|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
128.194.160.53
In Reply to: RE: What an astonishingly insightful (and iconoclastic) assessment of some formerly revered designs.... posted by RPMac on March 22, 2017 at 05:55:56
"What about the professional musicians that have found that all direct-heated triode single-ended amplifiers reproduce the sound of musical instruments most accurately?
Do they not know any better?"
One would need to have a statistically significant sampling of professional musicians and their preferences before being able to draw any meaningful conclusions. If the sample is restricted to those who participate in the SET or Tube DIY forums at Audio Asylum, it may be a rather biased sampling of professional musicians as a whole.
Chris
Follow Ups:
I have no data on this, but I'll be willing to bet a lot of professional musicians, even those with positions in famous symphony orchestras, listen to Best Buy grade components.Because the truth is commodity grade stereo equipment these days is quite capable of very accurate music reproduction. And that's solely due to the R&D that has gone into amplifier and speakers design over the past 90 years. Yes, that's right, advancements brought to us by the "Theory Men"!
Most audiophiles are about the equipment, not the music. The quality of the music for them is directly related to the price paid or the review in that worshiped audio magazine.
Edits: 03/22/17 03/22/17 03/22/17
Here is an anecdote about Svyatoslav Richter, a famous 20th century pianist. This is from his memoir book.
Richter loved listening to recorded music, but his "system" was a compact portable grammophone of the most despicable variety. Many of his guests asked, how he, a top-notch artist, could be content with such poor quality of sound. To which Richter answered: "I don't care about quality of sound, I care about quality of performance.
In my humble experience, the quality of performance may come through from a worn-to-death acoustical 78 rpm recording further crippled by digitizing and noise reduction.
Many professional musicians enjoy their Best Buy equipment simply because they are unaware that anything better exists. That does not mean Best Buy stuff is good. It is not.
A lady friend of mine, herself violin player in a string quartet, once commented on the sound of my system. "It is unnatural", she said, "it sounds as if we are in a big hall, but in fact we are in a small room. It is schizophrenic".
Hey Gusser that is even over the top for you!!! Maybe more exposure to listening to these musicians you speak of.
My only question is why are you on a tube forum. Is it because us tone deaf musicians need more help in making a decision of what music sounds like? The good news for you is you can buy a 1000 watt class d amp broad for under a 100.00.
Do you think anyone who really HEAR and FEEL music is taking about 2 inches of wire. Maybe some research on your part in regards to what great musicians can hear and feel. I bet your findings might surprise you. I realize you have the universe figured out with your math models. I on the other hand think you may have missed a variable or two???
If you write like you do, to bait me, I guess I took it this time. Enjoy your digital transistor state of art best buy system. I need to get some snake oil today. PT Barnum is in town.
Tom
I said right off the bat that I have no data to back up my claim. But neither do you! I'm also sure there are musicians that do use SET amps and other very expensive gear. But what's the sampling? Neither of us know.One on post you say audio engineering was what? only 89% good. The other 11% may someday uphold the claims of Dennis?
Yet in another post, you don't even know the basics of operating an oscilloscope or worse yet deciphering the what waveform displays!
So what qualifies you to make any statement of how advanced audio engineering has evolved.
I have no doubt that great musicians can "hear and feel" in music. But you seem to have no idea, or you refuse to acknowledge the performance levels of commodity stereo gear these days.
Tubes for me are an interesting hobby. But I am not so blind to say my tube stereo music amp is superior to a modern quality SS amp. I do it for the nostalgia and to explore a forgotten design art.
As for your scope thread I gave you two important things to watch out for in your measurements. Ground loops, especially with a phono preamp. And the difference between voltage measurement (easy) and current (difficult). You engaged with some of the other tips but seem to ignore mine. Fine. You don't like me and don't want to hear what I say.
But be assured your personal opinion of me does not change the laws of physics. Perhaps this is why you have such a skeptical view of test and measurement. You have no idea of how to do it properly, you get poor and conflicting results, so you write it off and scientific junk. Perhaps if you learned the science and engineering behind these measurements you would better understand how to use them properly.
Edits: 03/22/17 03/22/17 03/22/17 03/22/17
Gusser I do not dislike you I do not even know you. The whole scope thing came about because no one could give me a answer to why a voltage drop across choke was different than a resistor. Just got the scope for phase angles I needed to check. I am the first guy to admit my lack of knowledge of scopes. But if you notice no one came up with a answer just more questions. I put up the pictures and there are some nice guys who are still trying help me figure this out.
So is simple terms ,so this small mind of mine can grasp, why does a tube sound different than a transistor? Why do different tubes sound different? Transformers and caps. We will stop there because most people can hear differences in these components. Forget about the mechanical differences and let's go on test equipment. We can pick something as simple as a 300b vs 2a3. Do the numbers on what ever machine show what it is going to sound like??? And if you came up with whatever red flag does that remain consistent for other tubes.
Is there a machine that can tell how a how a 845 will sound like with the b+ at 450volts vs 1200 volts. Or 50 ma vs 100 ma idle current. Really your only way out of this is to assume all the variables are in our heads.
Well I guess if I am living a sugar pill illusion then at least I want my favorite pill. Because in my illusion the pill's sound is consistent.
Infinity may be a wee bigger than you think!!!
Tom
"why does a tube sound different than a transistor?"Because their transfer functions are different.
"Why do different tubes sound different?
Because their transfer functions are different.
"We can pick something as simple as a 300b vs 2a3. Do the numbers on what ever machine show what it is going to sound like???"Using a volt meter and having the knowledge of the load impedance, knowing the idle current....to a large degree, yes.
"Is there a machine that can tell how a how a 845 will sound like with the b+ at 450volts vs 1200 volts. Or 50 ma vs 100 ma idle current."
Knowing that and the slope of the load line, to a large degree, yes.
But it's not a machine, it's knowing the operating condition (voltage, current, load line) and having a knowledge of audio electronics.
It's truly amazing how much the math will tell you about an amplifier and how it will perform and (with some experience) how it will sound.
Published plate curves are really pretty accurate so the harmonic distortion can be predicted.
With a curve tracer one can trace the curves for the exact tube he intends to use and build/tweak the circuit around that knowledge, basically make it do whatever you want it to do.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Edits: 03/22/17
"Is there a machine that can tell how a how a 845 will sound like with the b+ at 450volts vs 1200 volts. Or 50 ma vs 100 ma idle current"
Well yes there is! Now of course we can't tell how something sounds to one's ears. But are you aware that we have software available today that can take a .wav file, send it through a computer amplifier circuit design, even a tube design, and output another wav file that will contain all the distortions that amp's circuit adds. You can play that and listen to it, albeit you will also have the distortions of your listening rig added BUT that can be nulled out in a computer simulation as well where you can see extremely complex signal interactions and delve into them.
ALL WITHOUT A SINGLE PHYSICAL COMPONENT EVER BEING SOLDERED OR CONNECTED!
Now of course this is only as good as the software models programmed in. But we have 100 years of accumulated audio knowledge to build these models. and it's all based on mathematics, that's the only thing a computer understands. It does not understand music. But it doesn't need to either provided our mathmatic models are accurate - and these days they are pretty damn good.
ALL WITHOUT A SINGLE PHYSICAL COMPONENT EVER BEING SOLDERED OR CONNECTED!
Now of course this is only as good as the software models programmed in.
Now, that's a nice cop-out after the 'bold' statement in capitals! Gusser, seriously, what are you doing in a tube forum? I am sure you can get a good mid priced receiver from one of the big box stores with .0001% distortion and be happy. If you're an objectivist that's fine, you can rest comfortable in the fact that the numbers and the 100-year accumulated knowledge in audio, will tell you all you need to know and just enjoy the music without a worry of what others believe. Yes, it's really that simple!
Make no mistake, I am not sticking up for Dennis here, nor do I agree with a lot of what he says, but taking it to the other extreme is not where it lies either, IMO of course.
It's called not spreading BS. I showed the state of the art with modern circuit simulation, actually this is as least over 5 year old technology. But I also called out the issues with the advanced technology and how it's not a perfect solution either.If more people here would do that rather claiming their latest installation of a 2in silver wire "raised the roof" in performance, this place might be a little more respectable.
And I never said I use a mid priced receiver. I do own two, one in a bedroom and the other for the family room TV 5.1. But that's not my listening system or my TV watching system either.
Edits: 03/22/17
Of course it was a cop out you said you would do it with machines then said we my have some software problems and maybe the guys who write the software are deaf and we could go on and on and on.
Now let make this real simple for us challenged musicians like myself. Tell me what machine or math model will tell why.
1. 2a3 300b 845 el34 kt88 6550 6l6 sound different. So show number differences then without listening tell me what I am going to hear. Next go ahead and listen to hear the differences and plot the sound with the numbers. Next find tubes with numbers close to the other tubes and see if they always sound the same.
2. Do the same procedure for transformers caps etc... Let's talk in absolutes. For example a 300b has numbers xyz that has a sound of ABC. So if you want something that sounds like a 300b all you have to do is test for xyz. You are smart enough to get the idea.
You have side stepped all the real issues on everyone posts here. You will take people who can hear and play music to task because in your world differences do not exist. Now it is time for to give us real numbers and explanations how a tube etc... will sound in a circuit with out ever hearing it.
So again this where the rubber meets the road. If you can not do the simple task of telling how one component change can effect sound good luck when comes to the whole picture.
So waiting for the answer if you come back with another post off topic we will know how much you know about real music.
Tom
Where did I say differences not exist? And I never claimed to know the fine art of music.There are known distortions and their sonic signature can be identified. And those distortions can easily be predicted in simulation today. So if simulation says a 300B has X distortion at said operating points, building the circuit will prove it does. Provided the computer model for the components are accurate and as always they are not perfect. But neither are real components. However the accuracy of the models is very good - especially for an audio amplifier.
An audio amplifer is not a musical instrument. It's job is to amplify an electrical signal. The closer the output signal is the the input signal, the better it is.
Different tubes and components sound different because the react differently to the electrical signal going through them. What else could it be? These differences can be measured. Perhaps not all today, but you would be surprised of how deep we can go with waveform analysis. Again especially in the low audio bandwidth area.
And if by listening you hear something different and describe it. Chances are a good audio design engineer can point to the circuit parameters causing it.
Tell me something: How do you feel about DBT? Do you think that is a valid test for hearing differences in components?
Edits: 03/22/17 03/22/17
"There are known distortions and their sonic signature can be identified. And those distortions can easily be predicted in simulation today. So if simulation says a 300B has X distortion at said operating points, building the circuit will prove it does"
I think you're talking way above Tom's pay grade.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Tre you really think I can not follow the bullshit distortion argument. Go back and read what Gusser wrote about best buy and musicians. That is what got me in the bullshit debate. Go back and read how his great machines and software where going to make this great amp out of numbers.
Now he is back peddling. And of course no real answers. You might ask your self with your SET midrange how does that stack up with his best buy beliefs. Seeing that you are so much smarter than me go back and read his post that got my poor feeble mind going. Here is just one of the great sentences "Because the truth is commodity grade stereo equipment these days is quite capable of very accurate music reproduction." Well if you believe that and the rest of the nonsense in that post I would ask you why you are also on a DIY tube forum. Gusser finally admitted he has no tubes in his system now.
Seeing you have all the answers why do you use tubes and Set circuits for your midrange and highs??? Forget best buy go on eBay for 5.00 Us you can get a 100watt class D amp board btl and stable to 2 ohms.
I could go on and on but I have to give this low pay grade mind a rest. All this side Stepping is making me dizzzzzzzzy!!! Notice I did not bring up digital front ends. God I love distortion!!!
Enjoy the best buy ride
Tom
"You out there, Golden Ears, the person who couldn't care less about present technical measurements but thinks of sound in gestalt terms as a holistic experience.
You're right, you know"
this from a Consummate 'meter reader' who is an electrical 'giant', {whom we are all indebted to for his utilization of fast Fourier analysis}
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
"Tre you really think I can not follow the bullshit distortion argument."
I'm a little confused.You understand all about load lines and spacing between grid lines along the load line and how and why that creates harmonic distortion?
If you follow all that then please explain why you call it bullshit?
BTW My commit about you was only in reference to this one statement, not all the rest of what you and gusser might be talking about.
"There are known distortions and their sonic signature can be identified. And those distortions can easily be predicted in simulation today. So if simulation says a 300B has X distortion at said operating points, building the circuit will prove it does"
As soon as you convincingly explain to me how calculating the HD based on plate curves, operating points and load lines is BS, I will see that I was wrong.
Thanks
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Edits: 03/24/17
Hi Tre
I only reason I got involved in this mad hatter tea party was Gusser comes on a DIY tube forum and tell us poor naive souls we can not hear only his machines can. Then if we state we can he sites the old tired DBT. Again assuming, I for one, have no formal training in research.
I have no problem with using distortion as one of the variables on our quest for the holy grail. I have a lot of Crowhurst literature. I have plotted more than one load line in my day. I problem I have run into this a lot, the math solutions and theory do not match what I am hearing. Weather it be ccs's cathode followers, a simple cap or resistor that may not be needed etc...
So many others and my self have concluded base on real life experiences that If it can measure good sound bad or measure bad sound good, we must be measuring the wrong thing. This would imply we maybe do not KNOW all the variables. This does mean your load lines and homogeneous spacings on your tube curves are not a tool you want in your tool box.
I will not insult you with reasons why things sound the way they do because I think there are far to many variables known and unknown to go there. What I will tell you is most the commercial stuff is just plain bad. Even at a high end shows if 10% was worth listening to you would be lucky. My only explanation is people who design this can not hear or money get it out the door etc... Also it may be the market demands loud and bright and corporate America is feeding its appetite.
If you go back just thru Gusser posts on this thread he tells us that he can put together as good as any thing just with the numbers. So I asked him to show me the numbers the machines would pick up to show me how a 2a3 vs 300b vs 845 vs kt88 vs 6550 vs el34 etc... All sound different. And different makes of the same tube sound different. So if the tube curves will give us this information then we should know how the 300b sounds different than a 2a3 etc...
Tre ours tastes, in music reproduction, may be a little different. But I bet we get where we want to go when we sit down and listen Oscar plays that grand piano and we think for a moment he is there. You have always been a asset to this forum and try to help. Others want to play alpha dog games. I admit I took bait. So now I am off to build another 3 phase motor controller for the big motor for the big platter with a big bearing.
Enjoy the ride
Tom
"... tell us poor naive souls we can not hear only his machines can. Then if we state we can he sites the old tired DBT."
Sorry, but why do you say "old tired"? It is old, certainly, in that it is part of the standard kind of procedure that has long been used in many areas of investigation where one has to disentangle observer expectations and biases, and in areas where the human senses and mind may be misled in all kinds of subtle ways.
It is maybe an inconvenient truth that humans are much less able to discriminate between subtle differences under double-blind conditions than some people would like to believe. But pretending that these failures can all be put down to some inadequacy in the DBT setup, and pretending that the differences really are audible even when neither the DB tests nor measurements combined with general understandings of audibility thresholds support the idea that they are audible, is really just burying one's head in the sand.
The denigration of the DBT methods by those who want to live in a fantasy world in which every inch of wire is audible could indeed be called an "old tired" reaction. But there is nothing "tired" about the DBT method itself.
Chris
A Best Buy $400 AV receiver is capable of very accurate music reproduction today. I stand behind that statement.I said nothing to the effect that good tube amps are not,
Care to explaine why my statement is wrong?
And I took the tube LCR biamps out of mt HT system. Just not practical. But my music amp is still a stereo KT66 design. I even have a tube surrounds synthesizer, a tube Hafler matrix!
I'll post some pics of my retired tube LCR amps tomorrow.
Edits: 03/22/17 03/22/17
Sorry, but it is a cop out. State of the art is just that, offering perfect results consistently, not results predicated on this, that and the other, or when the stars are aligned. How would anyone ever really know that the input parameters based on whatever conditions/assumptions are perfect, so as to render the output also perfect? Think about it. Even if you hit on the perfect, you would never know it.Besides, you haven't "shown the state of the art" you've only claimed that it exists. Who's the arbiter on that conclusion? What is it based on? Let me guess; very low distortion numbers, right? So you're using your original proposition (namely that numbers rule) to prove that... numbers rule! I hope that the irony (not to mention fallacy) here is not lost on you.
Also, I never claimed that you listen primarily to mid priced receivers as I don't know what your system consists of. I merely said that if numbers is all that matters, then there are reasonably priced components with stellar distortion numbers that should provide state of the art performance on a 'beer budget'. Win-win for you! That's the logical conclusion to your argument, don't blame the messenger.
Edits: 03/22/17
How did you come up with that? Nothing man made is perfect and never will be. Where I come from "state of the art" is the best you can do with modern tools, components and knowledge. And it keeps getting better but it will never be perfect.I think you missed my point entirely. I didn't say an amp designed via simulation is perfect. I was attempting to show how sophisticated modern circuit design tools have become. That based on these endless claims here by people who do not even work in any electronics field claiming what we can and can't measure accurately these days.
It is a fact that the professional version of Spice programs can do this level of simulation. That's is to process a .wav of other audio file through a simulated circuit and "record" the output into another file for analysis.
Now who can design a better amplifier assuming comparable skill levels. Somebody soldering parts together and listening. Or someone armed with these tools?
BTW, I posted my "beer budget" system up top.
Edits: 03/22/17
How did I come up with that you ask? Your previous post's entire theme, part of which I quoted above, is how advanced our capabilities have become both in measurements and simulation abilities that we can basically predict and/or measure anything we wish. You didn't explicitly state perfection, but you certainly implied at least near-perfection. So please don't backpedal now by saying that state of the art is just the best of our current knowledge base. It certainly is that, no argument here, but that is not the way you presented it.
Here's the thing now that you've somewhat clarified what it is the you're trying to say: I will agree with you in that we have the means to design proper circuits without much effort (assuming that one has the proper experience/knowledge on how to use the tools available). Since we are afforded this 'luxury' we should strive to properly engineer circuits to minimize all sorts of distortions. I am an advocate of this approach and that's what I strive for, to the best of my abilities of course.
However, certain topologies or class of audio electronics if you will, have hard limits (well sort of) on how far you can go in eliminating non-linearities while still sounding subjectively good - I Know I just lost you. And this is the whole point; measurements can often times sorta predict what we hear but at other times they fail and quite miserably so. The case of the SET is one such example. Once you properly design an SET amp by following the rules of good engineering practice, you're still left with quite a bit of distortion. The ear however doesn't hear it as such, well at least for some folks. You could design it with 3 or 4 stages using global and multiple local/nested feedback loops and get the distortion real low, but the sound will suffer.
I don't expect you to agree with this last part, but this is my experience - I simply can't deny the subjective, realizing full well that the objective portion is an integral part of designing electronics.
BTW, to clarify, I never called you system a beer budget one. I was trying to make a point about a high performance at a low cost system in the general sense.
You state that SE tube amps sound very good. And I have built a few myself albeit strapped Tetrodes, not the classic triodes. My experience was so-so. But I also did not have the right speakers or high quality SE OPTs.But if such were true, where is the commercial application of SE triode amps today?
Why are they strictly a hobbyist curiousity these days? The classics were the WE theater amps of the 1930s. Yet today most commercial theaters use Crown or QSC. Why?
Edits: 03/22/17 03/22/17
The key word is quality. Much mass market SS equipment is absolute guano. Crappy tube gear, especially out of China, is being marketed too.
Tubes, SS, or a mix of them? I could care less! System synergy is what I crave and there is more than 1 way to get it.
I use tubes because they (IMO/IME) do certain jobs better than SS. If setup X works, great. Otherwise, NEXT!
Eli D.
There is another fact about musicians that bears repeating. They know the material and their minds fill in info. gaps.
Sometimes, a musician is not the best critic of electronic equipment.
If a lump of galena played music well, I'd use it. Unfortunately, galena is, at best, good for AM detection.
Eli D.
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: