Amp/Preamp Asylum: RE: I think there are a few. by villastrangiato Looking for a new Amp or Preamp? If you're after tubes, post over here.

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Posted by villastrangiato on July 3, 2012 at 20:31:27

In Reply to: RE: I think there are a few. posted by Ralph on July 3, 2012 at 10:00:07:

Ralph said

"from your demeanor it sounds like you are more focused on the specs."

Ralph also said earlier:

"What we are talking about here in terms of distortion is differences of only a few 100ths of a percent."

I'm focused on science - not subjective blather. If a difference can be heard, it should be measurable. When people on forums like this start proclaiming that differences are audible but can't be measured, huge red flags go up. Just as you ASSumed from "my demeanor" that I'm "focused on specs", Morricab ASSumed that I had no experience with, understanding, or appreciation for the "superiority" of tube amplification and low negative feedback amps because among many amps, I happen to own a Crown Macro Tech 2400. The root of the words assume and assumption are sometimes suggestive of the disposition or knowledge of the person making assumptions. I'm very familiar with most of the landmark studies on human hearing pertaining to localization, sensitivity to phase aberrations, sensitivity to distortion, and the like. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck.

Both you and Morricab keep avoiding the obvious elephant in the room by refusing to acknowledge that loudspeakers produce far more distortion - harmonic, amplitude, phase, intermodulation, etc... than modern amplifiers. And the claimed differences in sound from one amp to the next are practically non existent compared to the differences between the speakers they're connected to. The diversion to your lp cutterhead "experiment" is just more subterfuge.

By definition, an experiment is a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact. Contrary to your "beliefs", listening to different recordings done with different amplifiers is not a scientific procedure. To be a "scientific procedure", data has to be collected and that set of data must be able to be duplicated under the same conditions by anyone else. Without the data, it's just another anecdotal flim flam. I know it's a shock to your system, but your personal subjective opinion is not science - it's just blather.

Loudspeakers are nothing like lp cutterheads and similarly are not like moving coil cartridges. Yes, all three can use moving coils but this is essentially where the similarity begins and ends. The damping, energy storage, and losses associated with each system are vastly different and it is precisely these factors that determine the distortion signature of each. A near zero output impedance amp is most definitely going to have a different cutterhead system response than an amp with several ohms of impedance. If you actually intended to produce a meaningful conclusion from your "experiment", you should be presenting data that was collected - not total conjecture that "a few hundredths of a percent" of odd ordered harmonic from an amplifier are somehow going to be evident from sound produced by a loudspeaker that contains hundred's of times that amount of odd ordered harmonic as a result of loudspeaker generated distortion.

Your assertions about audibility of odd ordered distortion generated by amplifiers are neither reasonable nor plausible. It is akin to detecting a pin dropping while a massive 10 car pileup is happening - the loudspeaker being the pileup and the amplifier generating the pin drop. Perhaps this explains why you decided to throw out the lp cutterhead non sense to prove a point that has no logic or truth.

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