I would also just add Floyd Tool's classic Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms to that list.
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- Thread starter Lab_Experiment
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I would also just add Floyd Tool's classic Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms to that list.
Not sure if you are still around - in case you are: Please, please be careful - with that sort of experimentation you could permanently destroy your hearing before you've even heard the sound that destroys it.
Even a power on or off thump could do it. Eg a power cut while listening.
You seriously need to think about the safety of what you are doing.
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@Lab_Experiment , if you want to experiment with the tactility of sound, you may want to look into tactile transducers:
They are not only useful for making your couch rumble. They could also be used closer to the body (with care). And may lead to other fun side projects. When mounted to a larger board, they can be used as speakers as well. Within their limitations, they seem to work quite well.
Exciters & Tactile Transducers
Discover concealable, universal speaker solutions with tactile exciters that reproduce sound through almost any rigid surface you can apply them to.
www.parts-express.com
They are not only useful for making your couch rumble. They could also be used closer to the body (with care). And may lead to other fun side projects. When mounted to a larger board, they can be used as speakers as well. Within their limitations, they seem to work quite well.
Holmz
Major Contributor
I think that those are called butt shakers, and not called head shakers?
Have a look at resonance frequency of the body and there the ocular globe
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Resonance-frequencies-of-human-body-organs_tbl1_274471590
So not only deafness but also blindness may occur!
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Resonance-frequencies-of-human-body-organs_tbl1_274471590
So not only deafness but also blindness may occur!
Well, luckily they are tactile transducers, no need to hear or see them
I was referring to the head-in-the-box method, not the shakers.Well, luckily they are tactile transducers, no need to hear or see them
I guess, it might still apply
I'll do better:
You're a mess, specifically, you're a bias-confirmation-slash-attention-seeker wasting everyone's time, and I predict you'll be gone soon.
You're also a bad speller.
OP
Lab_Experiment
Member
- Thread Starter
- #90
Someone said they were eating popcorn yesterday so with an expecting audience perhaps things tend to get a little more, shall I say, "cinematic" than what is absolutely strictly necessary. I still stand by the things I said. Sorry to the popcorn people. What happened that was likely the peak of my performance and ambition on tape. The rest of my efforts will merely be an attempt to get a genuine response from someone who actually has the ability to answer the questions I am asking, which put as plainly and simply as possible is this:
1. Given a driver similar to the ts-b400pro which has a 500w nominal 200w RMS rating and 106dB sensitivity, would I hear the difference between a benchmark AHB2(A/B) or a NCx500(D) at any frequency, but especially at the ever so critical 10kHz-20kHz range at ANY volume level and distance? Does the answer change at a 108dB tweeter because I found one and may buy it?
2. What is the THD+N of hearing? Where does it begin? An article or thread would be appreciated. I searched on the forum quickly and didn't see anything that jumped out at me. There may be a specific wording I'm not considering to find this.
3. It should be stated again: I don't care if two speakers sound more different than two amplifiers, I care if two amplifiers sound different. You are insulting your own intelligence to say anything more about speakers. Maybe some of you don't have a clue about what it means to be respectable. Don't ask God or Allah or the infinite void to save you if that's the case. A future with increasing dangerous technology is going to be increasingly unforgiving to the careless idiots. I know people who have died hitting moose on the highway and it's usually people the world is better off without but hey who's to say how things work. Some part of me doubts that the patience exists to keep each any every one of the 8 billion people on the planet around forever.
The graphs paint a picture that class D amplifiers are worse at high frequencies. Does the THD+N from 15kHz to 20kHz increase linearly? exponentially? The AHB2 goes from -102dB to -93dB to the graph from 5kHz to 15kHz respectively. Heck who knows how much worse it is at 20kHz and it seems ridiculous not to put that line on the plot considering that music is defined as spanning from 20Hz to 20kHz, not 20Hz to 15kHz. There's room for it. The NCX goes from -96 to -90 to -80 at respectively, and who knows if 20kHz would be -70 or -60 considering the trend. The 32 tone graphs are at 5 watts that's not telling me enough I don't listen at a constant 5 watts lol. Not knocking Amirm at all, huge respect to him. I would have wasted a lot of money already probably if not for this website. It is GREATLY appreciated. Very greatly. I cant emphasize that enough. I want to contribute somehow whether its with an amplifier that hasn't been tested or in some other way eventually. Although 4D graphs(xyzc) would be cool, hey I was stumbling in the dark a bit before coming here so yeah still epic stuff.
A while ago I tried to figure out some of these question when I was looking for a DAC. I was told that the FOCUSIRTE 2i2 would not sound different than the RME ADI-2 and boy were people wrong. The headphone jack was one thing but even in the line out to the YAMAHA HS8, I was surprised how much more "serious" the speaker sounded.
It's a really tough question because it probably cant be answered with a music test. This question probably has to be answered by someone who is using a tone generator and a DAC that has similar performance characteristics to the RME ADI-2-Pro FS. I would really like to hear general subjective opinions from people who have upgraded their amps and dacs. Tell me about your experience don't tell me what I should do...........
1. Given a driver similar to the ts-b400pro which has a 500w nominal 200w RMS rating and 106dB sensitivity, would I hear the difference between a benchmark AHB2(A/B) or a NCx500(D) at any frequency, but especially at the ever so critical 10kHz-20kHz range at ANY volume level and distance? Does the answer change at a 108dB tweeter because I found one and may buy it?
2. What is the THD+N of hearing? Where does it begin? An article or thread would be appreciated. I searched on the forum quickly and didn't see anything that jumped out at me. There may be a specific wording I'm not considering to find this.
3. It should be stated again: I don't care if two speakers sound more different than two amplifiers, I care if two amplifiers sound different. You are insulting your own intelligence to say anything more about speakers. Maybe some of you don't have a clue about what it means to be respectable. Don't ask God or Allah or the infinite void to save you if that's the case. A future with increasing dangerous technology is going to be increasingly unforgiving to the careless idiots. I know people who have died hitting moose on the highway and it's usually people the world is better off without but hey who's to say how things work. Some part of me doubts that the patience exists to keep each any every one of the 8 billion people on the planet around forever.
The graphs paint a picture that class D amplifiers are worse at high frequencies. Does the THD+N from 15kHz to 20kHz increase linearly? exponentially? The AHB2 goes from -102dB to -93dB to the graph from 5kHz to 15kHz respectively. Heck who knows how much worse it is at 20kHz and it seems ridiculous not to put that line on the plot considering that music is defined as spanning from 20Hz to 20kHz, not 20Hz to 15kHz. There's room for it. The NCX goes from -96 to -90 to -80 at respectively, and who knows if 20kHz would be -70 or -60 considering the trend. The 32 tone graphs are at 5 watts that's not telling me enough I don't listen at a constant 5 watts lol. Not knocking Amirm at all, huge respect to him. I would have wasted a lot of money already probably if not for this website. It is GREATLY appreciated. Very greatly. I cant emphasize that enough. I want to contribute somehow whether its with an amplifier that hasn't been tested or in some other way eventually. Although 4D graphs(xyzc) would be cool, hey I was stumbling in the dark a bit before coming here so yeah still epic stuff.
A while ago I tried to figure out some of these question when I was looking for a DAC. I was told that the FOCUSIRTE 2i2 would not sound different than the RME ADI-2 and boy were people wrong. The headphone jack was one thing but even in the line out to the YAMAHA HS8, I was surprised how much more "serious" the speaker sounded.
It's a really tough question because it probably cant be answered with a music test. This question probably has to be answered by someone who is using a tone generator and a DAC that has similar performance characteristics to the RME ADI-2-Pro FS. I would really like to hear general subjective opinions from people who have upgraded their amps and dacs. Tell me about your experience don't tell me what I should do...........
Your ineptitude serves as litter for the casual passer by who may not want to read through 90 posts to find a comment or question with some actual substance. And the fact that the rest of you are not only acknowledging this but taking the other side is deeply unsettling for what I expected from a "science" community.
Robin L
Master Contributor
There is no specific answer for this question. Age determines the limit of the highest audible frequency and exposure to high levels of sound affects the signal to noise ratio of hearing. Frequent exposure to high levels of sound leads to tinnitus and your M.O. of listening to speakers can easily lead to that sort of hearing damage. For the most part, men start to lose the upper registers of hearing in their early twenties. By way of example, I could easily hear flyback transformers (used with cathode ray televisions) up to the day I went to a Neil Young concert around 1977/1978, this during his Zuma/On the Beach era. Loud, amplified Rock before anybody realized that hearing protection was required for that sort of concert. The frequency of the flyback transformer is 15khz. I was about 22 at the time. But usually, by the time one is 30, the upper limit of hearing is around 15khz anyway. It doesn't take all that much to permanently damage hearing. And Neil Young has permanently damaged his own hearing. So, there wouldn't be a specific answer to your question as it's on a case-by-case basis. However, tinnitus can be considered (in its way) as a form of harmonic distortion. Tinnitus can be a ringing in the ears, it also is a constant hiss. One of my bosses tuned pianos for a living. He would have his ears close to the strings of the piano as he tuned and developed severe tinnitus in the process.
More:
Noise-induced hearing loss - Wikipedia
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Your not going to get much of that here. It’s a science based forum. If you want this, then there are way better places to get that.
Unlikely. SNR of either amp is pretty good. Maybe when having your ear very close by without anything playing, you could hear one having more his than another… hard to say really. With actual music though, that will be totally masked. You won’t hear a difference.
Please note that the AHB2 is not a class D amp. It’s AB with a special tracking power supply.
Simply because any distortion components of 20 kHz are not audible. They are at least 40 kHz! You are not a bat. Nevermind that in real music, the 20 kHz content will be down about 40dB on average vs 1 kHz. Distortion components will be more than 80 dB below that. That is way, way, way below any noise floor of the room. So you can’t hear it because it’s too high in frequency and it’s too low in level.
kemmler3D
Master Contributor
It depends on what you're listening to and at what gain... the Benchmark noise stays below-90dB but if you turn the amp all the way up and listen to silence, you might hear the noise.
Class D amps tend to get more distortion at higher frequencies, but it's important to remember that almost all music has exponentially falling power with rising frequency, i.e. most tweeters are never asked to put out 100w let alone 500w, even if the woofer is cranking. If a woofer is being driven with 100w then the tweeter might only be getting single digits while listening to most music. Dubstep may be an exception.
If you are sitting around putting your speakers through the paces and listening to tones - that advice may not apply to you, in which case I'd go for something with more frequency-invariant performance, i.e. the Benchmark.
I had some NC500 (not NCx500) amps in my system and never noticed any noise and distortion. My subjective opinion was they had authority in the bass and were totally transparent. Never heard any noise or distortion even if I listened carefully... but I will acknowledge I wasn't TRYING to hear it, either.
A difficult question to answer directly, but there are different thresholds for detectability of distortion, noise, and sound in general. This thread goes into it somewhat: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/
The thing to remember is whether you can hear something depends on whether there is other sound going on at the same time - masking.
So it's hard to say what the THD+N or maximum resolution or whatever of a human ear is. In fact, different people have different "resolution" due to training / experience in critical listening, not just young healthy ears. Something is only "heard" if the brain AND ear both pick up on it.
Robin L
Master Contributor
Here's a potentially useful chart of noise exposure vs. time:
Robin L
Master Contributor
Don't forget that the environmental noise is one of those factors in masking. The gear might have 110 db dynamic range, but the first 30db will be eaten up by the sounds in the room. I've got a fine SACD of Mahler's 3rd symphony that has too wide a range of dynamics to be consistently audible without adjusting the volume.
New popcorn on hand now ... so go on with this
MAB
Major Contributor
I can't hear the differences between amps. Of course I exclude amps like my old Radio Shack mixer/amp which is 6dB down at 10kHz, has >10% distortion, and audibly hisses and hums even with low efficiency speakers (albeit at close range). But once you get to something like a Niles Commercial install amp, I can't hear the difference, nor could anybody at the HiFi store I worked at in the '80s. The Niles is a really good amp, and would drive speakers like Infinity Kappa, notoriously difficult to drive. We sold Goldmund, Accuphase, Mark Levinson, Audio Research, and Bryston (to name a few) so the comparisons are across huge price and perceived performance. I still have a decades old Niles 12-channel amp I use for all my speaker prototyping. I do notice the Niles produces more hiss with high efficiency compression drivers compared to some high-spec amps I have. I posted the results here. But for sure that is a corner case, and masked by music, and to hear it with no music I need to get my ear unreasonably close to the driver, and with music no way to hear. I can measure the noise.
I am not alone in being unable to hear the differences between most amps. I was unsurprised when David Clark published his study showing people cant hear differences between properly operating amps (both skeptics and believers in amp difference), since none of our customers could tell the difference either irrespective of how much they spent or how good they thought their ears were.. Don't ask me how I know this!
Additional observation, the most distinguishing feature of the Radio Shack mixer amp I mentioned above is the frequency response.
OP
Lab_Experiment
Member
- Thread Starter
- #98
Now I'm curious about what you either upgraded or downgraded to.
kemmler3D
Master Contributor
Not because I didn't like the system, but I moved to a new house and swapped in LS60s for the system that the NC500s were in, and sold the old (bulkier) speakers. There wasn't any good place for them anymore.
My desktop setup is Genelec 8030bs so I'm all active at the moment aside from secondary systems (guest room, patio)... I still have the NC500s because one needs a capacitor replaced and I haven't gotten to it yet. They're for sale pretty cheap if you feel up to the task.
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