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In Reply to: RE: Question... posted by BigguyinATL on March 29, 2016 at 11:26:41:
You see I don't understand that... I would alway leave the clipping protection on!
I find no use for superfluous circuitry in the signal path. Perhaps it is a good idea in the pro world to protect gear from roadies and hard-of-hearing rockers at the gain controls.
The 50 Watt NAD clipping point is very near that.
I did a lot of listening to the Crown at much louder levels than I do with the NAD - because I could. Having said that, I can get pretty reasonable levels with 100 continuous watts and did the comparison within its range. The NAD design offers double that much IHF dynamic power.
Its design purpose is not for discriminating audio.
A good thing since that's essentially my conclusion given the extensive listening tests. I do acknowledge the value of low power consumption, compactness, ruggedness and watts-per-dollar in the pro world.
But you should give it a fair shake.
I listened to both with an open mind. It clearly has some strengths, but not those that are most important to me.
When I read you review, and I see the adjectives "Transparency", "Air" and "Chimes and reedy things bathed in upper harmonics", I think that we might be concerned...
Perhaps I'm not doing a great job verbalizing the live, unamplified experience or you might understand to what I refer. I struggled trying to describe the nature of the Crown's deficiency in getting the top right and sounding artificial. For me, it is not difficult to appreciate hearing an instrument with its harmonics in step and consistent with the fundamentals. Or a series of performers in the same space where you can perceive the acoustic and "air" of the room.
The Crown, however, is the proverbial "bull in a china shop" in terms of top end delicacy. It's like watching a defensive lineman attempting a plie. :)
I'm sure you have read the various Elliot Sound Labs articles on amplifier clipping.
No, but thank you for the link. I can certainly hear when the amplifier's character changes - which most often means the top end gets hard, screechy, closed in and loses sound quality - not *improve* it!
I think he makes a compelling case as to why you should never use soft clipping circuits. I didn't fully understand the depth to which detrimental effects occur:
"In general, for anything other than guitar amps, I would not recommend any form of soft clipping. The idea of hi-fi is to minimise distortion, and introducing non-linear elements into the circuit just increases the distortion at lower levels...
Unfortunately, at lower levels there will still be some distortion. For any circuit to clip 'softly', it must start to introduce distortion well below the clipping voltage (set by the power amp's supply rail voltage). As discussed in greater detail below, you will end up with 1-2% distortion at around half power (sometimes even less), with the distortion climbing rapidly as the amp delivers more power. This is not hi-fi!"
Amen!
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Follow Ups
- RE: Question... - E-Stat 17:49:43 03/29/16 (0)
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