Master Thread: Are Measurements Everything or Nothing?

[antcollinet]

Are what I’m trying to call out. They sound very close to implying that he has golden ears.

And you are missing my point.


Not when we are talking about devices which routinely measure as audibly distorting.

He is essentially saying - when they are designed well - he can't tell them as different (not better than) solid state (no golden ears needed - he is literally saying he cant hear a difference). This is what we would expect. When they are designed badly - distortion generators - he can hear that - also to be expected. He is not claiming to be able to hear anything that the measurements show should be inaudible.

 

[Mort]

I'm saying that I doubt anyone could pick whether a tube or solid state amp is playing if the only information they have is the sound (ie the entire setup is behind an acoustically transparent curtain so that they have no idea what the components are).

Your are just trolling. You even said you were joking but now you've doubled and tripled down because I guess you think this is fun.

 

[Jim Taylor]

I'm saying that I doubt anyone could pick whether a tube or solid state amp is playing if the only information they have is the sound (ie the entire setup is behind an acoustically transparent curtain so that they have no idea what the components are).

I take it that this is the situation that you are describing: you hear music playing, but cannot see the components. There is no switching or interruption to provide a comparison, the listener knows nothing about the speaker being used, and the listener is not familiar with the selection being played. Under these circumstances, it is perfectly reasonable to say that the listener cannot tell whether the amplifier used is a sold-state amplifier or a performant tube amplifier. After all, any audible characteristics might be attributed to the speaker used or the recording characteristics of the selection being played.

I thought that perhaps you were talking about a blinded but switched comparison between solid-state and tube gear ... including non-performant tube gear. That's quite different.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

Your are just trolling. You even said you were joking but now you've doubled and tripled down because I guess you think this is fun.

Those were not my exact words.
These were.

I’m half serious. I think people can overestimate what is egregious. I suspect in a lot of cases valve amp measurements may look horrible but in a proper ABX they may be really hard to tell apart from a superbly measuring amp

I’ve been trying to explain what I meant. If that’s “doubling and tripling down” then I’m clearly not doing a great job of it.
If you think it’s trolling then I’ve clearly done an awful job of explaining what I mean.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

I take it that this is the situation that you are describing: you hear music playing, but cannot see the components. There is no switching or interruption to provide a comparison, the listener knows nothing about the speaker being used, and the listener is not familiar with the selection being played. Under these circumstances, it is perfectly reasonable to say that the listener cannot tell whether the amplifier used is a sold-state amplifier or a performant tube amplifier. After all, any audible characteristics might be attributed to the speaker used or the recording characteristics of the selection being played.

Exactly. So all I’m saying is that if Amir couldn’t pick a valve amp in that blinded scenario, in a sighted scenario any opinion he has about the valve amp (that he can see) is purely anecdotal.


Even knowing that a valve amp is playing (as Amir would have), does not allow you to say that a particular aspect of the sound in that room is caused by that amp or that a solid state amp would sound better. Unless you compare, level matched and blind and only change the amp, I don’t think anyone can say that a solid state amp would sound better (except as an anecdotal opinion).

 

[Mort]

Exactly. So all I’m saying is that if Amir couldn’t pick a valve amp in that blinded scenario, in a sighted scenario any opinion he has about the valve amp (that he can see) is purely anecdotal.

This isn't what we were discussing. We were discussing poorly performing amps not any amp. We've said that at least four times.

 

[IPunchCholla]

I’ve tried searching for it, but somewhere on this site are the files to do a blind comparison between a pretty poor tube amp and (I think) no amp at all. I just remember that I could NOT distinguish the two.

I would take Amirs statement to mean most of the time he hears no difference at all. Occasionally he hears distortion that indicates a tube amp in the chain. He has basically never heard noticeable distortion from a solid state amp.

One person is saying “Wait, can he do that? Can he identify the source of distortion that way, in dissimilar setups far apart in time? Shouldn’t we challenge that, even though it is Amir?

Anyway, I don’t see anything controversial on either side.

Edit to add not.

 

[RDoc]

It seems to me that the issue this tread supposedly is addressing is more like: can people tell the difference between components, say amps, that both measure within the range of accepted inaudibility and how far apart do the measurements have to be for them to be distinguishable. IMHO, the point to the measurements and how they are interpreted is to give people an idea of how the components will perform without having to go out and listen and compare them in person. What measurements to include is certainly a very valid and interesting area of discussion.

The alternative to measurements is the golden ears of published audiophiles (audiofools?). Floyd Toole has written extensively about doing actual blind testing of highly subjectively rated speakers against well measured speakers and the well measured ones win. Of course, lots of people are quite happy with systems that when compared side by side to high quality systems sound terrible.

If a tube amp and a solid state amp both measure within acceptable limits, who cares what the technology is? If the goal is accurate sound reproduction, buy the cheaper one and use the money saved for speakers (that measure well).

 

[Newman]

I would take Amirs statement to mean most of the time he hears no difference at all. Occasionally

"many times" link

he hears distortion that indicates a tube amp in the chain. He has basically never heard noticeable distortion from a solid state amp.

Yes, and I think the other thing he especially wanted to dismiss, was the notion that valve amps can deliver some 'special magic' sound quality.

He did also mention that he is assuming to have good speakers when he says valves will never 'sound better'. Otherwise, one might stumble onto a lucky synergism where a valve amp slightly 'helps' a speaker that is not reasonably neutral.

cheers

 

[Axo1989]

I’ve tried searching for it, but somewhere on this site are the files to do a blind comparison between a pretty poor tube amp and (I think) no amp at all. I just remember that I could NOT distinguish the two.

I would take Amirs statement to mean most of the time he hears no difference at all. Occasionally he hears distortion that indicates a tube amp in the chain. He has basically never heard noticeable distortion from a solid state amp.

One person is saying “Wait, can he do that? Can he identify the source of distortion that way, in dissimilar setups far apart in time? Shouldn’t we challenge that, even though it is Amir?

Anyway, I don’t see anything controversial on either side.

Edit to add not.

You may be remembering this thread posted by @GXAlan employing a budget 300B SET amp vs Topping D90 (as 'straight wire with gain'). He calculated SINAD for the former = 38 dB at levels used to make the samples.

I'd possibly never heard a valve amp—SET or otherwise—prior. Three music selections, being prog rock from Yes, a sparse audiophile spoken word number and a jazzy thing from LaLaLand. I found I could hear a number of sonic characteristics/differences and correctly identified the amps in all three cases. I recall only a handful of people did that.

Careful listening on headphones for sure (I used fairly neutral AirPods Max initially but wasn't so sure about the LLL example until I tried more colourful Sony Z1R) but not impossible. Certainly the measurements the OP provided showed differences that you could expect may be audible. I can understand people who could hear different characteristics may well prefer the valve amp rendering, and I appreciated it most listening to the LLL track via Z1R which did have some so-called magic. Even though I preferred the clearer versions personally.

Apart from the generally interesting demonstration of sonics, my other takeaway was that a few of the more strident SINAD-inistas that post here really are bags of piss and wind—afflicted with a narcissism of inaudible differences. And note that I couldn't differentiate a later comparison using classical. Which has helped me not take things too seriously.

 

[drewdawg999]

Apart from the generally interesting demonstration of sonics, my other takeaway was that a few of the more strident SINAD-inistas that post here really are bags of piss and wind—afflicted with a narcissism of inaudible differences. And note that I couldn't differentiate a later comparison using classical. Which has helped me not take things too seriously.

I'm with you, I'm starting to think SINAD is the wrong units. THD+N seems to demonstrate the difference in sound quality better, which is inaudible nearly all of the time. Personally I don't hear distortion until around 8%, corresponding to a SINAD of 22dB. I'm easy and still trust my ears for better or worse, sound quality is strongly tied to mood and level of dopamine release. So tube amp SINAD in the 30s is transparent to me and my aging ears, as is vinyl.

I like measurements as another data point, but not the only one. It's nice to keep the snake oil in check, and to maximize value. But sometimes I don't know what to think anymore, just that following standards and ideals is not for the strong. I don't believe our ear-brain system to be totally unreliable, that's just an average of humanity. The average person is also a dumb, judgmental asshole, a face in the crowd, a pawn of conventional society. I think leaving normalcy helps me hear and think better.

 

[MattHooper]

You may be remembering this thread posted by @GXAlan employing a budget 300B SET amp vs Topping D90 (as 'straight wire with gain'). He calculated SINAD for the former = 38 dB at levels used to make the samples.

I'd possibly never heard a valve amp—SET or otherwise—prior. Three music selections, being prog rock from Yes, a sparse audiophile spoken word number and a jazzy thing from LaLaLand. I found I could hear a number of sonic characteristics/differences and correctly identified the amps in all three cases. I recall only a handful of people did that.

Careful listening on headphones for sure (I used fairly neutral AirPods Max initially but wasn't so sure about the LLL example until I tried more colourful Sony Z1R) but not impossible. Certainly the measurements the OP provided showed differences that you could expect may be audible. I can understand people who could hear different characteristics may well prefer the valve amp rendering, and I appreciated it most listening to the LLL track via Z1R which did have some so-called magic. Even though I preferred the clearer versions personally.

Apart from the generally interesting demonstration of sonics, my other takeaway was that a few of the more strident SINAD-inistas that post here really are bags of piss and wind—afflicted with a narcissism of inaudible differences. And note that I couldn't differentiate a later comparison using classical. Which has helped me not take things too seriously.

I brought up my experience at my friend’s house listening to small Totem floor standing speakers that seemed a wonderfully “synergistic” (yeah I’ll use that word, try and stop me! ) match with a Fezz Audio 300B based amp. We’d heard them on a Hegel ss amp and this tube amp and they struck me as good/pedestrian on the SS, but gorgeous sounding on the tubes - to the point I couldn’t get myself out of the listening chair. And that I enjoyed the combination probably more than most of the systems my friend has had through the years.

The Fezz amplifier measurements suggest audible deviations to be very plausible:

Master Thread: Are Measurements Everything or Nothing?

Did I mention that even though I'm 70, I have to keep resisting the advances from Sydney Sweeney? Yesterday, on an entirely different forum, I learned that if you make a typo in her name, you get Sydneys weeney.

www.audiosciencereview.com

I don’t know if it was strictly the sonic changes rendered by this amplifier, or whether there was some mix of yummy biases…. But I would absolutely have no hesitation calling the sound difference
“ magical” - not in terms of suggesting they were doing something unmeasurable, but in terms of the level of subjective effect it had for my perception/listening pleasure.

(Uh-oh, I snuck another ASR-hated term in… better put on my tomatoes-resistant plastic hoodie…)

 

[rdenney]

I'm with you, I'm starting to think SINAD is the wrong units. THD+N seems to demonstrate the difference in sound quality better, which is inaudible nearly all of the time. Personally I don't hear distortion until around 8%, corresponding to a SINAD of 22dB. I'm easy and still trust my ears for better or worse, sound quality is strongly tied to mood and level of dopamine release. So tube amp SINAD in the 30s is transparent to me and my aging ears, as is vinyl.

I like measurements as another data point, but not the only one. It's nice to keep the snake oil in check, and to maximize value. But sometimes I don't know what to think anymore, just that following standards and ideals is not for the strong. I don't believe our ear-brain system to be totally unreliable, that's just an average of humanity. The average person is also a dumb, judgmental asshole, a face in the crowd, a pawn of conventional society. I think leaving normalcy helps me hear and think better.

It depends on the signal. When listening to 1-KHz sine waves, I can easily hear the harmonic overtones accompanying 1% distortion vs. 0.001% distortion (but played through an amp not nearly that good). 1% distortion is a SINAD of 40 dB, because SINAD (signal over noise and distortion) [/i]is[/i] THD+N.

The overtones on a 1-KHz sine wave at 25 dB SINAD are loud and obvious compared to the tone with 40 dB SINAD.

(I conducted this test comparing 1V signals from a very old Kikusui signal generator, a budget Tektronix tone generator, and the reference oscillator in my HP339a distortion analyzer. I used an HP8903b distortion analyzer to measure the distortion. The tones were played through an amp with a measured SINAD of 55 dB, which, by the way, is a great-sounding vintage Kenwood amp.)

Energetic and tonally diverse music played loudly will mask a lot of that distortion and noise, and with music my ability to hear differences is limited to a SINAD in the mid-30’s. But if one instrument of relatively simple tone, like, say, a flute, holds a note, the difference might become apparent.

If I’m greatly amplifying a small signal—40 dB would be a typical combined gain from a preamp and an amp at full crank—low distortion in that signal might get loud enough to hear. That’s one of the techniques for hearing low-level distortion: gain-riding the quiet bits.

All my amps sound great in terms of distortion and frequency response. Quiescent noise differs, as does power capability.

Rick “calibrates his hearing with measurements” Denney

 

[IPunchCholla]

You may be remembering this thread posted by @GXAlan employing a budget 300B SET amp vs Topping D90 (as 'straight wire with gain'). He calculated SINAD for the former = 38 dB at levels used to make the samples.

I'd possibly never heard a valve amp—SET or otherwise—prior. Three music selections, being prog rock from Yes, a sparse audiophile spoken word number and a jazzy thing from LaLaLand. I found I could hear a number of sonic characteristics/differences and correctly identified the amps in all three cases. I recall only a handful of people did that.

Careful listening on headphones for sure (I used fairly neutral AirPods Max initially but wasn't so sure about the LLL example until I tried more colourful Sony Z1R) but not impossible. Certainly the measurements the OP provided showed differences that you could expect may be audible. I can understand people who could hear different characteristics may well prefer the valve amp rendering, and I appreciated it most listening to the LLL track via Z1R which did have some so-called magic. Even though I preferred the clearer versions personally.

Apart from the generally interesting demonstration of sonics, my other takeaway was that a few of the more strident SINAD-inistas that post here really are bags of piss and wind—afflicted with a narcissism of inaudible differences. And note that I couldn't differentiate a later comparison using classical. Which has helped me not take things too seriously.

Thank you! That’s the one. I didn’t try headphones, only speakers. I’m pretty amazed how bad I am hearing distortion via music compared to sine (-15dB and -47dB respectively).

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

This isn't what we were discussing. We were discussing poorly performing amps not any amp. We've said that at least four times.

Unless you mean the royal "we" I don't recall agreeing to that restriction.
But let's run with it for a bit.

As I said earlier, and as subsequent posters have agreed, in order to be audible, the level of performance has to be a lot worse than most people expect (in post 16,594 "music compared to sine (-15dB and -47dB respectively)"). Amir, presumably can do better than this with his training.

Now let's assume Amir walks into a room at a hifi show which has a valve amp playing. If Amir knows it's a valve amp, I hope it's not controversial to say that this could bias his opinion. It could lead to a false positive (for example "I don't like valve amps so I'm biased towards hearing distortion even if this particular amp is audibly transparent"). No training can remove that sort of bias.

Also, as I've mentioned before, the environment is not controlled so there may be other factors. Amir may correctly hear distortion but may incorrectly attribute it to the amp. Some of these super high-end rooms could quite possibly have a DAC that is poorly performing and is the cause of what he is hearing. If we are discussing poorly performing amps then we need to control for other variables (such as poorly performing DACs)

So again, I'm not sure what is controversial about wondering whether Amir's comments about valve and solid state amps were based on controlled conditions

 

[JSmith]

I'm saying that I doubt anyone could pick whether a tube or solid state amp is playing if the only information they have is the sound (ie the entire setup is behind an acoustically transparent curtain so that they have no idea what the components are).

Agree... what they could pick, if a trained listener, is high levels of harmonic or intermodulation distortion.

Your are just trolling.

Nah, ol' mate isn't a troll, just interested in detailed discussion, as many of us are here.

somewhere on this site are the files to do a blind comparison

Yeah that was the @GXAlan thread... I picked the difference each time, but sort of preferred the one with the HF rolloff, which can of course be done with EQ and not baked into an amp.


JSmith

 

[CD2]

Agree... what they could pick, if a trained listener, is high levels of harmonic or intermodulation distortion.

Nah, ol' mate isn't a troll, just interested in detailed discussion, as many of us are here.

Yeah that was the @GXAlan thread... I picked the difference each time, but sort of preferred the one with the HF rolloff, which can of course be done with EQ and not baked into an amp.


JSmith

This. To be pedantic: tube/solidstate alone is not too useful a distinction. For example Naim amps are solid state, but carefully designed for audible 2nd order harmonic distortion because their fans want it. OTOH I've heard tube amps (e.g. Manley) that were much less "tubey" in sound than, say, Cary. Circuit design matters!

But. If you look at the tube amps that are actually produced commercially, they are mainly made for customers who *like* 2nd order distortion etc. Tubes seem to lend themselves to designing circuits that do that. The difference shows up plainly in measurements, and it's also dead easy to hear.

Genuine question: are there commercially-available tube amps that don't test with audible distortion?

Some people really *like* colored sound and by gum, they should have it and enjoy it. This site caters to folks who don't.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

This site caters to folks who don't.

Yes and no. My view is that if you want colored sound it's still useful to start with neutral equipment so you can color it as you wish rather than being locked into the manufacturer's choice. But yeah I understand what you mean for sure.

 

[CD2]

Yes and no. My view is that if you want colored sound it's still useful to start with neutral equipment so you can color it as you wish rather than being locked into the manufacturer's choice. But yeah I understand what you mean for sure.

Makes sense! The Schiit Freya is an interesting example -- you can use the preamp to season music to taste. The day can't be far off when someone will sell a class-D amp that lets you dial in any distortion profile you like.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

Makes sense! The Schiit Freya is an interesting example -- you can use the preamp to season music to taste. The day can't be far off when someone will sell a class-D amp that lets you dial in any distortion profile you like.

even if you don't have an amp with that kind of control, it's trivial nowadays do do so with a mac/pc/linux machine. hell, you can make aphex twin sound like he was recording on wax cylinders if you want.