surroundman
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Good work, Amir. Reviews like this are necessary in order to stop presenting this "op amp rolling"as a feature by the manufacturers.
I could but it is not work that I enjoy doing. Maybe members can sign up to produce as anyone with a capture card is equipped to do so.Hi @amirm, in order to help people experience these results rather than just read about them could you make a level matched recording of a music sample using each op amp and share them? With all the competing claims floating around it is hard for people to accept these results just based on reading and looking at graphs.
I won't name the manufacturer, but for instance a brand that offers Purifi 1ET6525SA amps offers a myriad of OP Amp options. The Sonic Imagery 990 adds $300 to the price of a monoblock build. The Weiss adds $500.They are not stupid at all. It is just that they don't don't know the underpinning of the technology so go by marketing of companies and lay intuition (that if it is more expensive, it must be better).
this is an important point, almost philosophical: very often without logical bases and without knowing what to look for you only risk making changes that make things worse... or that don't improve them at all. I think it's one of the bases that lead people to the disease of continuous upgrade, which very often in reality never is.knowing if a change improves anything. Or worse yet, made things worse.
Listening to music can be a magical experience and people want "more magic" in their lives and are told they can get it with better/ different op amps and tubes. The concept of negative feedback eliminating differences between different op amps and tubes is not widely understood.I never understood what op-amp or tube rolling should deliver. Even if you want to change the frequency reponse of your device, just use EQ.
The feature itself is not the problem—no more than the internal RGB lighting of the A5, or the separate, swappable PSU (light rolling? PSU rolling?).Good work, Amir. Reviews like this are necessary in order to stop presenting this "op amp rolling"as a feature by the manufacturers.
Has anyone objectively validated this company is capable of producing anything worth buying (as upgrades)?Sonic Imagery
No.
There are huge differences between op-amps, but which parameters are relevant depends on the application— and if or how much this would translate to better output performance.
But there totally can be a "better" op-amp.
This is like saying there are no better DACs because your wife doesn’t hear the difference from the kitchen while you're comparing an "expensive" DAC to an off-the-shelf, mass-engineered DAC.
I call this "the gulf between the designers and the internet"so would that then mean, that for given workload, like audio dac, there would be a virtually 'one-size-fits-all' opamp design? and other design exist for the purpose of different workloads, like the one for "video"? that sounds like it make sense
I've seen so many times I can predict the future for youHi @amirm, in order to help people experience these results rather than just read about them could you make a level matched recording of a music sample using each op amp and share them? With all the competing claims floating around it is hard for people to accept these results just based on reading and looking at graphs.
I think until we Test it we never know.So you think someone who has built a state of the art power stage, left room on the table on the front-end buffer/gain stage?