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In Reply to: Spectral nt posted by Sunya on July 1, 2012 at 03:39:31:
Exactly.
With a company like Spectral - that's been making some of the most advanced amplifiers in the world for decades - you'd think by now it would be the holy grail of amplifiers. Clearly, it is an oddity - always has been and probably always will be.
As noted earlier, I've owned amps with 200V/microsecond slew rates and rise times under a microsecond. Along side those, I've owned amps with slewing rates intentionally limited to 25V/microsecond - as with most SS amps. And after many hours of comparison, I could not hear a difference between the two.
Why? Because the loudspeakers we connect these amplifiers to produce harmonic and intermodulation distortion that is orders of magnitude higher than the "hundredths of a percent" comments put forth by folks like those in this thread. The science and the listening confirm over and over and over again that amplifiers aren't the weak link in the audio chain and haven't been for decades - loudspeakers are and to some extent, human hearing is. Most of us can barely hear past 17 or 18khz yet we seem to need bandwidth out to 500 khz from our amps for "accurate reproduction" - RUBBISH!
The preoccupation with TIM and "time smear" that corporations and their sales reps capitalized on many years ago has in the ensuing time been exposed as a fraud - along with various other snake oil schemes in the audio business. Very few people are willing to buy an expensive Spectral amp - as good as they are, because there's no real payoff in sound improvement.
With tube amp manufacturers, the added even ordered harmonics and soft clipping "features" of tubes are still used as "audiophool sweetners" today- literally decades after it was discovered that SS could outperform them in just about every category - most notably with low output impedance and high current delivery.
The Spectral 360 is a great example of a SS amp that "out tubes" most tube amps. On that basis, it should be extremely popular among the audiophool illuminati. But it isn't largely because of marketing, poor profit margin, and the lack of "audio sweetners" present in its performance - and most importantly - it doesn't take several minutes to warm up nor does it glow in the dark very well. In terms of speed, quietness, and strength, the Spectral 360 is arguably one of the most capable amplifiers ever made for home use. But very few people know about it or own it essentially because at that level, the market doesn't know what it wants. Those who have that kind of money to spend typically rely on the advice of pushy snake oil salesmen to whom marketing and profit margin mean everything. Having an amp that can slew at 600V/microsecond is like saying I have a V-12 powered Renault F1 car in my garage. It's not street legal so I can't drive it anywhere but the engine sure sounds nice...
When loudspeakers reach down into the "hundredths of a percent" region in harmonic and intermodulation distortion, I might actually consider listening to the tube fanatic reasoning or claims that some audible difference exists between SS and tube other than that which is readily attributable to tube "issues" like high output impedance or losses associated with output transformers for models that are so equipped. Until then, it will be talk to the hand and keep your insulting, baseless snobbery to yourself. I reserve the right to remain highly doubtful without referring to the tube faithful as wackjobs or audiophools as long as the tube faithful refrain from labeling me ignorant or lacking in sound perception.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Spectral nt - villastrangiato 07:11:53 07/01/12 (3)
- RE: Spectral et al... - Ralph 09:33:53 07/02/12 (0)
- RE: Spectral nt - morricab 09:39:07 07/01/12 (0)
- RE: Spectral nt - rick_m 09:19:53 07/01/12 (0)
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