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In Reply to: I see the distinction, but to get back to specifications ... posted by Feanor on June 26, 2012 at 06:04:09:
Well, I have never made any attempt to hide that these are criteria that I think are necessary to have a chance for really good sound. Again, I use it as a starting point for deciding to audition something or not and this comes from a lot of negative listening experiences for which I have then found measurements of the device in question. Since there is quite a bit of literature out there with measurements (thanks to Stereophile and Soundstage) and I have heard a lot of amps both really good and really bad I began to connect the dots to see where it led.
If the results had led me to a conclusion that the absolute level of distortion was important but harmonics not and that a rising distortion with frequency results in good sound and that a flat distortion with power increase is best then I would obviously posted different criteria. Alas, the devices that provided the best sound could be argued often to have the worst meausrements from an absolute distortion perspective. Why? I think it is because our hearing is not an oscilloscope or even FFT plot and that the way distortion is perceived is complex.
Nevertheless, it seems that if the distortion is predominantly low order and in a distinct decreasing pattern and that distortion is constant regardless of frequency then there is a good chance it will sound at least good. Once I decided this (and this was actually observed by the French reviewer Jean Hiraga 25 years ago or so) from looking at LOTS of curves of amps I knew pretty well, I think started to look at how they were designed.
Tube, transistor, Class A or AB, hybrid, no feedback, no global feedback, big power supplies etc. That is where my criteria and the kind of amp that makes them comes from. The Monarchy SM70 is unlikely to meet all of these criteria but the SE160 and SE250 appear to meet most of the criteria and sound darn good. The SM70 sounds, ok, especially for the price.
Regardless of what you say about how you like your class D I haven't found one yet that sounds to my liking and I have owned 3 different ones and listened to at least a dozen others. I find them to sound quite unnatural from the mids up and the measurements show that they have problems up there. If they sounded really good I think I would have to find out what made them sound that way but so far its consistent with my hearing and measurement observations. I don't expect them to sound good now when I look at a new ones measurements and see the same old same old from the numbers.
I recently heard the newest Nuforce reference monos on a pair of highly revealing Piega planar/hybrid speakers (2nd to top model) and using a top of the line Moon cd player and the top Pass preamp. The sound was terrible. Simply terrible. The amp made the speaker sound completely disintegrated between the planar and the bass drivers and the mid/highs were thin pinched and forward. No tone in the strings of violins and everything a bit steely. Not nice. The Piegas gave the amps nowhere to hide.
My friends also like Monarchy Audio products. Two of them now have the Monarchy Audio NM24 (I have the original M24) DAC with DIP. It has gone toe-to-toe with the Resolution Audio Cantata and done quite well and sounds substantially better to me than the DCS Elgar.
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Follow Ups
- RE: I see the distinction, but to get back to specifications ... - morricab 07:58:32 06/27/12 (2)
- Again, it comes around to perferences - Feanor 09:08:17 06/28/12 (1)
- RE: Again, it comes around to perferences - morricab 00:08:53 06/29/12 (0)
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