Unpopular opinions for here.

[Brian Hall]

What, there are aliens amongst us? That explains alot.

Easy to catch. They are the ones think MQA can sound better than a lossless flac.

 

[Cbdb2]

I have alot of opinions that maybe considered unpopular here. I encourage you you to share yours without causing a stink.

1, less distortion does not always mean better for enjoyment: I believe there is alot of crossover with guitar amps and audio amps. Alot of people would perfer tube amps to ss because of the distortion. It seems adding just a bit of distortion, like even order seems to be preferred by alot of people.

2, there are more things to consider other than how a piece of equipment sounds: I really hate bad build quality. For modern equipment it's sometimes build like crap, and dies on you in about a year or two. For example a Topping vs a vintage Denon dac. The topping may have 110db SINAD with great modern technology, but I personally think their quality isn't the best. Imagine it failing on you, it being build with SMD and no schematics to repair it, good luck trying to.

Opinions are fine, and so are preferences. But when opinions that counter the physics (electronics) become someones facts we have a problem.

 

[Cbdb2]

There is a reason opinions are often compared to anusses.
- Most people have one
- They are very important and useful for their owners
- There may be places to show and discuss them, but there is little chance, that they are of any interest at all to others in other places.

I heard it as "Everyone has one and mine is the only one that dosn't stink."

 

[Haskil]

I have alot of opinions that maybe considered unpopular here. I encourage you you to share yours without causing a stink.

1, less distortion does not always mean better for enjoyment: I believe there is alot of crossover with guitar amps and audio amps. Alot of people would perfer tube amps to ss because of the distortion. It seems adding just a bit of distortion, like even order seems to be preferred by alot of people.

2, there are more things to consider other than how a piece of equipment sounds: I really hate bad build quality. For modern equipment it's sometimes build like crap, and dies on you in about a year or two. For example a Topping vs a vintage Denon dac. The topping may have 110db SINAD with great modern technology, but I personally think their quality isn't the best. Imagine it failing on you, it being build with SMD and no schematics to repair it, good luck trying to.

Sorry, I think you are confusing two things: the artistic production of sound and its reproduction.

As they say in France, "you should not sweeten sugar".

So the sound produced by a tube guitar amplifier will have every interest so that its particular color is preserved to be reproduced by an amplifier having a low distortion rate and the greatest possible linearity so as not to add its color to its own. ...

I have had a Dac Topping for 3 years: DX3 Pro. It is on almost every day and all day : no sign of failure. I have an FX-Audio amplifier under my television which powers two small BW CM1s: it is at least 6 years old and it is still powered. No breakdowns to date.

 

[Brian Hall]

I have alot of opinions that maybe considered unpopular here. I encourage you you to share yours without causing a stink.

1, less distortion does not always mean better for enjoyment: I believe there is alot of crossover with guitar amps and audio amps. Alot of people would perfer tube amps to ss because of the distortion. It seems adding just a bit of distortion, like even order seems to be preferred by alot of people

There are good reasons for guitar amps (even non-tube types) to be able to add distortion to get particular overdriven guitar sounds.

I do not want anything like that in my audio playback systems. Why intentionally add distortion to flutes and violins? It seems kind of dumb/backwards to me to add tubes to anything other than an actual guitar amp. You only get higher cost and unclean sound.

If someone comes back and says tube equipment can give clean sound, then why bother with more expensive tube equipment at all?

.
2, there are more things to consider other than how a piece of equipment sounds: I really hate bad build quality. For modern equipment it's sometimes build like crap, and dies on you in about a year or two. For example a Topping vs a vintage Denon dac. The topping may have 110db SINAD with great modern technology, but I personally think their quality isn't the best. Imagine it failing on you, it being build with SMD and no schematics to repair it, good luck trying to.

If modern components do fail, they are generally cheaper to replace than the cost to repair "vintage" stuff.

 

[majingotan]

There are good reasons for guitar amps (even non-tube types) to be able to add distortion to get particular overdriven guitar sounds.

I do not want anything like that in my audio playback systems. Why intentionally add distortion to flutes and violins? It seems kind of dumb/backwards to me to add tubes to anything other than an actual guitar amp. You only get higher cost and unclean sound.

If someone comes back and says tube equipment can give clean sound, then why bother with more expensive tube equipment at all?

My opinion and subjective preference are definitely unpopular but yes I prefer listening to glowing tubes as they add not just 2nd harmonic distortion (to me the added 2nd harmonic distortion is definitely on placebo level and I'd argue that one cannot reliably pass a proper DBT volume matched ABX test between a SET amp and a SOTA SS amp) but 98% of the whole listening experience comes from the glow and heat and retro-ness of the setup (which I value much more over boring looking SOTA boxes). The unpopular opinion for me is that I choose the gears that keeps me seated and couldn't stop listening to next track until it's early morning again. The visual glow and heat emittance of tubes significantly help with that subjective feeling of sucking me into the music nirvana more than the placebo level difference of sonic presentation of tube amp compared to SOTA gears. For me, the overall package (over hi fidelity sound) matters more

I have alot of opinions that maybe considered unpopular here. I encourage you you to share yours without causing a stink.

1, less distortion does not always mean better for enjoyment: I believe there is alot of crossover with guitar amps and audio amps. Alot of people would perfer tube amps to ss because of the distortion. It seems adding just a bit of distortion, like even order seems to be preferred by alot of people.

2, there are more things to consider other than how a piece of equipment sounds: I really hate bad build quality. For modern equipment it's sometimes build like crap, and dies on you in about a year or two. For example a Topping vs a vintage Denon dac. The topping may have 110db SINAD with great modern technology, but I personally think their quality isn't the best. Imagine it failing on you, it being build with SMD and no schematics to repair it, good luck trying to.

1) It's more like visuals and heat to me than 2nd order harmonic distortion (which I honestly can't hear at all when A/bing against SOTA SS amp)

2) Simple circuit design like SET amps definitely last decades as they have very few parts that fail outside of tubes. Only way you'll toast a SET amp is if you get it wet or you remove the load and put music through it (transformer meltdown)

 

[mhardy6647]

I love the Crying of Lot 49 (etc.) counterpoint in this thread - a lot!

 

[Robin L]

I love the Crying of Lot 49 (etc.) counterpoint in this thread - a lot!

Now say "rich chocolaty goodness . . . "

 

[mhardy6647]

Now say "rich chocolaty goodness . . . "

or more to the point...

 

[Robin L]

View attachment 379413

or more to the point...

I mentioned it as it's Mucho Maas waxing Lysergic. Soon after, he expresses in a rapture how "She Loves You" points to the universal "She" in a mode that Joseph Campbell might recognize. Heady stuff, for something that's supposed to be happening in 1964. Mind you, it looks like Kinneret Among the Pines is close to Stanford.

(This might qualify as an "Unpopular opinion" not so much because people distain such thoughts, but that most people would be expressing "WTF?".)

 

[mhardy6647]

I mentioned it as it's Mucho Maas waxing Lysergic. Soon after, he expresses in a rapture how "She Loves You" points to the universal "She" in a mode that Joseph Campbell might recognize. Heady stuff, for something that's supposed to be happening in 1964. Mind you, it looks like Kinneret Among the Pines is close to Stanford.

(This might qualify as an "Unpopular opinion" not so much because people distain such thoughts, but that most people would be expressing "WTF?".)

I must confess that -- although I am a huge Pynchon fan, I haven't (re)-read The Crying of Lot 49 for a long time.
I vividly remember reading it the first time, though, in college (late 1970s) in a course called Contemporary American Letters.

 

[Robin L]

I must confess that -- although I am a huge Pynchon fan, I haven't (re)-read The Crying of Lot 49 for a long time.
I vividly remember reading it the first time, though, in college (late 1970s) in a course called Contemporary American Letters.

Campus Textbook Exchange in Berkeley, fall of 1979. Had a temp job there. Was stripping mass-market paperbacks, throwing the books into recycling and sending the covers back to the publisher. CoL 49 was a popular English 1A "novel" at the time. I asked If I could keep one of the discards. They said yes. I read it, then read it again and again and again. Probably re-read it about five times that first week. That whole business of sending messages into cans marked W.A.S.T.E. hit home for obvious reasons. And all those references to Berkeley and San Francisco, Bus lines in Oakland and the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. Have read that book more times than any other. Currently have the recent Hardcover reissue (with a replication of the cover of the first edition) and a couple of copies of that mass-market copy I stripped. I re-read it at least once every year.

 

[mhardy6647]

Campus Textbook Exchange in Berkeley, fall of 1979. Had a temp job there. Was stripping mass-market paperbacks, throwing the books into recycling and sending the covers back to the publisher. CoL 49 was a popular English 1A "novel" at the time. I asked If I could keep one of the discards. They said yes. I read it, then read it again and again and again. Probably re-read it about five times that first week. That whole business of sending messages into cans marked W.A.S.T.E. hit home for obvious reasons. And all those references to Berkeley and San Francisco, Bus lines in Oakland and the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. Have read that book more times than any other. Currently have the recent Hardcover reissue (with a replication of the cover of the first edition) and a couple of copies of that mass-market copy I stripped. I re-read it at least once every year.

That is (more or less) how I got my copy of Gravity's Rainbow, summer of '76. The bookstore @ Hopkins would put 'cutout' books in boxes out by their receiving doors, up for grabs. I was working in the stockroom in the Biology Dep't that summer (the summer before I matriculated -- they had extra summer job funds from the federal gov't that year and so offered jobs to incoming freshmen). I grabbed a lot of them on lunch breaks that summer. Still have most of those books. Some were excellent. (Gravity's Rainbow being one of them, at least as far as I am concerned).

I think I'll re-read Lot 49 this summer.

PS Having invoked these now-ancient memories -- I feel compelled to point out that 1) I worked in that stockroom (and in other odd jobs in the Biology Dep't) every summer of my UG tenure and 2) in the mid-80s, I graduated from that same Bio Dep't with a PhD, which served me well professionally.
The stockroom job, however, in many respects was the best job I ever had.

 

[Petrushka]

Sorry if this has been posted before, but I believe the underlying fact behind this myth is that, given two amplifiers driven into clipping, people prefer the tube amplifier.

 

[Petrushka]

Three channel is the real fire. Stereo....ha!

Dadblast it, this thread is triggering me, and all y'all're gonna pay the price!



ALLOT needs to be quantified. Dude, this is ASR!
Stereo = 2, mono = 1, so 3 dB better?
What's the reference (zero dB)? Perhaps Simon & Garfunkel's Sound of Silence?
What weighting curve is used?
Dang it, this stuff is important!




Ol' Blue Eyes would never disagree.
View attachment 378765

Macs, Ampex tape, three channels, a few packs o' Chesterfields or Luckies or Pall Malls (or whatever), and ol' Rover by his side. Oh, and booze. Plenty of booze.
Where're Deano, Peter, and Sammy?


Oh, it is.
I was listenin' to it yesterday and it was pretty darned glorious, actually.

I have a dozen or so boxes of the cursed Ampex tape.

 

[Robin L]

I think I'll re-read Lot 49 this summer.

Let me know when you do. You can start a conversation.