Why Do People Come To Computer Audiophile To Display Their Contempt For Audiophiles?

[pkane2001]

8 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Hi Paul -

 

It was with knowledge that the amp circuits jabbr built were measured and tested by Nelson Pass, and that further, jabbr understands the design principles of each and the way each circuit works, that I wrote.

 

There seems to be a general way of thinking among a large segment of society these days that scientific and engineering knowledge are a kind of bias like any other.  Bias they are indeed, but I would say a bias in favor of reality is not like any other.

Hi Jud,

 

I as well have studied Pass' designs. As I said in another post, I've owned four of his amps, and still own two.  My point was that simply understanding the design is not enough to guarantee that a component will work well, or will compare favorably to another. Measurements and listening (blind, if possible) are part of my evaluation protocol.

[Jud]

5 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Hi Jud,

 

I as well have studied Pass' designs. As I said in another post, I've owned four of his amps, and still own two.  My point was that simply understanding the design is not enough to guarantee that a component will work well, or will compare favorably to another. Measurements and listening (blind, if possible) are part of my evaluation protocol.

 

Have differences in measurements of the Pass amps you’ve owned been indicative of sonic differences among them?  (Not a challenge, I’m curious.)

[mav52]

57 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Have differences in measurements of the Pass amps you’ve owned been indicative of sonic differences among them?  (Not a challenge, I’m curious.)

I own two Pass amps and I'm not sure about measurements but they sound pretty darn good. If people like to listen to measurements instead of music that's fine with me. 

[Sal1950]

17 hours ago, jabbr said:

Measurements can be useful under the right circumstances. Just because something is  a measurement does not mean that it is unbiased nor accurate. What is your goal?

 

It is if the person doing the measuring is competent.

If your letting personal bias enter your results, or you can't get consistent results, maybe you need some assistance.

[Jud]

Sal, I think what jabbr was talking about is what you choose to prioritize as a design goal and measurement, especially when the goals conflict.  Should it be something readily audible to most, or readily audible to fewer?

 

For instance, most listeners are relatively insensitive to the flatness of the overall frequency response spectrum.   But it’s in all the specs and magazine measurements.  So if you’re in business to sell equipment, should you prioritize it over measurements of characteristics most people can actually hear better?

[Kimo]

I have owned, or auditioned, 2 Pass preamps, 2 integrated amps, 3 power amps, as well as several First Watt amps.

 

I don't think that they are necessarily designed to sound alike, and they often do not.  That being said, they all measure well, and sound excellent.  

[semente]

7 hours ago, Jud said:

Sal, I think what jabbr was talking about is what you choose to prioritize as a design goal and measurement, especially when the goals conflict.  Should it be something readily audible to most, or readily audible to fewer?

 

For instance, most listeners are relatively insensitive to the flatness of the overall frequency response spectrum.   But it’s in all the specs and magazine measurements.  So if you’re in business to sell equipment, should you prioritize it over measurements of characteristics most people can actually hear better?

 

Frequency response represents the tonal balance of the loudspeakers, akin to colour accuracy in a TV screen or computer display.
This image comparing a standard colour profile and a calibrated one serves as a good illustration:

 

 

I think most CA members will prefer the image on the left...or is it the one on the right?

 

A wobbly and/or tilted frequency response curve affects the tonal balance of instruments and vocals timbre.

It surprises me, then, that most audiophiles, at least those that listen to adequately mic'ed acoustic instruments and vocals are "relatively insensitive" to this?

 

Apparently we can determine image colour accuracy more easily than sonic tonal balance.

This is another proof that sound assessment through listening is not as straight forward as it seems, unless one is merely tasting.

 

But according to Toole's research, which consisted on having a sample of listeners taste the sound different loudspeakers, it looks like listeners do indeed prefer a flat frequency response:

 

https://www.scribd.com/document/270609041/The-Audio-Critic-28-r

[jabbr]

4 hours ago, Kimo said:

I have owned, or auditioned, 2 Pass preamps, 2 integrated amps, 3 power amps, as well as several First Watt amps.

 

I don't think that they are necessarily designed to sound alike, and they often do not.  That being said, they all measure well, and sound excellent.  

Right. I selected this example for this reason. FirstWatt in particular is something like a testbed to release a particular design on the market to gain wider impressions after the amp has been designed, measured and passed internal listening tests. This by a designer with many decades of very successful amplifiers spanning from $100s to $10,000s.

 

Of course measurements are done during the design, build and refinement phases. I think you might be able to go back after listening and perhaps glean some explanations from measurements as to why X or Y amp sounds different, but in my experience, when we start out with such a high level it takes much longer time and much more effort to determine these differences by measurement than it does by just listening.

 

There are reasons why human experts are still necessary in the age of measurement robots. There are similarly reasons why some of the best acoustic venues are really old as opposed to really new and why carbon fiber instruments haven't replaced wood etc.

 

Its also good that we have choices.

[esldude]

36 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Right. I selected this example for this reason. FirstWatt in particular is something like a testbed to release a particular design on the market to gain wider impressions after the amp has been designed, measured and passed internal listening tests. This by a designer with many decades of very successful amplifiers spanning from $100s to $10,000s.

 

Of course measurements are done during the design, build and refinement phases. I think you might be able to go back after listening and perhaps glean some explanations from measurements as to why X or Y amp sounds different, but in my experience, when we start out with such a high level it takes much longer time and much more effort to determine these differences by measurement than it does by just listening.

 

There are reasons why human experts are still necessary in the age of measurement robots. There are similarly reasons why some of the best acoustic venues are really old as opposed to really new and why carbon fiber instruments haven't replaced wood etc.

 

Its also good that we have choices.

Well if they sound different a minimum of one is of lower fidelity.  Possibly both differ from fidelity in different ways. You see this in people all the time.  People will pay for or celebrate differences.  They don't want all amps to be full fidelity and all sound the same.  They want to own a 'special' amp.  It can't be special if it sounds like all the others. Add in that most speakers fall far from real fidelity and it is a given that slightly colored amps will match up better with some certain speakers to enhance the coloration or decrease a deficiency.

[jabbr]

16 minutes ago, esldude said:

Well if they sound different a minimum of one is of lower fidelity.  Possibly both differ from fidelity in different ways. You see this in people all the time.  People will pay for or celebrate differences.  They don't want all amps to be full fidelity and all sound the same.  They want to own a 'special' amp.  It can't be special if it sounds like all the others. Add in that most speakers fall far from real fidelity and it is a given that slightly colored amps will match up better with some certain speakers to enhance the coloration or decrease a deficiency.

 

Can you measure the lower "fidelity" or tell me which has the lower fidelity without listening? This is the whole point. You have 2 great amps that measure well. The FirstWatt M2 and J2. They are different. There will be slight differences in measurements. Which is "lower fidelity" and on the basis of which measurements? Do your ears agree ? ( @esldude: you don't need to answer the last question because you admit not hearing differences between amps like these two, fair enough).

[pkane2001]

20 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Have differences in measurements of the Pass amps you’ve owned been indicative of sonic differences among them?  (Not a challenge, I’m curious.)

Hi Jud,

 

Yes and no. The main differences where in control of my speakers, which are fairly inefficient and dip to 2Ω. The amps in my main system are Aleph 1.2 monoblocks which are able to drive these speakers with extreme ease. IIRC, THD, frequency response, etc., when not stressed were similar under measurement and under listening audition.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, semente said:

 

Frequency response represents the tonal balance of the loudspeakers, akin to colour accuracy in a TV screen or computer display.
This image comparing a standard colour profile and a calibrated one serves as a good illustration:

 

 

I think most CA members will prefer the image on the left...or is it the one on the right?

 

A wobbly and/or tilted frequency response curve affects the tonal balance of instruments and vocals timbre.

It surprises me, then, that most audiophiles, at least those that listen to adequately mic'ed acoustic instruments and vocals are "relatively insensitive" to this?

 

Apparently we can determine image colour accuracy more easily than sonic tonal balance.

This is another proof that sound assessment through listening is not as straight forward as it seems, unless one is merely tasting.

 

But according to Toole's research, which consisted on having a sample of listeners taste the sound different loudspeakers, it looks like listeners do indeed prefer a flat frequency response:

 

https://www.scribd.com/document/270609041/The-Audio-Critic-28-r

 

More from Floyd Toole and Sean Olive of Harman:

 

Quote

 

Bech in [20] has shown that 6 trained listeners can provide data that is as statistically reliable as data gathered from 18 untrained listeners. Clearly, considerable cost-savings in time and money can be realized if listeners are trained before they participate in formal listening experiments. At Harman, listeners with normal hearing undergo a listener training program, which self-administered through a computer and custom software developed in-house [21]. The software teaches listeners to identify and rate using different scales, frequency response irregularities according to the center frequency, amplitude and Q of the distortion. The graphical user interface of the training software is shown in Figure 8. The training focuses on frequency-related problems since these are the common and most serious audible problems found in most loudspeaker-related listening tests, which many untrained listeners find difficult to describe. The training solves this problem by teaching listeners to describe these phenomena in technical terms that design engineers can understand and use to correct any problematic audible artifacts in product designs.

 

 

"We trained people to recognize frequency response related problems and found the problems they most often recognized related to frequency response."

 

Shocking.

[Kimo]

In my experience, only one measurement counts when it comes to how good an amp sounds, temperature.

 

It seems the hotter the damn thing gets, the better it sounds.

[pkane2001]

38 minutes ago, Kimo said:

In my experience, only one measurement counts when it comes to how good an amp sounds, temperature.

 

It seems the hotter the damn thing gets, the better it sounds.

 

Definitely true with Pass Aleph amps. They actually don't measure as well until they warm up for about an hour and become hot to the touch. Nice bonus in the winter, not so much in the summer.

[fas42]

3 hours ago, Jud said:

 

More from Floyd Toole and Sean Olive of Harman:

 

"We trained people to recognize frequency response related problems and found the problems they most often recognized related to frequency response."

 

Shocking.

 

Amaaaazing ...

[mmerrill99]

3 hours ago, Jud said:

"We trained people to recognize frequency response related problems and found the problems they most often recognized related to frequency response."

and delivered without a hint of irony

[Ralf11]

if there were some strong effect from something else, they could have trained for freq. response and NOT found that listeners most often found problems with freq. response

 

- no irony; the study simply shows that there is no such effect that is invariant w.r.t. training re freq. response

[Sal1950]

5 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Can you measure the lower "fidelity" or tell me which has the lower fidelity without listening? This is the whole point. You have 2 great amps that measure well. The FirstWatt M2 and J2. They are different. There will be slight differences in measurements. Which is "lower fidelity" and on the basis of which measurements? Do your ears agree ? ( @esldude: you don't need to answer the last question because you admit not hearing differences between amps like these two, fair enough).

Of course you can, if you know what aspect of "fidelity" is important to you.

Both of those amps will vary from ideal in different ways and can potentially affect the sound differently.

I highly respect Nelson and own 4 of his designs currently and had 2 more in the past.

But I find his dabbling in the First Watt line curious, he knows and builds highly transparent amps for decades now but I find his sideline in First Watt along the same line as Bob Carvers tube amps and his "voicing" of SS with transfer function tuning possibly a stab at being "good for commerce".  JA's measurements of the J2 I posted earlier,along with just the basic fact that these are very low power amps and will be very load sensitive.

It's like building two very different tube SET amps or two OTL's and saying "see, amps do sound different".  DUH

It's true that amp designers have known for at least 3 decades how to build a fully transparent amp. The fact that many chose not to design along those lines I'll leave to others for debate.

[jabbr]

4 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Of course you can, if you know what aspect of "fidelity" is important to you.

Both of those amps will vary from ideal in different ways and can potentially affect the sound differently.

I highly respect Nelson and own 4 of his designs currently and had 2 more in the past.

 

You describe an ideal amp below as "transparent", ok, let's use that goal for "fidelity". Now how do the Stereophile measurements tell you how "transparent" the amplifier sounds?

 

4 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

But I find his dabbling in the First Watt line curious, he knows and builds highly transparent amps for decades now but I find his sideline in First Watt along the same line as Bob Carvers tube amps and his "voicing" of SS with transfer function tuning possibly a stab at being "good for commerce". 

 

Are you suggesting the J2 isn't transparent? or the M2? Voicing? What voicing? The designs are different topologies with the goal of determining which topology works best in which circumstance. In many cases there is a new transistor technology which is being tested (e.g. Silicon Carbide, SIT, Power JFET), or perhaps positive current feedback ala F7 which is useful in certain difficult speaker loads.

 

4 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

 

JA's measurements of the J2 I posted earlier, along with just the basic fact that these are very low power amps and will be very load sensitive.

 

Yeah ok but use the measurements to tell me how they "sound", or how "less transparent" they sound. Interpret the measurements...

4 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

It's like building two very different tube SET amps or two OTL's and saying "see, amps do sound different".

It's true that amp designers have known for at least 3 decades how to build a fully transparent amp. The fact that many chose not to design along those lines I'll leave to others for debate.

 

I see, so there's been no advances in amplifier design in the last 30 years... and this thread is about ? coloration ? http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pass-labs/300136-def-amp.html

[esldude]

7 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Can you measure the lower "fidelity" or tell me which has the lower fidelity without listening? This is the whole point. You have 2 great amps that measure well. The FirstWatt M2 and J2. They are different. There will be slight differences in measurements. Which is "lower fidelity" and on the basis of which measurements? Do your ears agree ? ( @esldude: you don't need to answer the last question because you admit not hearing differences between amps like these two, fair enough).

Well for starters how about all your conventional measures done with a speaker attached.  One has feedback, one doesn't.  One has transformers for gain and one doesn't.  One is spec'd to put out 25 wpc into 8 ohms and 40 wpc into 4 ohms.  The other 25 wpc into 8 ohms, but only 13 wpc into 4 ohms.  And for that one reason I am pretty sure with a real reactive load they will show sizeable differences in your conventional measures of bandwidth, IMD, and response with a real load.   It is likely the auto-former droops at higher signal levels at both ends though I don't know this. 

 

The measurements by JA of the J2 show it rolls of the FR differently at different loads.  I notice the IMD test was done at one watt and not the usual measure at rated power.  I would imagine just doing the measures fully would show differences in these.  Doing it with a loudspeaker load even more so. 

 

The design choices are likely to produce a sound that isn't bad even when stressed (over-stressed), and one near limits that will actively color in a way that is actually more pleasing to many vs a clean amplifier.  If you read the manual, Mr. Pass basically describes them this way.  Nothing wrong with it whatsoever.  The type of distortion in all the devices and circuits he has chosen are those that much like tubes will sound better for the non-linearities in some ways.  He is an excellent designer.  He mentions he wanted something with characteristics of tubes without the hassle of tubes.  With that design goal he has done an excellent job.

 

Now without the full regular measures at my disposal, I would venture a guess the J2 is going to be of lower fidelity because it has much more limited current capabilities.  If someone says they listened to both and preferred the J2 that would not contradict this prediction. 

 

[esldude]

1 hour ago, Sal1950 said:

Of course you can, if you know what aspect of "fidelity" is important to you.

Both of those amps will vary from ideal in different ways and can potentially affect the sound differently.

I highly respect Nelson and own 4 of his designs currently and had 2 more in the past.

But I find his dabbling in the First Watt line curious, he knows and builds highly transparent amps for decades now but I find his sideline in First Watt along the same line as Bob Carvers tube amps and his "voicing" of SS with transfer function tuning possibly a stab at being "good for commerce".  JA's measurements of the J2 I posted earlier,along with just the basic fact that these are very low power amps and will be very load sensitive.

It's like building two very different tube SET amps or two OTL's and saying "see, amps do sound different".  DUH

It's true that amp designers have known for at least 3 decades how to build a fully transparent amp. The fact that many chose not to design along those lines I'll leave to others for debate.

 

Sal I think you have captured what Nelson Pass does in this and similar designs.  He is just playing with various colors to see what they are like.  A truly accomplished artist of the amplifier in that respect.

 

My main complaint, and for some it will seem a stupid complaint, is this approach severely limits the speakers one can usefully connect to such an amplifier.  I have thought for some time building mini-amps of 5 wpc or less and using them as colorful palette pre-amps feeding a clean power amp makes much more sense.  The price could be lower, and most speakers could be used with them.  Of course anyone so honest as to do that would likely find none of the true believers willing to use them that way.  They don't believe the clean SS amp could display the sound of an SET for instance.

[esldude]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

 

You describe an ideal amp below as "transparent", ok, let's use that goal for "fidelity". Now how do the Stereophile measurements tell you how "transparent" the amplifier sounds?

 

 

Are you suggesting the J2 isn't transparent? or the M2? Voicing? What voicing? The designs are different topologies with the goal of determining which topology works best in which circumstance. In many cases there is a new transistor technology which is being tested (e.g. Silicon Carbide, SIT, Power JFET), or perhaps positive current feedback ala F7 which is useful in certain difficult speaker loads.

 

 

Yeah ok but use the measurements to tell me how they "sound", or how "less transparent" they sound. Interpret the measurements...

 

 

Nelson Pass tells us how his M2 is not transparent in the manual:

 

Does it have any similarities to no-feedback Class A tube amplifiers

with an output transformer? Yes and no.

 

It does have some of the qualities that SET aficionados look for. The auto-former

does bring its own signature to the sound, although in smaller doses than we

usually experience. The midrange has a lush, warm character that I associate

with tubes and transformers, but subtly so. Part of this is due to the limited

bandwidth of transformers, and part of it is the lack of feedback artifacts.

On the other hand, there is considerably less harmonic distortion than with no-

feedback SETs, and if you really do like that distortion then the M2 might not be

what you want. Also, there is more power than usual and a relatively high

damping factor, so the M2 is different in that regard.

snippage.........

I think you will find the M2 a very pleasant amplifier to listen to. It is relaxed and

lively with a slight softness to both the bottom and top frequencies. I hope that

you will find as I do that it disappears and leaves the music for you to enjoy. I also

hope that it will make you go back through your entire record collection and make

you listen to it all over again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

So yes, the designer of the M2 doesn't think it is transparent.  He says so.  The

usual measures under the appropriate conditions would show you this without

listening to it.  Much of it if you know the circuitry and components chosen, and

how some measures are done in the spec's even clue you into how it would measure

indicating a lack of transparency.   It is those measures omitted. 

[semente]

8 hours ago, Jud said:

 

More from Floyd Toole and Sean Olive of Harman:

 

 

"We trained people to recognize frequency response related problems and found the problems they most often recognized related to frequency response."

 

Shocking.

 

From over a decade participating in web forums I don't doubt that "many untrained listeners find difficult to describe" frequency response; that probably also explains the large amount of "unflat" response speakers which are popular with audiophiles.

 

But "difficult to describe" also might explain why some people can't relate spatial or tonal problems with frequency response, or pinpoint what is wrong with their system/gear (making upgrades difficult and erratic).

Most people only report tonal differences in the top or bottom of the spectrum when changing gear (or even cables) because these are obvious.

Frequency response aberrations are like colour inaccuracies with TVs or displays; if audiophiles don't worry about this then in my view they have the wrong priorities (generally space reproduction).

Perhaps they should train themselves to learn how to listen better?

For those who do, maybe Sean Olive (Harman Group) can help:

 

http://seanolive.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/harmans-how-to-listen-new-listener.html

[Sal1950]

4 hours ago, jabbr said:

You describe an ideal amp below as "transparent", ok, let's use that goal for "fidelity". Now how do the Stereophile measurements tell you how "transparent" the amplifier sounds?

Dennis answered all your questions to me in a better and more detailed way than I ever could.

But I will make one small addition.  You are a smart guy and I know you understand that simply looking at the design and measurements of the First Watt line you can deduce a simple fact.

This line of amps from Nelson are simply designed to be very system reactive, this at a time in history when designing to be system agnostic should be easy-peasy.

As I said before, the fact that he has made these de$ign choices I'll leave to others to debate.

[Jud]

3 hours ago, semente said:

 

From over a decade participating in web forums I don't doubt that "many untrained listeners find difficult to describe" frequency response; that probably also explains the large amount of "unflat" response speakers which are popular with audiophiles.

 

But "difficult to describe" also might explain why some people can't relate spatial or tonal problems with frequency response, or pinpoint what is wrong with their system/gear (making upgrades difficult and erratic).

Most people only report tonal differences in the top or bottom of the spectrum when changing gear (or even cables) because these are obvious.

Frequency response aberrations are like colour inaccuracies with TVs or displays; if audiophiles don't worry about this then in my view they have the wrong priorities (generally space reproduction).

Perhaps they should train themselves to learn how to listen better?

For those who do, maybe Sean Olive (Harman Group) can help:

 

http://seanolive.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/harmans-how-to-listen-new-listener.html

 

And perhaps the visitors to Procrustes’ inn all ought to learn how to fit into the one bed?

 

Toole and Olive take a sonic characteristic to which most people are relatively insensitive, frequency response over the entirety of the audible spectrum; they as engineers feel people ought to be sensitive to it; and so they train people to be more sensitive to it.  In the process they also are training the same listeners *not* to prioritize characteristics to which people are immediately sensitive, such as phase linearity, with the role it plays in the fundamental auditory function of locating sounds.  Having changed the way people listen from normal, they then designate the result an improvement.  And some folks are even of the opinion *everyone* ought to learn to listen abnormally, since this would make them smarter.  

 

I am thinking if engineers were able to make designs that were more sophisticated than our level of knowledge and technology currently allows, they would be able to design speakers that reproduce the key characteristics of reality as people actually hear it, rather than taking what we currently know and are able to build and training people to think of it as accurate.