solderdude
Grand Contributor
It’s called voicing.
No, its deliberately adding distortion and has nothing to do with 'truthful' reproduction regardless what people call it.
It’s called voicing.
P.S have you ever rolled tubes?
And I will also repeat myself. Even if you design a perfect amp with no signature of its own, people will still seek their own interpretation of “musicality”.I'll just quote myself here:
So, can various tubes from the same family sound different in the same design or not?yes, and I design tube amps as well.
I don't deny this reality. But the point of my post regards to the technical side.And I will also repeat myself. Even if you design a perfect amp with no signature of its own, people will still seek their own interpretation of “musicality”.
I don’t think we disagree. But this seems to be a reality of this hobby.
So, can various tubes from the same family sound different in the same design or not?
If you have ever measured tubes and put tube(s) in specific designs that have little to no overall feedback then yes, there will be differences even between similar type tubes.
When you insert those tubes in amplifiers with lots of tubes and overall feedback then there will be no discernible differences.
It's NOT the tube its the circuit the tube is part of that determines if there the signal is deliberately changed (colored).
It really is about implementation.
That was my point. But if your goal is absolute accuracy without “color”, there are more options then ever before. At least at customer level and within reasonable price. Not sure if ordinary, speaker amplifiers are at this level? Haven’t been following latest trends so I have no opinion there.I don't deny this reality. But the point of my post regards to the technical side.
People are weird. I saw a subjective review comparing between 3 THX based amps with colorful descriptors of their individual sound. The THX circuits main selling point is that it's non-coloring and transparent, and yet people still attribute specific sound signatures to them. So there is no more point to talking about musicality then there is to talking about which cheese is the best. People will associate biases and preferences with absolute quality no matter what.
There are no “highly complex waveforms of a music signal”, only lots and lots of sine waves piled atop one another.There may be other nonlinearities that only reveal themselves with the highly complex waveforms of a music signal
Crosstalk is usually noticed at 20 dB or more, thus, 91 dB is an excellent number. IMD at -120 dBFS is great, it is below the most strict thresholds considered in the engineering of these products. Having better numbers does not mean having a better sonic experience, especially when considering the humans are pretty insensitive to distortion.think headphone amp is still not completely solved yet. The channel crosstalk for l30 is -91dB, far from good SINAD. I would also hope that we can get IMD to be lower than -120dB. I would guess after 5 years we can finally say headphone amp is completely solved.
Headphones using DSP with a personalized in ear impulse response and head tracking can simulate the same thing with greater fidelity and lower cost. Then cross it over to some subs for the bass impact and you've probably got the best simulated soundfield there is until we get to Matrix levels of virtual reality.
Dude, there isnt such a thing as trillion light years in the observable universe. Our nearest neighbor is 4 light years.How far is our solar system from its third-closest neighboring galaxy? However many trillions of light years that is, it's a small distance compared to the gulf between normal consumers and ASR members. In other words, the problem with AVRs is my family.
Start with my daughter. She loves, loves, loves movies and TV, both in a serious analytical way, and as a helpless fan. Visual storytelling is of huge cultural importance to her. Her life would be empty without it. Yet she listens to her TV through the built-in speakers. She absolutely doesn't want anything better. Or my brother and his wife. They bought a new house, so felt they "ought" to buy a new TV, and got a Bose soundbar to go with it. Again, sophisticated, literate folks, who take movies seriously. Or my other sister-in-law, who bought an HT-in-a-box thing, and kinda got some of it hooked up, and has been happy with the result for the last eleven years. A librarian, who reads books you never heard of.
Standards will always be as low as they can go, until demand forces them up. And it isn't doing that. 99.9% of people are perfectly happy with what's on offer. Often delighted and impressed. The video side seems to dominate completely. Whereas headphones - lamely trying to stay on topic - have become a huge market, big enough to make the tiny SOTA sliver worth catering to. Somehow the HT market didn't pan out the same way. There's the anything-will-do folks (i.e. my family), and the big-explosion folks (like Beats headphone people), but the demand at the top seems weaker and narrower. Because it's much more expensive than headphones? Probably, but without the demand, AVRs will always be as bad as they can get away with.
Dude, there isnt such a thing as trillion light years in the observable universe. Our nearest neighbor is 4 light years.
Others have addressed the 1st paragraph.You've misunderstood what I said. Specifically in terms of amps, yes the signal that their output should be faithful to in everything but total level is the input source signal (and as I've said, this should be fidelity to a music input signal, as transparent fidelity to sine tone input does not necessarily guarantee the same for music signals.)
My second point in brackets in my original comment was that specifically for transducers used for audio reproduction, they cannot be said to be faithful to anything but an acoustic 'signal', as they are analogue audio to acoustic converters. So this acoustic output signal of the transducer should ideally be faithful to the acoustic output that the sound engineer heard when listening to the final master of the music, in order to preserve the intent of the artist.
I don't wanna poke an hornets' nest but what's the point of a post like this?You've misunderstood what I said. Specifically in terms of amps, yes the signal that their output should be faithful to in everything but total level is the input source signal (and as I've said, this should be fidelity to a music input signal, as transparent fidelity to sine tone input does not necessarily guarantee the same for music signals.)
My second point in brackets in my original comment was that specifically for transducers used for audio reproduction, they cannot be said to be faithful to anything but an acoustic 'signal', as they are analogue audio to acoustic converters. So this acoustic output signal of the transducer should ideally be faithful to the acoustic output that the sound engineer heard when listening to the final master of the music, in order to preserve the intent of the artist.
Isn't crosstalk another form of distortion because left and right channel play different music? Is there any study showing how much crosstalk can be perceived by human? Maybe it is harder for us to hear crosstalk than THD and noise, I still want it to be as low as possible and add my own crossfeed if I want.Crosstalk is usually noticed at 20 dB or more, thus, 91 dB is an excellent number. IMD at -120 dBFS is great, it is below the most strict thresholds considered in the engineering of these products. Having better numbers does not mean having a better sonic experience, especially when considering the humans are pretty insensitive to distortion.
It isn't, this is an electrical parameter of a multichannel (more than one) system. It does not alter FR (linearity) or add new content (non-linearity).Isn't crosstalk another form of distortion because left and right channel play different music?
I swear that there are some studies about this, but I do not recall them right now.Is there any study showing how much crosstalk can be perceived by human?