledge in all technical areas. Where were you when I had a fight with the guy who wanted me to install an Eximer laser in his lab not using stainless steel piping and ductwork? He was an expert on lasers all right, but he didn't know high school chemistry when it came to fluorine. It turned out that it was so corrosive that the gas tank had to be removed after several months not because the gas would run out but because the gas itself became contaminated with atoms from the inside of its own cylinder container which made it unsuitable for his experiments. The safety guy who was at war with my Director later admitted that in an similar installation at Bell Labs, fluorine had done a quarter of a million dollrs worth of damage to ductwork in one weekend. Want more horror stories about "experts" going beyond their field of expertise?"

Getting a Ph.D in any scientific field is about learning how to learn. I happen to be an expert with regard to laser systems (I have worked with and repaired/maintained excimers, CO2, Ar+, Nd:YAG, diode pumped, MOPO etc. ) and even setup a Fluorine based excimer here in Switzerland as a postdoc. I also have several years experience with mechanical design and machining (we made that instrument all in house). I have experience with digital and analog electronics, high voltage electronics, RF electronics and I know how to proficiently use both analog and digital oscilloscopes. Oh yeah and I have experience in designing optical systems (lens, mirrors, and fiber optics) for the delivery of high energy laser pulses.
While I am not a world leader in any of these areas, I have far more than a cursory knowledge and understand the underlying priciples for how they work.

I also happen to know a fair bit about chemistry (seeing as I am a chemist). What do you know about being an expert?? What are you an expert at? It sure isn't listening. When was the last time you had a currently accepted SOTA amp or preamp in your home to keep for long term audition? When was the last time you had a currently accepted SOTA speaker system in your home? Your AR9 are not considered SOTA now (doubtful they were then either). I saw you bash the ML Summit recently, what exactly didn't you like about it?? It didn't give you that box flavor you are so used to?

"It is typically human nature to attack the last component installed in a sound system which makes it sound bad. But in the case of a first rate solid state amplifier such as any of the three you cited, these amplifiers reveal the shortcomings in the rest of a sound system, not create their own. This is something for a disciplined mind to consider. For the first time it lets you hear just how awful that loudspeaker really is, how bad that phonograph cartridge sounds, how many resonances your room acoustics introduce. Don't condemn the amplifier until you have a real reason, not one you got by taking the intellectually lazy way out. It is easier to imagine the earth as flat than round if you don't go to the trouble to find out whether or not there really is an edge"

Oh I am sorry who is taking the intellectually easy way out?? You are the one who says, "Gee wiz that measures great! I would buy that thing without ever hearing it. I bet it will look pretty hooked up to my oscilloscope at night" Buying without listening but reading a spec sheet IS the easy way out and precisely why so many bad amps were sold in the past (and bad speakers too).

I don't condemn or praise ANY product without first listening to it thoroughly. That being said, I have enough experience with amps that measure this way to know that those measurements don't correlate with good subjective performance and that the rise in HF distortion could spell sonic disaster.

Here is something for your so called "disciplined" (I would call it closed) mind to consider. If the loudspeaker is of insufficient resolution, then it is quite possible for all electronics to sound the same, ie. they sound like the speaker. Think about it.

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