Dan D’Agostino on measurements

[Blumlein 88]

I think ribbon mikes on the recording end are in the same position as tube playback gear.

Btw, first time I heard Esl63 s I said, "I have to have some of those.". Knowing they cost more than I ever thought of spending on speakers. A few weeks later I did, and never regretted the purchase.

 

[MattHooper]

I think ribbon mikes on the recording end are in the same position as tube playback gear.

Btw, first time I heard Esl63 s I said, "I have to have some off those.". Knowing they cost more than I ever thought of spending on speakers. A few weeks later I did, and never regretted the purchase.

Yeah, that's how I ended up with mine, after hearing my friend's pair

 

[MrPeabody]

No!

Or, at least, that is a potentially misleading way of putting it, insofar is it seems to imply I'm arguing that amplifiers 'ought' to be colored (and thus to preference instead of neutrality).

I'm saying audio gear is designed by and for people, and people can have different goals. Amplifiers OUGHT to be designed for sonic transparency where THAT IS THE GOAL. And it's clearly a very well justified goal (and one that has pushed progress on that front in the audio world). But *some* people may have a slightly different goal, where some degree of deviation is desired or enjoyed, and insofar as that satisfies a desire THAT TOO can be a rational goal. It may be a niche relative to the number of people who want transparency, but if it exists, it's not irrational, just a slightly different goal.

I work in pro sound. For most of us, for various reasons, we don't want audible distortion produced by the amplification so we choose decent solid state amplification.

But in my home 2 channel system I can relax some of the criteria and I have slightly different goals that tube amps satisfy.

"No!", he said with an exclamation point. Yuch. This post of yours is very, very disingenuous.

The reason I wrote, "You are arguing that amplifiers ought to color the sound according to individual preference," is because this is PRECISELY what you had argued. For you to now claim otherwise is, well, to say it plainly, it is total B.S.

There is no substantive distinction between the stuff you wrote and my characterization of it, where I wrote, "You are arguing that amplifiers ought to color the sound according to individual preference." Setting aside people who have no preference for coloration, your position is indisputably that people who prefer a certain type of coloration should choose an amplifier that provides that type of coloration. How is this substantively different from my characterization, that you are arguing that amplifiers ought to color the sound according according to preference? THERE ISN'T ANY DIFFERENCE!!! Not even the tiniest sliver of a difference. Yet, now you are trying to argue that this isn't what you said. PUKE!

The artist never has "full control" over what the listener hears, and the listener virtually never has access to the precise equipment/room used in the recording. And yet, the communication between musician and listener has been successful for as long as there has been recorded sound.
Your flat out declaration just ignores all the variables. The average consumer system, even hobbiest, will involve various compromises, and in fact that is baked in to the problem.
... ... ... ... ... ... .....

None of that has even the slightest tidbit of bearing on the question on which we are disagreeing. It seems bizarre to me that you would have thought that it should. It absolutely does not. The fact that the artist never has full control over what the listener hears does not detract from the fact that a necessary condition, for the listener to hear what the artist recorded, is for the amplifier to not color the sound. The only way that all that gibberish that you wrote would be relevant would be if it were an attempt to argue that this is not true. Maybe that's what you thought you were doing, but I couldn't really tell. In order for the amplifier to faithfully replicate the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, the amplifier needs to be accurate. Either you are arguing that this is not true, or else you are agreeing with it. There is no middle ground on this. In your responses, I can't tell whether you are or are not saying that this is statement isn't correct. If you disagreed with this statement, why wouldn't you have said so, in plain English? If you agreed with it, why wouldn't you have said so, in plain English?

Again, you have characterized the subject in a way that is misleading, and which I've tried to clarify.

And, yes, it is more complicated than you imply, for reasons I've argued.

I have not mischaracterized what you wrote in even the slightest manner.

You have twisted this thing into some sort of Gordian knot. It is not complicated. I will say it again. If an amplifier is to faithfully replicate the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, the amplifier must be accurate, and this is the reason, obviously, why objective measurements of an amplifier matter, which is contrary to what (according to the popular interpretation) D'Agostino said. (I don't think he actually intended to say that; my comment is a response to this popular interpretation, whether this is or isn't what he intended to say.)

There is really only one sincere argument contrary to what I wrote. It is this: Some people don't care whether an amplifier faithfully replicates the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, so long as they like the way it sounds. You could have simply said this. If you had, I wouldn't have had any issue with it. But of course this isn't what you did. No, that would have been too cut-and-dry, too pedestrian. You wanted to write something that would give the impression that my take on the question is simplistic and that your take on the question is more highly evolved than mine. Well, you are wrong about that. The truth is that your take on the question is less honest than mine. That's the true difference.

 

[MrPeabody]

I find this to be a good thread and have enjoyed reading the thoughtful comments from all concerned. Since we have no idea of how the actual sound was when mastered, we are left here to reproduce the recording.

However,is there one kind of BBQ sauce that is the really the best, and we all can agree on it (never!) , given that one piece of steak, and you sample the steak plain, and you sample it with different sauces on the other bites, what if you prefer some sauce over just the original steak?

If you always reach for that sauce, while you are not technically getting the "unique" flavor of the virgin steak you grill every Saturday, you are allowed by all of us to love you some sauce dude.

Amplifiers, all have their own harmonic spray, and they are affected by their speaker loads in different ways, testing an amp on a resistor is just that, testing an amp on a resistor, good for comparing that one singular test, but not a fully comprehensive test though, and amplifier designers know that.

What Dan is saying ( and i forgive him but his old ears are not hearing everything his amp is doing, but he hears what he can hear as what it is doing) is that THD is not a good indicator of how his amp will sound, and he is also saying that driving for the absolute best accurate reproduction left him feeling less interested in the music at Krell, those old ears wants some sauce!

Now, if you like a "sound' that an amp makes in conjunction with your speakers and room, enough that it distinguishes itself from another amp, then there you go, you found your sauce. However, you may at some point want a different sauce, and thats OK too.

As long as we all know that we like to put some sauce on our music, whether coloring everything in one way or other via the amp, or using EQ or whatever, its the same thing they did at the studio, colored the sound the way they thought you would like it!

So if you have headphones and you want to EG them a bit to suit your taste, then that is not a bad thing at all. For example, if your phones lack a bit of bass and treble, for you, and you EG them some, no harm done there, you are unique, and you get to do what you want to "your" sound.

Is it best to add sauce, well, i dont think anyone can tell you it is not, they can tell you why they think it is not, based on if they want the actual flavor of the steak because they like to taste the variety of the steaks meat, but then again, preferences.

Let me tell you, there are times when i place my SET amp into service, when i want some added dynamics to my music, and it delivers. Sometimes i feel like one type of sauce, sometimes i feel like another, but no matter, you are always putting "some" sauce on that recording, especially the amp to speaker to room interface.

in the late seventies when i was exploring audio, we had all kind of cool stuff, echo boxes, dynamic range expanders, stereo enhancers, parametric equalizers with bar graphs (wow) and sub harmonic synthesizers and stereo image expanders and all kinds of stuff, and when some, any , or all were used in moderation, they typically made anything played sound better. Then came high end audio and said, dude, those tone controls are ruining your music, that was the beginning of the great lye/scam of high end audio. they claimed they wanted to get to the real music, but they gear they had was so colored it was unbelieveable , some of it sounded like i had turned on all my processors boxes to the max all at one time, hahahahaah.

two channel stereo is such a limited reproduction system, is it any wonder folks want to add some sauce!

I enjoyed reading your post. Interestingly, I happen to strongly dislike anything on my steak except salt and black pepper!

Sauce is okay for people who like it. I never said that I disagreed with that. My issue was that, in the popular interpretation of what Mr. D'Agostino said, he said (he didn't really, I think ...) that so long as you like the sound of an amplifier, there is no reason to care about measurements. Again, I don't he actually meant that exactly, but this seems to be the popular interpretation. If for the sake of argument we assume that he really did say this, then this is what I disagree with it. I'm not sure I made the point as well as I could have, the first time, but it is simply that objective measurements are meaningful even if you like the way an amplifier sounds, the reason being that (to me anyway) it matters that an amplifier has the ability to accurately replicate the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, and for people for whom this is important, the only way to be certain that an amplifier is accurate is by way of measurements. Now, I need to qualify this, because there is still work to be done before we know which measurements are strongly correlated with what we hear and which are not. The understanding of how harmonic distortion is audible is vastly improved over what it was a few decades ago. Notwithstanding that there is unquestionably uncertainty in this respect, the fact remains that objective measurements are the only way to know the accuracy of an amplifier, with any certainty. And I believe that accuracy matters, because in my philosophy for amplifiers (and for audio equipment in general), the sound at the output of the amplifier (or anything else) should simply be a faithful replication of the sound fed to the amplifier. To my way of thinking, there isn't any way that this is not the correct perspective. To view it differently would be to think of amplifiers much like musical instruments, and to my way of thinking, amplifiers are a different category of thing vs. musical instruments. (And vs. guitar amplifiers, which are a special case and which are part of the musical instrument.)

 

[xykreinov]

Were I to try to summarize or put into correct perspective what Mr. D'Agostino actually said, it would be something like, "Measurements do not tell the whole story. You have to listen, to know whether the measurements correlate with the sound quality."

I think there is a fundamental problem with this perspective, as I will explain momentarily, right after I make a comment about many of the comments on the YouTube page. Many of those comments indicate a different interpretation of what Mr. D'Agostino said, something more like, "Measurements are useless. All that matters is how an amplifier sounds." I don't think this would be an accurate interpretation, yet it is how many of the comments spun it. This suggests to me a sort of confirmation bias, not the type that we routinely discuss here, but a different type, where, when listening to something that someone else is saying, we don't always hear what they are actually saying, but hear what we want for them to be saying. Based on Guttenberg's comment in text at the top of the comments section, I think that Gutterberg is guilty of this. And it was obvious in the video that Guttenberg was leading D'Agostino on, trying to coax him to say something strong, that other people would take to mean that he's saying that measurements are useless. Guttenberg simply wants to get as much traffic to his YouTube channel as he can, for the obvious reason, and he now owes reg19 a thank you for helping him out.

The problem with the perspective that Mr. D'Agostino expressed is the presumption that amplifiers ought to have any sound signature at all. In my opinion they should not. Amplifiers are not musical instruments, and should be talked about in a manner that suggests commonality with musical instruments. The output of an amplifier should be a perfectly linear replication of the input. This perspective ought not need any justification, because it is manifest that otherwise there would be no assurance that what is heard through the speakers or headphones is faithful to what was recorded at the microphone. There are no two ways about it. The only question is what is the best way to insure that an amplifier faithfully replicates the signal sent to it. Is this better accomplished using laboratory instrumentation, or by listening? There was a point in time when instrumentation was poor and no one would have questioned the need to listen to the amplifier, in order to have a sense of how well the amplifier faithfully renders the signal presented to it. Some people might argue that this is still true today, and that you still have to listen in order to know whether the distortion level is audible, or how objectionable the distortion is. I don't have any big problem with that, however I will point out that there is a fundamental distinction between listening to make an assessment of how much distortion you can hear, vs. listening to find out whether the amplifier sounds the way that you like for amplifiers to sound.

Technically-minded people, who would advocate listening to an amplifier in order to assess how much distortion you can hear, do understand that an amplifier's job is to faithfully replicate the input signal. People who are not technically minded and who listen to amplifiers and talk about whether they like the sound of this amplifier better than the sound of this other amplifier, etc., generally do not quite understand that the job of an amplifier is to faithfully reproduce the input signal. They make it all too apparent that they just don't understand this essential, fundamental truth about amplifiers. Moreover, there is a curious steadfastness in their inability to understand this, by which many people imagine that they hear differences in amplifiers that they did not actually hear. This has been demonstrated numerous times. People will routinely describe in considerable detail, while using arcane language, the difference in the sound of two different amplifiers, and then when they are asked to tell which is which when all they have to go by is the sound, they cannot tell them apart. What is it that makes people behave this way? Why are so many people unwilling to simply say, "I can't hear any difference." In audiophile circles, your status and reputation within the peer group is determined by your ability to hear things that lesser audiophiles with ears with inferior gilding do not hear. If you are willing to say, "I can't tell them apart," you will be fortunate if you are not told that you are expected to stay around after the others have left, to help clean up all the mess. You may even be asked to clean the toilets, or clean the leaves from the pool using that big long-handled thing with the net on the end. I'm being silly, but what is actually true is that if most other people in the gathering say that they hear a difference in the two amplifiers and you do not agree with them and add a little bit of your own elaboration to what they have said, they're simply gonna stop talking to you. They will in fact treat you as though you don't belong in the group. You're not going to be invited back to the next meeting of the society. And you can't stand the thought of that, and wouldn't be able to stand that thought even without the rumor that you overheard that both Steve Guttenberg and Michael Fremer are planning to drop in unannounced at next month's meeting. You certainly don't want to miss that one. You'd best start talking about the difference in the sound of those two amplifiers, using the most arcane and elitist language that you've thus far been able to muster.

Nice write-up. Succinct comment to link to people who are wishy-washy about an amp's job. Might want to fix this, though:

Amplifiers are not musical instruments, and should be talked about in a manner that suggests commonality with musical instruments.

I'm sure you meant "and should not be talked about in a..."

 

[xykreinov]

Sauce is okay for people who like it.

True. But, I wish more people would come to see that tastier sauce of many more varieties can be had from their own DSP, instead of that from the baked-in distortion and tonality of poorly measuring components. Colorizing can be done in better ways.

 

[xykreinov]

Has anyone created a high end amplifier where they aim for it to initially measure as perfectly as possible but then provide the user with sound shaping options that can be bypassed or enabled, i.e. adding dsp modelling to emulate various distortions etc so users could modify according to taste? If implemented well, that could provide the best of both worlds and be flexible to individual tastes.

I'm very surprised nobody has mentioned the MiniDSP SHD Power to you. It's a solidly measuring amp that at least allows for lots of tonality modifications (without the need for another computer in the chain once done).

 

[MrPeabody]

Right. The first two quotes were generalizations of the attitude I've sometimes encountered here. When I got to your specific point, I DID address your specific point.

But the way you replied DID imply you were making a case for why amplifiers OUGHT to be neutral. The fact you said things like "in my opinion" does not automatically negate this. First, let's remember that the phrase "in my opinion" does not automatically denote "this is merely subjective."

blah, blah, blah

I went back and read what I had written, and the only thing I saw that bothered me was that I had inadvertently left out the word "not" in one sentence, which obviously changed the meaning of that sentence. It should have read:

"The problem with the perspective that Mr. D'Agostino expressed is the presumption that amplifiers ought to have any sound signature at all. In my opinion they should not. Amplifiers are not musical instruments, and should not be talked about in a manner that suggests commonality with musical instruments. The output of an amplifier should be a perfectly linear replication of the input.

What you are now saying may be the most pedantic thing I've ever encountered. You are suggesting that I should follow up every sentence I write to say clearly whether I regard it as subjective vs. an objective truth. You took it so far as to contrive a very silly argument to the effect that there is an important distinction between qualifying something by saying that it is an opinion, vs. qualifying something by saying that it is subjective. That's a rabbit hole that you're not going to drag me into.

I will admit that I did say in a definitive, absolute way that amplifiers should be accurate, i.e., in a way that conveyed the sense that I did not regard this as a mere opinion, but something that is true aside from my opinion. I think it is bizarre for you to take issue with my having said it that way. Most everyone (except evidently you) takes for granted that everything that everyone says, with the exception of mathematical statements and statements that are overtly connected with scientific endeavors, is their opinion. There is inherent vagueness in most everything that people say, with respect to whether they mean to say that it is their opinion or whether they mean to say that it is true in an absolute sense.

What truly matters here is whether the statement, that an amplifier should be accurate in order to faithfully replicate the sound fed to it, has merit. And there can be no question that this statement has strong merit. The reason is obvious. But rather than address the question of whether the statement has merit, you've gotten hung up on the question of whether I regard this as something that is subjective or something that is true in the absolute sense.

 

[MrPeabody]

Nice write-up. Succinct comment to link to people who are wishy-washy about an amp's job. Might want to fix this, though:

I'm sure you meant "and should not be talked about in a..."

Yes, that was an obvious error that I also discovered recently. I'll see if I can edit it, but I'm pretty sure that the window for doing that closed days ago. I hate when I do that.

 

[MattHooper]

Suggestion: some deep breaths before posting. You are getting in to the insulting zone. No need.

"No!", he said with an exclamation point. Yuch. This post of yours is very, very disingenuous.

The reason I wrote, "You are arguing that amplifiers ought to color the sound according to individual preference," is because this is PRECISELY what you had argued. For you to now claim otherwise is, well, to say it plainly, it is total B.S.

There is no substantive distinction between the stuff you wrote and my characterization of it, where I wrote, "You are arguing that amplifiers ought to color the sound according to individual preference." Setting aside people who have no preference for coloration, your position is indisputably that people who prefer a certain type of coloration should choose an amplifier that provides that type of coloration. How is this substantively different from my characterization, that you are arguing that amplifiers ought to color the sound according according to preference? THERE ISN'T ANY DIFFERENCE!!! Not even the tiniest sliver of a difference. Yet, now you are trying to argue that this isn't what you said. PUKE!

Actually, yeah, there was ambiguity to clear up in what you originally wrote, to which I replied. You don't seem to be aware of it. I'm trying to help.

Writing "You are arguing that amplifiers ought to color the sound according to individual preference" followed by your view that "any coloration of any sort is patently contrary to the purpose of the amplifier" can easily imply to the reader that I think amplifier designers ought to think of amp design in terms of coloration, not neutrality. Which is not my position. If you don't understand that is an inference a reader could and likely would take from what you wrote, it suggests you could work on clearer communication, so as to recognize when you are being ambiguous or implying things you don't mean to imply.

Now you have added: "Setting aside people who have no preference for coloration," but that is not what you wrote; you are adding that NOW.
Of course it's true that many people have preference for no coloration in an amp, some do. The problem is what you wrote originally was not in fact that clear. So I had to clear things up for you.

None of that has even the slightest tidbit of bearing on the question on which we are disagreeing.

Of course it does.

Do you remember writing this?

By the way, I basically agree with b1daly's point. If most all decent amplifiers don't sound identical, the differences are so minute in comparison to the differences among speakers that it doesn't make a lot of sense to fuss over amplifiers. (Except with respect to very basic considerations, power in particular, although even with respect to power I suspect that the amount of power that people think they need isn't rooted in reality.)

I explained why it does make sense for some people to "fuss" over small differences in amplifier sound. What may have minor significance to you, may have greater significance for someone else, hence the "fuss." Why did you ignore this? You seem to throw out all sorts of claims and shift around or ignore the original claim, as the claims are debated.

Speaking of that:

It seems bizarre to me that you would have thought that it should. It absolutely does not. The fact that the artist never has full control over what the listener hears does not detract from the fact that a necessary condition, for the listener to hear what the artist recorded, is for the amplifier to not color the sound. The only way that all that gibberish that you wrote would be relevant would be if it were an attempt to argue that this is not true.

No, my "gibberish" (deep breaths, remember) was warranted because what you ACTUALLY wrote before was this:

It is inarguably true that in order for the artist to have full control over what the listener hears, it is absolutely and fundamentally necessary for the amplifier to not color the sound.

Which was a sloppy phrasing which brings forth the problems I explained. An amplifier being neutral does not give an artist "full control over what the listener hears" due to the many variables between the mixing of the music and the consumer end, and that's even if the consumer is using a perfectly neutral amplifier.

Now, if what you want to word things better to avoid the implications of the original statement, fine. But please don't pretend that is exactly what you wrote to start off with.

In order for the amplifier to faithfully replicate the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, the amplifier needs to be accurate.

Uh...obviously, yes.

If that's all you ever wrote, we wouldn't be in this conversation.

There is really only one sincere argument contrary to what I wrote. It is this: Some people don't care whether an amplifier faithfully replicates the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, so long as they like the way it sounds.

But you wrote a lot about how an amplifier SHOULD perform.

Did you mean, more precisely, that you simply "prefer" that an amplifier be neutral? And that this had no more justification than "you like chocolate; I like vanilla?"

Or did you actually mean something stronger, making a case that an amplifier SHOULD be designed to be neutral? Not just to "suit your taste for neutrality" but for some broader goal that other reasonable ought to agree with?

See the difference? If you are arguing that amps SHOULD be designed to be neutral and accurate, that's perfectly fine of course. But when you do so, you'll be getting in to precisely the weeds I have outlined. It's true that "In order for the amplifier to faithfully replicate the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, the amplifier needs to be accurate." But...so what? What's the point, what is the relevance, of making that claim to our hobby? I mean, if it doesn't have relevance to the goals you or I or others have in this hobby, why are we even discussing "neutrality" as a goal?

Presumably it's only relevant to some goal you have in mind, which is why you care about it in the first place. And what is that goal?
Is it to "hear precisely what is on the recorded signal?"

Why? To what end? Is this strictly a science experiment to you?

Why is this relevant? Because if an actual straight pipeline of accuracy/artistic intent from artist to listener is in most cases impossible, and if coloration can come from other places in the consumer chain (e.g. speakers/rooms) that has implications for discussions about who is "opting for coloration over accuracy," how much is "too much" and why. Just how much is one really sacrificing *relative to the goal at hand* should he select an amp that is audibly colored?

Now, perhaps none of this is of actual interest to you. Perhaps you would only like to stick to dry observations like "In order for the amplifier to faithfully replicate the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, the amplifier needs to be accurate" without assessing any relevance to our hobby of audio gear/listening to music. But I think that would be very odd to say the least...and I'd wonder what any of us are doing here if we all talked that way, outside any larger context of relevance. Of course I don't think you actually think this way: doubtless you have goals in mind and thus why amps "should" be designed for neutrality. I'd likely agree with much of what you'd argue too, with some important caveats. Why then would you become so angry when someone tries to look at your claims in this context, to help put general claims of "neutrality/distortion" in context?

 

[MattHooper]

blah, blah, blah

Sorry you feel that way.

I have enjoyed some of your other posts. It's too bad I can't seem to get you interested in a..well...more interesting conversation than the one you seem to think we are having.

What truly matters here is whether the statement, that an amplifier should be accurate in order to faithfully replicate the sound fed to it, has merit.

That statement has all the merit of a tautology. That's like saying: "A bachelor SHOULD be unmarried in order to be a bachelor!" "Should" doesn't even enter in to it, because being unmarried is what it means to be a bachelor! Likewise with a statement that an amplifier "should" be accurate in order to faithfully replicate the sound signal fed to it. "Faithfully replicating the sound fed to it" is essentially what anyone around here would mean by "accurate." What does it add here?

Since I presume you don't really want to toss out tautologies, an actual statement that could have "merit" would be to remove the tautological repetition and you get:

What truly matters here is whether the statement, that an amplifier should be accurate, has merit.

Is that what you mean to say?

If so...yeah, certainly the statement has merit insofar as it's a completely valid question to discuss. But of course, that claim requires justification.

And that's just the question I've been addressing.

And there can be no question that this statement has strong merit. The reason is obvious.

No it's not "obvious."

IF you are merely going to produce an essentially tautological statement about amplifiers being accurate (as discussed above) you are not giving a "reason" for the statement. Tautologies are not "reasons." (MrPeabody would know this! )

But IF you are going to make a non-tautological claim, like "Amplifiers should be accurate" then the reasons are not simply "obvious." You should be able to give the reasoning. And...I've gone in to the implications of the reasons most give for the claim.

And I really did, in another post, honestly try to answer your self-expressed confusion as to why anyone would desire classic tube amp distortion
in their system. Was it not at all helpful in showing how it can be a reasonable choice for some other people?

Cheers.

 

[tomelex]

I enjoyed reading your post. Interestingly, I happen to strongly dislike anything on my steak except salt and black pepper!

Sauce is okay for people who like it. I never said that I disagreed with that. My issue was that, in the popular interpretation of what Mr. D'Agostino said, he said (he didn't really, I think ...) that so long as you like the sound of an amplifier, there is no reason to care about measurements. Again, I don't he actually meant that exactly, but this seems to be the popular interpretation. If for the sake of argument we assume that he really did say this, then this is what I disagree with it. I'm not sure I made the point as well as I could have, the first time, but it is simply that objective measurements are meaningful even if you like the way an amplifier sounds, the reason being that (to me anyway) it matters that an amplifier has the ability to accurately replicate the sound fed to it in the form of an electrical signal, and for people for whom this is important, the only way to be certain that an amplifier is accurate is by way of measurements. Now, I need to qualify this, because there is still work to be done before we know which measurements are strongly correlated with what we hear and which are not. The understanding of how harmonic distortion is audible is vastly improved over what it was a few decades ago. Notwithstanding that there is unquestionably uncertainty in this respect, the fact remains that objective measurements are the only way to know the accuracy of an amplifier, with any certainty. And I believe that accuracy matters, because in my philosophy for amplifiers (and for audio equipment in general), the sound at the output of the amplifier (or anything else) should simply be a faithful replication of the sound fed to the amplifier. To my way of thinking, there isn't any way that this is not the correct perspective. To view it differently would be to think of amplifiers much like musical instruments, and to my way of thinking, amplifiers are a different category of thing vs. musical instruments. (And vs. guitar amplifiers, which are a special case and which are part of the musical instrument.)

Oh! no no no no no, no salt or pepper on your steak dude, you are compromising it! ahahhahahhh So, i am a full believer in using a full spectrum of measurements to document your preferences, or even to document the accuracy of a replicating unit. There is nothing in plain old audio electronics we can not measure well past the degree of any ones hearing ability, hopefully there are not too many technically qualified on this forum that still believe there are some sorts of secrets and unknown things that we can not measure, I hope but would not put money on it though, been around far to long to think that would ever be the case.

The whole danged problem with audio is there are no real standards, its all subjective, from the selection of mics, to mixing and mastering, to the gear you choose based on industry agreed minimum specs (that are vague and woefully inadequate) or how it looks or how deep your pockets are and then what's in side your ear/brain interface. Staying on subject, amplifiers, Dan D and Nelson pass and all those guys know a lot about amplification and accuracy and they know something about marketing too. Why do you think these guys always talk about they listen to the amps, not just look at the specs?

They are in the business of selling products to put bread on their tables. Nelson Pass has some pretty awesome patents for op amp circuits from 30 years ago driving distortions down so low, and later specialized op amps designed by others like LME49724 are per the measurements they show in the data sheets virtually distortionless over the audio range with resistive loads. And that LME sounds good to me as well. Distortion well below what any swinging deek on this forum can hear. Wire with gain. Now, if you could get me an amp that did that with a real world load, AND the folks designing the speaker I purchased used that same amp, then we would have something to say about just making little squiggles into more bigger squiggles with no distortion added.

Trouble is, those guys designing speakers, what amps are they "voicing" their speakers against? There are just no standards, so its the wild west out here in audio land.

If we had standards, then folks would, I think, all want the best measuring, and the best and coolest looking stuff, and then purchase some kind of component etc that allows them to do any type of EQ, dynamics change, reverb, etc and then we would all be singing cum bi ya or however you spell it.

 

[Helicopter]

It is worth measuring Dan's stuff to ensure it performs acceptably, but no one buys this stuff for the sound or performance. Give me a break.

Any talk of a blind test is a bit unfair to the chassis and meters that make up the majority of the purchase price. If someone who cares about performance is even considering this stuff, a pair of Benchmark AHB2s is an obvious and better path.

The coloration on this is just a spin on appearance, which is where virtually all the appeal for potential buyers resides. I am not going to debate coloration. I like to have the options to play music transparently, and with various pieces of gear that color the sound. I love tubes because they look awesome.and they warm up your space with heat.

Personally, I think this stuff is some of the most gaudy and fantsy panted gear around, and I wouldn't have it. It reminds me of the Hummer H2 and other conspicuous consumption. I prefer the looks of many other brands.

It is distinct, so there is value there if you want to flaunt in a wide spray.

 

[mhardy6647]

in re: pineapple pizza...

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-call-for-humor.9679/page-46#post-641500

 

[Judas]

I think Dan has the right approach. I heard his amp and it is very good. It was driving the Wilson Sasha. I did not get goosebumps. That may have something to do with the music selections.
Ideally one would want a zero distortion amp. The question is how do you get there? Let us just assume his motives are pure for the sake of argument.
The question is how do do you get to that vanishingly low distortion? Negative feedback? Remember every time man solves a problem he creates another. Blind testing is a tool not an argument unto itself. It is kind of used as an audio parlor trick..

 

[mhardy6647]

I did not get goosebumps. That may have something to do with the music selections.

Well, not necessarily. I don't know about you, but I do not know how to measure gooseflesh.
E.g., RMS or peak?

 

[rdenney]

Well, not necessarily. I don't know about you, but I do not know how to measure gooseflesh.
E.g., RMS or peak?

Peak, without a doubt. And don't discount the Hair Standing On End Factor, either.

Rick "RMS, SchmarMS" Denney

 

[phoenixdogfan]

The output impedance isn't super low, so there could be some small frequency response errors with speakers having large impedance swings. I wouldn't call that "euphonic" since it will be different speaker to speaker. Possibly barely discernable in a rapid-switched level-matched test, but not particularly significant in actual use.

The surprising thing is the relatively high crossover distortion- there's no excuse for that in a modern amplifier. That said, it's not likely to be anywhere near an audible level. I'd be annoyed at paying huge $$$ for something with that design flaw, but I'm not Dan's target market.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

The output impedance isn't super low, so there could be some small frequency response errors with speakers having large impedance swings. I wouldn't call that "euphonic" since it will be different speaker to speaker. Possibly barely discernable in a rapid-switched level-matched test, but not particularly significant in actual use.

The surprising thing is the relatively high crossover distortion- there's no excuse for that in a modern amplifier. That said, it's not likely to be anywhere near an audible level. I'd be annoyed at paying huge $$$ for something with that design flaw, but I'm not Dan's target market.

I believe in retrospect that's what was happening with Harry Pearson's amplifier reviews (particularly tube amp reviews) in The Absolute Sound. One issue he would have some $25+ plus tube amp from CJ that he would give this extended phenomenological description on how it imparted a particular sound to his IRS Vs, and the next issue he would have another tube amp which he crowned as SOTA on the basis of how it presented a differing and "enhanced" view of the audio experience with an otherwise identical setup. And I'm convinced he was actually hearing something audible and measurable: To wit, the random and, in some cases, serendipitous interaction between each amp's output impedance curve and the impedance curve of the particular speaker he was mating it with.

Of course this discovery was nothing that had a wider usefulness to anyone not repeating his identical set up in the same acoustic environment.

Which means he was chasing his tail, and leading everyone taking his advice to do so as well. Talk about "circle of confusion."

 

[Sonny1]

Dan is selling mega bucks amps. They might be good but it’s hard to justify the price with measurements. You need a little “magic that cannot be measured” to sell the story he’s selling his customers. He really has no other option because his amps don’t measure better than ones costing a fraction of the price his amps sell for. They are audio jewelry for people who want to make a statement (the statement is I have lots of money to burn). I’m a fan of the looks.