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In Reply to: " I am happy to guide those who I am quite sure want a better sound than they have" oh please tell me... posted by kuribo on December 8, 2014 at 09:21:40:
"what exactly "better sound" is and why do you think you are qualified to determine for others exactly what that is? What's next? Are you going to tell me what food I should like? Which beer is "best"? "
It's called psychoacoustics and in case you didn't know there are ways to find out what sounds most people like the best.
I haven't just heard it, I have been able to correlate it to a greater or lesser degree, with particular amplifier designs. It just so happens that these designs produce particular distortion patterns that are low in perceptible distortion not in absolute distortion. What I am telling you from my experience is that I find that there are scientific explaantions as to why some amps would be preferrable to others for the majority of listeners.
Objective performance based on an oscilloscope or FFT generator is meaningless in isolation. As an analytical scientist one is always trying to relate a measurement feature BACK to a real world phenomenon. This correlation is where the meaning lies not in the raw numbers. The problem is that engineers have for decades pursued numbers as the ends and not as the means to achieving good sound. They have misunderstood the purpose of measurements in their drive to achieve better numbers.
This was realized a long time ago by D.E.L. Shorter at the BBC and Norman Crowhurst who wrote about the problems that negative feedback causes in signal generation back in the 1950s. Otala later saw a problem with negative feedback loops and speaker interaction. I am not coming at this out of the fantasy blue sky. Other rather smart men laid the groundwork for this kind of thinking. Cheever put it together pretty nicely in his Master's Thesis.
The disconnect between what is heard and what is measured has also caused JA at Stereophile much consternation. When AD likes something a lot that measures rather poorly and MF gets caught that way too sometimes it makes JA wonder what is it that is going on. Geddes explored this in 2 AES papers and found that his new metric fit much better than THD + noise measurements, which if anything had a slight NEGATIVE correlation with sound quality!
"In truth, your "observations" mean -0- when it comes to what others may like or dislike. You have made blanket statements here repeatedly about the "evils" of negative feedback, class d, etc. You have no evidence to support this, i.e., "dogma"- the simple fact is, there are intelligent, knowledgeable people who think you are full of it and their preference and ownership of amps that use large amounts of it are both evidence and proof to the contrary"
I have given reference to evidence about these other technologies it is up to you to read and comprehend. Ownership of those other products is often based on other factors than sound quality...that is often the nature of human psychology.
I call it objective/subjective because while, yes it comes down to individual perception there are clear rules that govern what most of us perceive as "good sound" and they are related to how our ear/brain has evolved to understand soundwaves and harmonic patterns in nature. Screw with what nature produces and you run a high risk of an unpleasant sounding result. If you read Cheever, you will notice that it is also sound pressure level dependent and therefore the sensitivity and impedance of the speaker and how the amp reacts to that also matters.
This is objective, observational science and theory synthesized from studies to link the two. I may not have conducted these studies but I am trained and qualified to take their findings and extrapolate what it means with various types of amplifiers.
" you have heard THREE (3) class d amps and have made your pronouncement"
You have a SERIOUS reading comprehension problem. I said I OWNED 3 different Class D amps and have heard at length about a dozen others.
"Never mind there must be at least 20 or more discreet class d amp platforms"
Heard most of them, including the new N-core from Putseys. I have also heard at length exotica like the Sharp SX-200 and Tact Millenium (and their cheaper models too) as well as Lyngdorf, numerous B&O modules (Jeff Rowland, Bel Canto etc.), T-amps, Nuforce, Devialet, Hypex UcD (several DIY), N-core (mola mola), Zap pulse (my own), PS Audio (my own), other Sharp (my own) etc..
"I don't need to read a paper on TIM or NF to know whether or not I like the sound of an audio system."
And that is the problem. You, unlike me don't care WHY you prefer something. I go looking for the reason I like what I like and continually lean towards certain gear and away from other gear. As a scientist I am trained to investigate the root cause of an observation...you clearly are not trained to do this.
"Your appeal to authority ("I have heard so many SS amps I lost count", etc. therefore I am an expert) is spurious.
"
THis is NOT an appeal to authority. If I had said, "AD thinks all SS amps are crap so I they are crap" then THAT would be an appeal to authority (assuming we both agree AD is an authority on audio). I am giving my firsthand observation, something quite different.
"You seem to have "opinion" and "argument" confused: an opinion does not necessarily have to be supportable or based on anything but one's own personal feelings."
As I have said many times in the past (you obviously read only what you want to read and not the whole post), I have an observation and have found evidence to support what I am hearing (see comments above about research in psychoacoustics and distortion perception) and based on this information have synthesized a hypothesis about what I think should sound good and what I think would not sound good. I make arguments using research that some kinds of amps will be inherently less good sounding based on their designs and the subsequent distortions that those designs invariably produce.
"And yes, def. 2 fits as well: you do seem to come across like a religious zealot or "authority", who has exclusive access to the one and only holy path to "better sound"..."
No, as I have pointed out that I have used scientific observation along with documented research in the field of psychoacoustics...is it possible it is wrong? Probably not completely but I am sure it can be further tuned and improved. I have never appealed to any authority other than the research results from various sources but I let the data there speak.
"to think that your opinions would mean more to others than what they hear..."
People seem to like my advice once they try it...I have had numerous adopter of my system concepts, particularly electronics. Since that is a fact (I would be blind not to notice friends who copy my systems) then I have to assume I am offering some value from my advice. They take my word only as far as giving something a try...if it fits then they try to buy it if not...well then I guess what they hear differs from me.
"Perhaps others are taken in by your "science" "
I am sure you have no idea what is involved in practicing science so I will leave your comment as such. I have over 20 years as a practicing analytical scientist so I think I know a thing or two about scientific method and falsifiability of hypotheses.
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Follow Ups
- RE: " I am happy to guide those who I am quite sure want a better sound than they have" oh please tell me... - morricab 03:33:51 12/09/14 (1)
- Good luck trying to extrapolate your results.... - kuribo 05:50:17 12/09/14 (0)
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