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"BIGGER and heavier is BETTER. Bigger transformers and wires load down less. Big capacitors hold more charge.""Is there such a thing as too big? Certainly there are diminishing returns as we get bigger. When a transformer is delivering 1 watt to a preamp circuit, going from a one kilowatt rating to two kilowatts isn't going to buy you much improvement. This consideration is not much of a deterrent to the average audiophile, however." If you disagree please take it up with Mr. Pass. I ain't no maverick. Tweekie
Edits: 10/07/16 10/09/16Follow Ups:
Checked the spelling.
Mind you; Nelson Pass' designs do give me would.
... an Aussi with a sense of humor on AA. Have a Fosters on me sir. Tweekie
" And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall" Robert Allen Zimmerman
Maybe the would came about as the result of that BIG tranny?
" And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall" Robert Allen Zimmerman
I enjoy a big tranny as well :)
They don't make too much noise and pollute your system?
" And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall" Robert Allen Zimmerman
Depending on the circuit several smaller caps in parallel might charge and discharge quicker than one big one. I'm not going to second guess any NP design though.
ET
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking till you do suck seed" - Curly Howard 1936
"Remember, the great NP also has amplifier designs that use electrolytic caps in the signal path. Now tweaker, you gonna go replace all your signal caps with leccys because your hero does?imho it's a mistake to fetishize engineers. Better to fetishize engineeering itself, but that requires real effort.."
As Ryelands pointed out I brought in NP to lend some cred and so some little dweeb wouldn't call me a fucking poser for the 10th time. Don't know why NP would use electrolytics but it is likely to be a bad idea. Agreed. Nothing to do with the bigger is better thing though. Why the toxic one would think NP is my hero or I fetishize him is a complete mystery. I never owned any of his stuff. I have a tube amp. T456
Edits: 10/07/16 10/07/16
My issue is that bigger is very often better. I brought NP into this so I wouldn't once again be denigrated as a complete poser or maverick... As to what type of trannys are best between box and toroidal I don't know. All I "know" is that either one would almost certainly sound better to me if they were bigger, using a smaller gauge numbered, larger diameter wire for their windings. By this I mean either a bigger toroid than a smaller toroid or a bigger box than a smaller box, not comparing the two. Tweaker
Edits: 10/08/16
I brought NP into this so I wouldn't once again be denigrated as a complete poser or maverick...Whether you succeeded is a different matter. You'd have earned slightly more respect, at least from me, if you'd read his piece with more care.
In passing, though Beautox has probably forgotten more about amplifier PSU design than you or I are ever likely to know, my understanding is that NP used an electrolytic in a single-ended SS design. What else could one use there? (Apologies if I've got that wrong.)
Whatever, esp if using good quality caps (slit foils?), SE designs can sound very fine indeed. Tracing the current loops suggests why.
My flavour of the moment is a chip amp without any caps in the signal "path" and only 2 x 1500uF in the PSU. It need a biggish transformer to work well and, it being a toroid, care taken to get a clean mains.
There's a mad fellow in NZ who sells products that bring chip amps up several notches. Maybe a little low on power for some but I've never heard such a sweet, clear sound from an amp. (I'm not familiar with SE tube designs.)
IOW, though "bigger is better" can work very well, it's not an absolute principle.
D
Edits: 10/09/16 10/09/16
I see no distortion of NP's view on the subject of bigger is better in power supplies in the excerpt I posted. His article is titled: Manufacturers Report - "The Importance of the Power Supply" - May, 1997 T456
Edits: 10/09/16
Now, on a serious tip;
I tend to agree on the biggest, most robust power supply in any power amp.
Is your chip in a socket?
"...using a smaller gauge larger diameter wire..."
That's something I haven't seen. Must be something created by a marketing department.
I edited it to say smaller gauge numbered. In actual fact I don't think that even you are too stupid to not have known what I meant. What am I marketing, preytell? Just another inane comment that has nothing to do with anything of substance or possible use.
Tweaker,
Only you know what you meant. All I can do is read what you wrote, so either write what you mean or quit whining about it when you don't.
"Just another inane comment that has nothing to do with anything of substance or possible use."
ROFL!!! My sincere apology for stepping on your turf.
"Well I disagree with the famed NP. Bigger is not always better. It's stupidly simplistic to make such statements. Have any of you heard of low powered single ended DHT amps? They are among the sweetest sounding amps around" My contention is that bigger is often if not exactly 100% always better for many situations. In reference to the comment about the sweet SE amps specifically I would contend that a bigger tranny with the same voltage and larger cap bank and fatter internal wires would improve the sound of that particular amp as long as it was done in a way that would not cause some other problem. Blow diodes, whatever. A bigger tranny with fatter wires... I stand by the principle of bigger tranny and larger cap bank. This as a general not stupidly simplistic statement in regards to this particular issue. Tweaker
I find the use of SET amps as an example poor. You need a better reference. I know they sound nice and lots of listeners love them. But they are inherently non-linear due to circuit topology(they compress the negative half of a signal compared to the positive half) meaning it can't be fixed.
Tweaker-
be cautious of all of this tranny talk...
I think the First Watt is his best.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
There, fixed it for ya.
Nelson Pass is nearly a dinosaur. I very well-informed dinosaur, but somewhat archaic nonetheless. His philosophy to solve most problems is to throw gobs of power at it, with much of it being wasted. In this day, that seems to be rather wrong-headed.
I owned a Threshold amp in the 70's and knew of Nelson Pass while many of you were still drinking milk with dinner. Loved that 400A until I got tired of fixing it. That took 20 years and a lot of tunes, played very loudly and with great fidelity. It also generated a fair amount of heat.
But I believe now that all that wasted juice is not required to make great sound. Mr Pass is a brilliant designer and, more importantly, knows what good music sounds like. I only wish he could alter his philosophy to concentrate on using less power, not more, to accurately amplify a signal. Then he would win back my admiration.
Peace,
Tom E
berate is 8 and benign is 9
.
No I don't use SET/DHT amps, but I've heard some good ones. I've also heard some really bad big-heavy-monster amps, as well as some good ones.
Still maintain that bigger-is-better is not a universal truth for power supplies on power amps; there can be fundamantal problems with huge power supplies, and that the quality of the power supply is more important than it's size. By quality I include things like the downstream and upstream performance - often the problem with big supplies is they tend to pollute the rest of the system.
Paul Klipsch would love you. He thought what the world needed was a good 5 watt amp. Of course he was referring to using it on a Klipsch and not even on a relatively efficient bass reflex which is in the low 90s these days and no where near the efficiency of a Klipschorn.
Average power on todays speakers is one thing. A couple of watts will play very loud but it will clip on real transients like pounding on a piano and that's not fidelity. Of course that kind of power will work on todays pop music designed for a car environment.
I never wrote anything about output, 5 watts or otherwise.
The post was about efficiency. Pass designs tend to be inefficient, some of them sinfully so, yet audionuts gobble them up and rave about them. Been there, done that. You don't need a silicon space heater, or tubes, to make good sound.
The monoblock amplifiers I currently (ha!) use for midrange/tweeters (4 ohms, 88db or so efficiency) put out 50 to 60 watts, depending on load. I cannot turn it up far enough to induce clipping, and I sometimes like it LOUD. The amps rarely get warmer than an alarm clock. The HD is around .001%, IMD is -90db, hum and noise around -110db. They are NOT Class D, but my bass amp is, so it runs incredibly efficiently as well.
That's the kind of stuff smart people are designing these days, not power hogs.
Peace,
Tom E
berate is 8 and benign is 9
I wouldn't take the statement to seriously. I know he uses lots of capacitance in the power supplies and transformers that could provide enough current for a larger output amp. There are micro demands that might surprise. Very short periods where the demand on the amp is quite high. I think 1 1/2 to 2 times the textbook requirement should be enough.
I ain't no maveric.
Every quote has a context. It is IMHO basic good manners to the author to provide one. So, see link.
D
Well I disagree with the famed NP. Bigger is not always better. It's stupidly simplistic to make such statements. Have any of you heard of low powered single ended DHT amps? They are among the sweetest sounding amps around.But just to show that the great NP is not infallable, take just one quote from the linked "Commentary for consumers"
"The best power transformers are toroids" - Now whenever someone makes blanket statement that something is the best, I always wonder "best for what?"
It's complete bullshit to state that "The best power transformers are toroids" wihtout qualification.
Torroids in fact have several issues that some other transformer types don't have. For example, they saturate real easily if there's any DC on the mains (that's why torroids sometimes hum). They tend to let through HF noise. And so on.
NP goes on to state "They pack the most power for weight and size, and they make less noise" .. well thie first part is true. But the second is not true if there is an unruly mains supply, a common occurence.
Remember, the great NP also has amplifier designs that use electrolytic caps in the signal path. Now tweaker, you gonna go replace all your signal caps with leccys because your hero does?
imho it's a mistake to fetishize engineers. Better to fetishize engineeering itself, but that requires real effort..
When it comes to picking transformers, capacitors or other components, it's important to understand the pros and cons of each type, so you can use something appropriate to get the best performance.
Thus questions of the sort often heard here "What is the best sounding capacitor/diode/fuse/etc" are fundamentally flawed, as much as asking "what is the best tire" without saying whether the intended use is racing, snow, gravel, low noise, best fuel econmy, etc, or even mentioning the vehicle.
Edits: 10/06/16 10/06/16
It's stupidly simplistic to make such statements.
Indeed it is. But, though I agree with most of the points you make (esp re toroids), the OP's point wasn't simply that "bigger is better", it was more that his claim had a pedigree. Which it does.
One reason I added the link was that reading the full text may lead the reader to conclude (as I did) that NP is being ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek. There's a clue in the sentence immediately before the one quoted:
Since we are not designing amplifiers here but rather trying to get a handle on what constitutes quality in a market full of hype, I want to talk about some general ideas and comment on some of the common approaches used by manufacturers.
And another in the last sentence:
Get at least 15 pounds of amplifier for each thousand dollars spent.
But maybe that's just me.
In reality it's the power supply that drives your speakers. What we think of as the amplifier is a complex valve that modulates the power supply so it drives the speaker with a copy of the input signal. Reproduction depends on a power supply that isn't changed by being taxed heavily. If the power supply changes the amplifier isn't modulating a constant power supply and that's distortion. A large, smooth power supply is essential to correct reproduction.
My amplifiers each have 2, 1KVA low noise transformers (per monoblock) and dual capacitors the size of 24oz Tall Boys for 400,000 uF capacitance per channel....big enough for me :-)
No more Class D here, at least for now.
Yo mitch, that's mi boy. 400000uf on each side. Now were talking. Tell the folks at AA what the transient responce of your amp is..., IYHO. Tweekie
And the conduction angle is so narrow that the sharp, high current pulses through your PS transformer cause it to ring like a church bell, spraying high order harmonics of the mains frequency throughout your amp. ;~)
"It is better to remain silent and thought a fool, then speak and remove all doubt." A. Lincoln
Not a chance.
Clayton M300 -the most natural sounding SS amps I have heard and way more satisfying than NC1200.
300 wpc into 8 ohms and 600 wpc into 4 ohms, all in Class A
I have owned these twice and came back to them (fully upgraded with a larger PS) after owning/trying several highly regarded amps including M1.2 Ref.
Maybe not everyone's choice but they sound great here.
One reason some people are turning to Class D is because of their relative light weight compared to traditional class A or AB, etc. that might weigh 30 pounds and often more. Older (vintage) audiophiles don't want to do the heavy lifting anymore.
There and Back Again
Or
One man's story of Class A to Class D and back
Glad this old man can still do the heavy lifting of a pair of 90 pound monoblocks
(one at a time)
Life is too short to not enjoy a pair of 90lb mono-blocks!
.
That was world, not would of course. My bad.
NP is the best in the biz at this juncture. He is really doing some amazing SS work. I do not report this on just anyone.
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