Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

---

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Speaker Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

Re: Out of curiosity

Posted by AJinFLA on February 25, 2007 at 13:46:01

In Reply to: Re: Out of curiosity posted by Donald North on February 24, 2007 at 11:40:47:

DN - I heard both the Arcam and Creek integrated amps while out demonstrating my new Sonic Décor on-wall speakers to dealers. I'm not normally impressed by solid state amps but these two lines caught my attention. I've heard various HK amps and receivers at work.

That sounds a little less controlled than I would prefer before casting judgement on the "sound" of an amplifier :-).

DN - For your speakers, I recommend trying another amp than a HK receiver to power the mids and highs. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!

I have had dozens of amps in my systems throughout the years (still own several). That is precisely why I use the HK. I suspect this is also why Dr. Geddes chose to use a Pioneer receiver when demoing his speakers to prospective *paying* customers. A rather important instant to impress IMHO http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Observations and Thoughts.pdf
What I have found over the years, is that with my active, high resolution speakers, the differences between amplifiers becomes diminishing(ly) small, as long as the amplifiers are well designed. I certainly do not hold that view for passive loudspeakers driven by say, a valve amplifier, where things tend to get a little too chaotic for me. As they say, one mans chaos is another mans "sweetness" and "musicality":-).

DN - What makes an amp sound dynamic, resolving, involving, and fun, while others don't, has to lie beyond standard frequency response, swept THD, and IM measurements. I would suspect it has to do with the behavior of an amplifier with dynamic, non-periodic signal content(like music) while powering complex, reactive loads (real speakers).

It always has. But not through some secretive magic, but rather by solid design principles found in scientific textbooks, as I'm sure you would agree.

DN - I'm sure some of these amplifier designers have developed their own design recipe but doubt they'll be disclosing them any time soon!

The Colonel certainly won't be divulging his secret recipe anytime soon either :-). The issue that I have with that perception is this:
If I made a car that got 50 MPG using the standardized tests for all other cars, it would be plastered in big, bold print in all my ads, not kept a secret. *How* I did it would be the secret left to my competitors to attempt to reverse engineer. So why would Creek or Hi end audio Brand X not clearly show what measured performance criteria allows their amplifier (or widget) to sound "more detailed, better,etc." in a standardized test, then leave it to their competitors to figure out how to engineer this. Why the big secret? Should they not have this "real" improvement in bold print? Why so vague where you leave it to purely subjective opinion, where for every two people saying, yeah, this thing sounds like the cats meow, two more are saying it sounds like a barking dog. Then who is right? With no standards whatsoever? Sounds great. No it doesn't. On and on it goes...

DN - My forte is speakers and have a full-enough plate as it is designing transducers and systems, although I have designed an interesting all-triode, feedback-less, low output impedance phono preamp which I need to build up.

I haven't owned a record in maybe 20 yrs :-).

DN - Thanks for the reminder about the JBL coax. We've been busy at AuraSound these past months with OEM laptop speaker and TV speaker projects and an interesting amplified speaker system for the iPod with a customer. But after that project starts production, I want to investigate developing a coincident coax with NRT motor structure for the mid-woofer.

I look forward to it, since that fits my design philosophy. The number of true midrange/tweeter coaxials with greater attention paid to the surround/cone/mouth waveguide is next to zero. PHL, TAD and KEF are exceptions, but non-DIY friendly. Might have some commercial value if done just right too :-).

cheers,

AJ

The threshold for disproving something is higher than the threshold for saying it, which is a recipe for the accumulation of bullshit - Softky

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Sonic Craft

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---