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For those who would like debating comparative testing, you can try it yourself in a live environment at HE2007. Bob Cordell an I will be in room 1627 doing a series of clinics including a simple comparison between a SS and a tube amp. The intent of this clinic is to allow first-hand experience (you get the switch) in a live comparison between level matched amps. We engourage people to bring their own music.We avoid the terms often debated in this and other forums. We found that by making the test very simple and to the point, there were fewer issues with how we recorded statistics, what was visible or not, or that one light color clashed with the curtains, people like green lights, whatever.
So we all know tubes sound different from SS, right? All you have to do is flip a switch and play your music and tell us which amp is the tube amp. How hard can that be?
Special thanks to JA and Ray Kimber for supporting audio education. A complete listing and schedule of clinics and workshops is at my site. I know this sounds like a sales promotion, but we are doing this for free: nothing for sale.
Clinics and workshops:Amplifier Measurement Clinic
Amplifier Listening Comparison
Speaker Auditioning Clinic
Speaker Measurement Clinic
The Peak Power Demands of Well-recorded Music
Active Loudspeakers - An ExampleThere will also be an Amplifier Design Q&A session on Saturday afternoon
P
Follow Ups:
I'm assuming it would be relatively easy to find a tube amp and a SS amp that either sound very close to each other or two that sound significantly different. Or I suppose you could simply randomly chose two and see what happens.
It seems to me that all this test does is give a benchmark for the two particular amps chosen but is rather meaningless in the greater scheme of things.Am I missing something here? Plese don't read this response as trying to be confrontational.
Only one person who went to the clinic suggested we cherry picked amps. The reality is that the SS amp is mine and I live in VA and the tube amp is Bob's and he lives in NJ. The first time we did this clinic, we did not actually put the amps side-by-side until we were in the clinic room. We were set up to go either way: "see how hard it is" or, "see how easy it is". We got lucky and the answer is, IMHO, reasonaby hard.The SS is a POA-2400, a pretty nice amp from Denon. The tube amp is a KT88 rebuilt by Bob using good parts. These are the amps we own. If someone wants to make a proposal and get the equip to us, I am all ears.
This brings up a higher question. Should we be using amps with known colorations or not? These two amps are typical designs and make for a good comparison. There are a lot of similar KT88 designs out there and the Denon is no Halcro, Krell or Boulder, but is similar to many SS amps most of us normal people use.
If we had a whole room for just this clinic and people wanted to hang with us all day, we could go deeper and find the point of group audibility: If we lower the wattage on the SS side, at what power point will we hear a significant difference in the SS amp? If we lower the wattage on the tube side, at one point will we hear a significant difference? What if we moved to a SET amp? How low in watts can we go with a SET? This would take time and lots of amps.
The purpose of this comparison is not to clarify the line between the SS and tube amps, but to allow listeners the opportunity to hear a matched comparison for themselves and discuss what they hear.
Hope this helps.
One is the assumption that there is a generic "tube amp" sound and a generic "sand amp" sound. So your test is to, by using only one example of each, to prove or disprove that proposition.Stated that way, I think you can see the obvious problem with what you have set up.
The other proposition is that a listener can distinguish between two reasonably good amps, not driven into clipping.
That, it seems to me, is the real hypothesis you're testing, which, I agree is an interesting one.
Sure would be nice if all amps of a type sounded the same :o)This comparison rig can compare any number of things. Bob and I talked at length about what works best in a public forum and had some meaning. Any two items we compare can only say something about those two specific items: you are right. Moving up and down the audio chain and you get different levels of perceived variance between products. If we had chosen an item like interconnects, the average listener would be stumped upon entry because they don't know anything about the products being tested or what expensive interconnects sound like. Also, we would be strained because we would be comparing items which at best have a very minor effect on the sound. For the same reason, it would be useless to compare a top rung SS amp versus a top rung tube amp, they should sound similar. In a hotel/show situation, we don't want to compare items with such a small difference it would take weeks in a home system to decide if there is any change.
So how do we move this to something which has meaning to the average listener? The idea of a tube versus SS is good because there is a lot of press on "the tube sound" and how different tubes sound. There is also a common perception that tubes have trouble with bass. So we selected a comparison which places people in a situation where they feel confident they will hear a big difference. The rest is up to them.
x
First ask each listener whether he prefers tube amps or solid state amps.Then let each listener compare two amplifiers that are not visible (the design/styling may cause listeners to favor one or the other)
Tell him amplifier A is a solid state amp, when in fact it is a tube amp.
Tell him amplifier B is a tube amp, when in fact it is a solid state amp.
Determine how often the stated amp design preference (if there is one) matches the preferred sound quality amplifier.
I predict low correlation (assuming no clipping is allowed).
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
just because you're a Subjective Audiophile there's no *obligation* to spew foolishness designed to give blind testing a bad rap.Just thought you should know.
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
Why not just ask listeners to say which amplifier they "liked" better, takes away the "did I get it right?" factor and if there's anything an audiophile has not problem with its declaring his/her subjective preferences, comes natural, can't imagine a less anxiety free query for an audiophile actually.You could them ask participants who had *already* given their judgement to answer a fact-finder summary, i.e. the question might be "What was it about your choice you felt was better? E.g. better bass, better realism, more relaxed, smoother, more dynamic?
Oh, if you get a lot of "I liked both" answers that would be an indication the was little to tell them apart.
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
We run a pretty relaxed clinic. In the time allotted, I think deeper questions might actually make it more tense. We start with: Can you hear a difference? Once we get some feedback on that question, we let people talk about it and most of your points come up. Then we go back and play cuts where people heard something so others can pick it up. This is a clinic, listening and discussion.Good points. Hope you can make it.
P
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