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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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In Reply to: "I don't wish to "convert" any of the non-believers, just educate them on the errors of their ways"....How quaint. posted by AJinFLA on December 20, 2006 at 16:42:04:
AJinFLA,It's quite possible that every one of those SET amps you've heard have sounded awful. How do I know as you don't list what amps you've listened to?
Your statement that the 40 or so watts of my Mastersound *might* hack it for your tweeter or super tweeter amps in a pinch shows how little you know about just how much power is typically used when playing music, but that hardly surprises me, considering how many of the either untruthful or uneducated claims you constantly make.
For an example of power required consider this: McIntosh had a demo where they wanted to "prove" why you need their monster new 2000 watt three chassis (per "monoblock") amplifiers. They started the demo off with some Mariah Carey. According to one person who attened the demo this music had virtually NO dynamic range as the big blue needles on the Mc amps showed. At a comfortably loud level the needles read about 2 watts. That's right 2 watts. Here were 2000 watt amps (8000 peak) idling along at 2 watts and it was plenty loud enough.
Next the demo guy put on a very dynamic recording of some classical with a loud gunshot or explosion (not 1812 cannons though). Through most of the music it was running at well under 1 watt!! Then the explosion and the needle almost hit 2000 watts! Here the guy said that you need the power to handle such dynamic headroom. However, the duration of this peak is for sure very short and so all this idling power is for what? 10 milliseconds of use?
What that proves is that most of the time the music stayed at a very low power. The speakers could have been driven to very satisfying levels with a 20 watt SET no problem. It's true the same peak would have made the amp badly clip; however, with no negative feedback the clipping would be instantaneous and then back to business as usual. You might not even hear it. Nearly every amp in the world would have clipped on that shot but so what?? Who cares if an explosion is reproduced cleanly or not? It might even make it more spectacular if it does. IMHO and that of the man who witnessed the demo as well, the McIntosh demo showed the exact opposite of what they were trying to prove.
It showed:
1) that most people's music (ie. rock and pop) is heavily compressed and requires very little power to play loudly.
2) With wide dynamic range material the average power required is very low and as long as big peaks are short then running out of power may not be very sonically deterimental.
3) Having all of this headroom is largely unnecessary and money is better spent on impoving the sonics of the design.
4) Since nearly all amps (except for these absurd McIntoshes) will clip at high peak level uncompressed music then how well an amp recovers from clipping is of the utmost importance. Typically a zero feedback amp like an SET, will recover much faster than a high feedback amp.AJinFLA you continue to embarass yourself when you claim if any of the thousands of real, acoustic instruments at the hundreds of music performances that you've attended sounded anything like a SET amplifier, you would either have left or got up on stage and smashed it. Why is that an embarassing statement? Because SET's are known for their ability to make instruments and singers "sound" like real live unamplified music should. I'm afraid your comments are only revealing your lack of knowledge of what live unamplified instruments sound like, despite your claim of having heard thousands of real, acoustic instruments at the hundreds of music performances that you'vehave attended.
Like you said AJinFLA some people seem to not be bothered at amplified music events by the distorted sound of underpowered amplifiers clipping. But that's part of your problem! You use live amplified music events as your reference standard. At these events they're most likely are using solid state pro-amps. So to YOU a solid state pro-amp is what live music sounds like. To each their own I suppose. As for me I use live UNamplified musical events as MY reference standard. That's why I use an SET amp. Because it sounds like live unamplified music does!
To end this I'll use one more comment that proves you talk about things you don't know about as if there were facts. For when you stated If someone managed to make a SET that lacked euphonic colorations you proved that's exactly what you do. As the KR audio Kronzilla monoblocks are reputed to be just such a device. These are parallel SETs with no feedback that are hybrids, ie. tubes only on the output and measure quite well indeed. They have a jfet input and mosfet driver to the tube output. What makes them so special is the KR tubes are a newly designed tube to specifically move current at audio frequencies. So while they look like transmitter tubes due to their size in practice they are not. Also without having ever heard a Mastersound Reference 845 for you to ASS ume they're an SET that doesn't lack euphonic colorations is a bit ludicrous.
It seems to me that you're actually quite insecure in your audio component choices AJinFLA. For if you were secure you wouldn't have the need or desire constantly disparge others choice in and effort to convince yourself you've made the correct choice.
Thetubeguy1954
PS: If I were you I'd ask Santa for a better ability to determine what live unamplified music truly sounds like.
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Follow Ups
- I Can See You're Stuck On Stupid Again AJin Fla - thetubeguy1954 12/21/0606:52:32 12/21/06 (0)
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