High end Vintage SS amp vs the best Class D amps

[Goodman]

Slogans are easier than thought.

OK, overthinking is the worst enemy of good thinking. If applied to audio it's called over-engineering.

 

[JSmith]

Accurate is good, musical is better.

So get an accurate and transparent audio chain and add "musical" (distortion of the signal) to taste.

Why would one want a certain sound baked into an audio product?

Let's start from the top

You didn't address anything to be quite frank and haven't provided any data at all to support your assertions. What do they say about opinions again? Everyone has one... blah blah.



JSmith

 

[DSJR]

I was always into 'musicality' from domestic playback equipment (Hell, I was a Linnie for years and have always 'hummed/sung along with the tune and still do ) but was shocked many years ago when I started going to hear live small venue and pub-jazz in addition to orchestral performances in the Royal Festival Hall and a few badly seated Proms at the RAH (sitting next to the organ behind and to the left of the organ). The sound wasn't 'organic,' 'musical' as such and certainly not silky smooth and velvet in tone as so many audiophiles love. Many smaller UK amps claiming to be 'class A' (I'm thinking some if not all later Sugdens, Audio Innovations 500 valve integrated and the infamous Musical Fidelity A1 and A100 of old) sound as if a sonic blanket had been put over the tweeters, the sound all soft and slightly diffuse - I'm sure there are easily measurable reasons for this but correct as heard loive (or off master tape/file) it aint!

To me anyway, a badly conducted symphony CAN sound as if it's played by robots and small venue live jazz can be anything but overtly organic or musical - rather the opposite as the drum kit, sax and trumpet pins you to the back wall Massed strings can 'sound nasal as if they've got a cold' compared to the silky tones of some older speakers (the classic Quad '57 electrostaics make strings sound more like strings than the real thing but that's a one-off ) JBL lovers will know how good their better larger models were/are with percussion instruments - UK 'flat earth' models either had little to no bass at all, or the 'BBC Boomers' bloated and flopped the bass out in a boomy splodge, although Harbeth have improved in recently evolved models and Spendor lifted the upper mids to put some life back in, the result a refined 'Batman' curve (their designer's left now so no idea what future models will be like). The MUSIC should move you, NOT added sh*t from the playback system. the best measuring amps I've heard do seem to sound 'straight laced' as they don't alter the sound much of at all if they're happy with the speakers and volume levels. Dacs are a done deal really, althouygh it's great to see the cheapest ones fight to squeeze an extra inaudible dB or two SINAD figure here and there. Again, the 'nice sounding dacs' usually have severe flaws in the design which give the sonic colouration that audiophiles who never hear music live seem to like.

Apologies. Does any of the above make sense?

 

[SIY]

Again, the 'nice sounding dacs' usually have severe flaws in the design which give the sonic colouration that audiophiles who never hear music live seem to like.

Apologies. Does any of the above make sense?

Q: Can you give me an example of a "nice sounding DAC"? Curious what the producer might have done.

 

[DSJR]

I suppose I had in mind confections like the Totaldac that was reviewed here a while back. Going back to Jurassic times the earlier 'Bitsream' players all had a kind of 'organic softness' to the sound which one either loved or hated (Marantz CD10, Philips CD 840 were two which stuck in my mind - all old and maybe past it now). The Naim CD-S2/XPS player transcended these and had real bass power and authority I remember, which worked its magic into any system at almost any price, but which did it with a slightly 'creamy' tone according to Martin Colloms when he tested it back then. My thoughts were that these days are gone now and modern dacs perform (and sound) broadly similar if the filters are set right..

 

[tmtomh]

Let's start from the top, Accurate is good, musical is better.

Accurate is musical.

 

[Count Arthur]

The Benchmark is underpowered for a stereo power amplifier.

Were you in the artillery?

 

[Goodman]

I was always into 'musicality' from domestic playback equipment (Hell, I was a Linnie for years and have always 'hummed/sung along with the tune and still do ) but was shocked many years ago when I started going to hear live small venue and pub-jazz in addition to orchestral performances in the Royal Festival Hall and a few badly seated Proms at the RAH (sitting next to the organ behind and to the left of the organ). The sound wasn't 'organic,' 'musical' as such and certainly not silky smooth and velvet in tone as so many audiophiles love. Many smaller UK amps claiming to be 'class A' (I'm thinking some if not all later Sugdens, Audio Innovations 500 valve integrated and the infamous Musical Fidelity A1 and A100 of old) sound as if a sonic blanket had been put over the tweeters, the sound all soft and slightly diffuse - I'm sure there are easily measurable reasons for this but correct as heard loive (or off master tape/file) it aint!

To me anyway, a badly conducted symphony CAN sound as if it's played by robots and small venue live jazz can be anything but overtly organic or musical - rather the opposite as the drum kit, sax and trumpet pins you to the back wall Massed strings can 'sound nasal as if they've got a cold' compared to the silky tones of some older speakers (the classic Quad '57 electrostaics make strings sound more like strings than the real thing but that's a one-off ) JBL lovers will know how good their better larger models were/are with percussion instruments - UK 'flat earth' models either had little to no bass at all, or the 'BBC Boomers' bloated and flopped the bass out in a boomy splodge, although Harbeth have improved in recently evolved models and Spendor lifted the upper mids to put some life back in, the result a refined 'Batman' curve (their designer's left now so no idea what future models will be like). The MUSIC should move you, NOT added sh*t from the playback system. the best measuring amps I've heard do seem to sound 'straight laced' as they don't alter the sound much of at all if they're happy with the speakers and volume levels. Dacs are a done deal really, althouygh it's great to see the cheapest ones fight to squeeze an extra inaudible dB or two SINAD figure here and there. Again, the 'nice sounding dacs' usually have severe flaws in the design which give the sonic colouration that audiophiles who never hear music live seem to like.

Apologies. Does any of the above make sense?

Good description of the BBC curve. BBC engineers only cared about accurate voice timber, thus ignoring all other aspects. They did that with heavy plastic cone drivers (Kef, Rogers, Splendor and now Harbeth which are a nice polite old school speaker, outrageous ly over- priced.

 

[SIY]

I suppose I had in mind confections like the Totaldac that was reviewed here a while back. Going back to Jurassic times the earlier 'Bitsream' players all had a kind of 'organic softness' to the sound which one either loved or hated (Marantz CD10, Philips CD 840 were two which stuck in my mind - all old and maybe past it now). The Naim CD-S2/XPS player transcended these and had real bass power and authority I remember, which worked its magic into any system at almost any price, but which did it with a slightly 'creamy' tone according to Martin Colloms when he tested it back then. My thoughts were that these days are gone now and modern dacs perform (and sound) broadly similar if the filters are set right..

Is there any actual ears-only no-peeking evidence?

 

[Goodman]

Were you in the artillery?

Yes that's me alright! have you ever been to a live concert? It's LOUD

 

[Goodman]

Is there any actual ears-only no-peeking evidence?

Old dac,new dac, yada, yada! you can get the sound you want changing opamps , much cheaper than buying a new dac.

 

[dfuller]

Who wants accurate?

I do.

Are the microphones used accurate?

Within reason. Mics are usually chosen both for polar pattern and their inherent sound. Unless you're recording documentary style (which very little is), "accuracy" isn't really the question here.

Is the mixing board accurate?

Very little is mixed large format any more. DAWs run at at least 32 bit float internally. But, for the little that is mixed on large format analog consoles, the good ones (read: modern AMS Neve, SSL, Audient, API, etc etc) easily clear .01% THD+N, which (again) is better than even the best tape machines.

Is your Dac accurate ?

Yep.

Digital recordings, eliminate information, harmonics, side information, natural distortions, overshoots, and decay time.

No, they don't. Digital is higher fidelity than any analog recording method. I swear I already said that the absolute best tape machines had about 13 bits worth of dynamic range... Which is significantly worse than the 40 year old CD standard. They don't eliminate side information, that's nonsense. Digital is truly "what goes in is what comes out". Tape has a characteristic sound, digital does not.

 

[voodooless]

None of those studio things matters at all. It's the artist and mastering engineer that makes it sound the way they feel is best. This process does not need to be accurate, because it's artistic freedom.

If you don't want accurate reproduction of this, then you're on the seat of the mastering engineer pretending to know better.

 

[Goodman]

None of those studio things matters at all. It's the artist and mastering engineer that makes it sound the way they feel is best. This process does not need to be accurate, because it's artistic freedom.

If you don't want accurate reproduction of this, then you're on the seat of the mastering engineer pretending to know better.

The first part of your statement is,of course, correct.
The second phrase merits argument, because mastering is often done on crappy little speakers. I know of artist who give final approval while listening on car sound or even their smart phone.

 

[voodooless]

The first part of your statement is,of course, correct.
The second phrase merits argument, because mastering is often done on crappy little speakers. I know of artist who give final approval while listening on car sound or even their smart phone.

Welcome to the loudness war.. victims of that war cannot be healed sadly.

 

[HammerSandwich]

I think the gainclone type chip amps come a lot closer to a really good ClassA/B amplifier than a Class D.

You believe that a class-AB amplifier is closer to a class-AB amplifier than something that's totally different?

 

[tmtomh]

The first part of your statement is,of course, correct.
The second phrase merits argument, because mastering is often done on crappy little speakers. I know of artist who give final approval while listening on car sound or even their smart phone.

You make a good point - but your argument depends on an assumption that has been persuasively rebutted many times: even if your desire or intent is to improve sonically upon what the artist, producer, and mastering engineer created, three problems crop up:

1. Not every recording needs sonic tinkering/improvement - so some might sound better to you with your system's coloration, but others will not sound as good as they might if you played them back on a more neutral/accurate system.
2. Even if you are convinced that every recording needs tinkering, the particular problems/deficiencies in the sonics vary widely across recordings. There is no single kind of coloration, distortion, or "voicing" one can build into an audio playback system that will reliably or consistently improve the sound the way one wants. Any such coloration will improve the sound on some recordings, have little or no effect on others, and worsen the sound on others.
3. Finally, in terms of proposing a standard - a principle by which we should evaluate the performance of audio equipment - this notion of "musicality" cannot work because it is subjective. What musicality means to you - your personal preference - is of course the most important thing for you, and whatever system gives it to you the most often for the least money and with the most convenience is of course the best system for you. But your ability to gain reliable equipment-purchasing insights from others, and their ability to gain reliable insights from you, becomes broken if everyone uses their own personal idea of "musicality" to communicate with each other. Everyone has different preferences and no one can know if your "warmth" is someone else's "veiled," "tubby," or "wooly"; and no one can know if the positive sonic aspects of equipment that you tout are also accompanied by negative aspects that maybe you didn't notice, neglected to mention, or didn't think were a big deal but are a deal-breaker for someone else.

Note that none of these three issues requires us to get into an argument about blind listening tests - even if we assume for the moment that differences you claim to have heard between different pieces of equipment are actual differences that you could consistently detect with statistical significance in a proper blind test, these three problems still remain if we substitute "musicality" for "fidelity" when we communicate with each other about the performance of audio playback equipment.

 

[SIY]

Old dac,new dac, yada, yada! you can get the sound you want changing opamps , much cheaper than buying a new dac.

If you choose opamps based on ignorance, you can indeed change the sound- oscillation can destroy a lot of downstream components. If you really know what you're doing, you can change them and not make things worse. But if you really know what you're doing, you'd laugh at the idea.

 

[Goodman]

You make a good point - but your argument depends on an assumption that has been persuasively rebutted many times: even if your desire or intent is to improve sonically upon what the artist, producer, and mastering engineer created, three problems crop up:

1. Not every recording needs sonic tinkering/improvement - so some might sound better to you with your system's coloration, but others will not sound as good as they might if you played them back on a more neutral/accurate system.
2. Even if you are convinced that every recording needs tinkering, the particular problems/deficiencies in the sonics vary widely across recordings. There is no single kind of coloration, distortion, or "voicing" one can build into an audio playback system that will reliably or consistently improve the sound the way one wants. Any such coloration will improve the sound on some recordings, have little or no effect on others, and worsen the sound on others.
3. Finally, in terms of proposing a standard - a principle by which we should evaluate the performance of audio equipment - this notion of "musicality" cannot work because it is subjective. What musicality means to you - your personal preference - is of course the most important thing for you, and whatever system gives it to you the most often for the least money and with the most convenience is of course the best system for you. But your ability to gain reliable equipment-purchasing insights from others, and their ability to gain reliable insights from you, becomes broken if everyone uses their own personal idea of "musicality" to communicate with each other. Everyone has different preferences and no one can know if your "warmth" is someone else's "veiled," "tubby," or "wooly"; and no one can know if the positive sonic aspects of equipment that you tout are also accompanied by negative aspects that maybe you didn't notice, neglected to mention, or didn't think were a big deal but are a deal-breaker for someone else.

Note that none of these three issues requires us to get into an argument about blind listening tests - even if we assume for the moment that differences you claim to have heard between different pieces of equipment are actual differences that you could consistently detect with statistical significance in a proper blind test, these three problems still remain if we substitute "musicality" for "fidelity" when we communicate with each other about the performance of audio playback equipment.

Of course everyone's taste, systems, and rooms are different, and I don't want to alter the artistic content, but if I follow your logic to the letter, it means that I should listen with the same little crappy speakers or similar that the content was mastered on, and who's goal is to saturate radio stations with a continuous compressed blast with no dynamic contrast. A lot of Classic recordings are now being remastered for this reason. Steven Wilson an artist, musician and recording engineer is highly solicited for this task. The same content remastered is now enjoyable on a large audiophile system.

 

[Gregss]

Slogans are easier than thought.

IMHO - Accurate is hearing what the artist and his recording engineer wanted you to hear. If you like added distortion(s), that is fine. Just that most of us want to hear what was intended, not some smoothed over, homogenized or modified music. Accurate is what most of us are after.