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RE: At best Cheever defines the euphonic, not the accurate

Interesting thoughts; however, when I say "perfect" I am referring to those who claim that for "properly" designed amplifiers within their limits they should all sound the same...i.e. no sound of their own. One only need look at this thread about Bryston, a brand with vanishingly low distortion, to see that many people, especially those with a lot of experience, find them at best flawed sounding. The truth is that despite super low THD and IMD they still have a characteristic sound that is imposed on all recordings and yes it is the human "detectors" that are picking these traits up consistently. People will tell you that it should be too low to be audible...but it isn't.

What exactly is logically not true about there is no such thing as zero distortion when designing amps with non-linear devices (of course there are no linear devices so...)? I don't think that thinking engineers are awful just the ones who follow the misguided directions that were laid out at the advent of negative feedback. The scientists were saying one thing (there must be something wrong because listening and measuring don't match) and the engineers were doing something else (i.e. they were saying, let's just keep pushing the THD and later IMD lower and then no one will hear the amp anymore)!! Well, no matter how hard they pushed we STILL hear it because of how they are pushing it down and the artifacts that creates.

"First-off "perfect" doesn't exist other than in the sense of meeting Specs. Except for the identity case (I'm THE perfect example of myself) we are stuck with limiting variations sufficiently that stuff will "do the job". In this case the job is to have inaudible distortions."

Exactly what I have been saying, if you read what I wrote carefully. I made it clear that since no perfect amp exists then the distortions that are there need to be inaudible. If you realize that even at the practical limit of what can be done with feedback and multi-stage amplifiers you will see that it is STILL AUDIBLE! If you look more into the psychoacoustics then you see that it is better to put the distortions where they can be masked and then they don't need to be so low. Many of these amps have stood the test of time (why on earth do you think SETs made a comeback?? It is not nostalgia because the last time they were used was out of most living memory). I can tell you that I would not have embraced this kind of amp unless it delivered a clear and obvious advantage for more realistic sound. I tried the low distortion route...dissatisfying in the extreme...enough to make one stop being an audiophile.

"With adequate loop bandwidth and gain the in-band distortion will asymptotically approach the error amplifier's which can be very clean."

And yet the amp with one of the lowest distortions ever measured (at least for an audio product), the Halcro monoblocks, was also one unlistenable S.O.B. They got their 15 minutes of magazine fame...and then went bankrupt. Then you have an amp like the KR Audio Kronzilla monoblocks, which remained at the top of Germany's Stereoplay magazine amp rankings for 10 YEARS (2002-2012)!! In that time the company had further improved the amp a couple of times so the latest version is even better (I had a 2006 version in my home and it made most other amps sound BROKEN...including the highly lauded ASR Emitter II Exclusive). It sure makes a lot of distortion compared to a Halcro...or a Bryston for that matter. But I bet 9 out of 10 experienced listeners would find it sound MUCH more realistic, transparent and holographic. It even uses transistors (proof to me that it is the design more than the devices) in the input and driver.

Meters don't matter for audio, unless you find the correlation with listening experience it is for naught because there is no linear in amplification devices. This is the point that Cheever, Crowhurst and Shorter have been pointing out for a long time but it seems only SET designers, Jean Hiraga and now Nelson Pass are listening. Matti Otala made a lot of interesting discoveries but he was not willing to throw away completely "good engineering practice" to get to the logical conclusion that modern amp design is barking up the wrong tree.

The best solution to a problem is a function of the system constraints and there are always trade-off's as with everything else in life. So while your approach may be best for a particular ilk of designs it certainly isn't a given..."

Like I said above, SETs made their comeback on the rediscovery of their sound not for nostalgia. THe low distortion brigade has had their 60+ years in the sun but now the experienced listeners who really care about sound are drifting towards gear that simply sounds more realistic despite the worse numbers on the scope. If it was really worse do you think it would have been able to reestablish a serious foothold in the high end industry?? Do you think Nelson Pass would really embrace the ONE transistor, no feedback design if he thought it sucked compared to his other designs?? Just sayin'...

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