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Re: Your post seems rather brusque and condescending...

Posted by Thorsten (M) on January 23, 2005 at 03:29:18

In Reply to: Your post seems rather brusque and condescending... posted by Wellfed on January 23, 2005 at 00:58:34:

Hi,

> Do you know djn and what his tastes are?

No, therefor I stated my preferences AND qualified my statements.

> "Best avoid, if your tastes in sound run like mine."
> How would one know what your tastes are so as to apply
> any relevance to your statement.

Given that I have published quite a few reviews (in TNT Audio and at ETM) as well as loads of other writings that is easy enough.

> What does your phrase "they tend to generalise too much" mean?

Exactly that. In real music there is (unless computer genrated) an unavoidable minute variation from note to note, phrase to phrase and so on. I find that in subjective terms Amplifiers using large amounts of negative feedback tend to obscure these variations more than amplifiers with no loop feedback.

> As for my tastes, Atma-Sphere M-60's, driving Köchel K-300 horns,
> using an Audio Synthesis DAX Discrete for a source, provide me
> with ecstasy beyond words. I have heard you mildly diss each of
> these products, or at least their progenitor, at one time.

The Koechel Horns, you should be aware, are Speakers I quite like.

I listed the M60 as my second favourite OTL Amp of those I heard (which does not say I don't prefer something else though).

The various DAX Dac's tend to also come up occasionally in my writings as worthy of note, however I feel that a really well implemented Non-Oversampling DAC offers sound more to my liking.

> What does this mean? People have different tastes?

Exactly. Recording & Reporduction is invariably drastically flawed. In order to get the experience we want from listening to recordings we need to arrange our systems such that they avoid emphasising the areas where we as individuals tend to react to the difference between recorded and real music while emphasising or at least excelling at what are the core areas of music that us spell "reality".

> We all value our own opinions, but your outburst is more than
> a little over the top IME.

OUTBURST?

Someone asks "what is a good OTL Design to build".

I list my experiences with OTL Designs I have heard and simply note that contrary to the Hype some people generate OTL Amplifiers are not perfect or the end to it all.

And that is an OUTBURST? Pulleeese.

> Having said all that I still enjoy reading your
> thoughts and would love the opportunity to meet
> and listen to your system some day.

If you find yourself in London, you are welcome to drop in.

> One last thing, I don't think Atma-Sphere amps require NFB.

The commercially sold ones have it and quite a good dollop too. If you remove the NFB, the output impedance gets very high. High enough that you actually need to design a speaker especially to co-operate with that high output impedance (which is not per se a bad thing, on the contrary, I have been advocating "current drive" to speakers for a long time).

And of course the distortion goes up and as in OTL's in generally the distortion open loop must be fairly high and is generally composed of quite a few high order components, which may or may not be audible as sonic problems.

As with all engineering, everything is about tradeoffs. Going OTL means you trade off some things for the ability to say "there is no Output transformer coloring my sound". I believe for somone who wonders if he should invest into such a device it is important to be aware of the tradeoffs.

Ciao T

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