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In Reply to: What makes an amplifier have a deep soundstage? posted by Doughter on March 28, 2007 at 05:38:14:
I imagine there are many views on this and it something I have attempted to gain via many experiments, so here is my 2 cents worth. Overall I feel that it starts with the source and is then limited by whatever is down the chain from the source.With amplifiers and I am relying here on my experience with about 10 gainclones I've built, the two deciding factors seem to be 1) Bandwidth of the amp and 2) very low noise levels.
I have had great results from gainclones, but building modules with higher than normal bandwidth (which is tricky due to potential stablitiy issues) brought about much deeper sound stage.
The noise level is interesting, I have tried regular torroids, snubbered power supplies, smps and battery, and the sounstage gets better in that order and the noise level decreases in that order. The funny thing is that from the listening chair they all sound pretty much dead quite when no signal is applied, but of course as you get right up to the driver the difference is fairly obvious.
The battery supplies are dead quite, music does really come out of the inky blackness, the difference in soundstage, micro detail, etc is quite pronounced so long as the speakers are up to it.
So I guess in a generic sense most amps probably would give better soundstage if their power supplies are really clean.
A wide bandwidth seems to give very fine HF detail and ambience which works really well if the speakers are up to the task, but I think for reasons of instability most amps are probably throttled back quite a bit.
Interstingly I found that increasing the power supply voltage and hence output, did not improve soundstaging and really only gave a bit more drive to the bass, but with a sub boosted system this is not an issue for me. The greater voltage should increase dynamics but really I feel as most of this is in the bass region and most of the ambinece information is in the HF the increase in bass may actually work against it by 1) causing more distortion at the drivers (I am using full range drivers) and 2 messing the HF/LF balance up a bit. Overall high frequencies don't need huge power but of course the bass does which is why I prefer to use a pair of subs. This might account for why many high powered amps I have heard actually sound worse that many lower powered ones, they give more bass but trade of a lot of fine detail in the process.
One other factor may have some control over sound staging this being a high degree of separation, which a dual mono set up should provide.
Anyway thats my take, but I sure there is a a lot more to it.
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Follow Ups
- Re: What makes an amplifier have a deep soundstage? - Zero One 02:17:25 04/11/07 (0)
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