Are audio companies all involved in a huge conspiracy? - Page 55

What did I misinterpret exactly???

IF "no-one hears a difference" between a cheap amp and an expensive amp due to EQ, then that would rule out sound quality as the reason to buy the expensive amp. Better to get the cheap amp and equalizer, since "no-one" would hear a difference. But that's quite an indictment of expensive amps.

This needs a step back. Nobody says all amps sound the same under all conditions. Certainly I could run my mains out of a couple of my guitar amps and ezch would sound different from teh other and from any "normal" stereo amp you'd care to name. I don't know if it's even possible to set the controls so that those amps are flat. I could run one channel off a half watt amp and get it clipping merrily and it would sound different from the other amps in the system.

That's an extreme example, I know.

But what people generally say is amps that measure the same sound the same. If I bring an 80s era Arcam to the fight and it has an audible rolloff in the high frequencies, that audible rolloff is also measurable. The amp is not "trying" to be accurate it's trying to make (at least what people then perceived as) ugly highs in CDs sound acceptable.

So generally what is happening is the tester has to make the "lesser," "cheaper" (more accurate) amp measure like the more expensive, less accurate amp. Not the other way around.

If you really want to spend thousands of dollars to get an amp that deviates from flat in a way you could perfectly replicate with an inexpensive resistor at the output of a "cheap" flat amp, knock yourself out. Just know what it is you're actually doing. But in music reproduction, amp-as-equalizer seems a less than ideal approach to me.

This one is from your "It's all in there" :
"Is adding an equalizer just a way of “dumbing down” the better amplifier ?

Richard Clark allows the equalizer to be added to whichever amplifier the listener wants. It can be added to the amplifier that the listener perceives as the weaker amplifier . The EQ is most likely to be used when comparing a tube amplifier (which exhibits slight high frequency rolloff) to a solid state amplifier . In that case Richard Clark says he can usually fashion an equalizer out of just a resistor and/or capacitor which for just a few dollars makes the solid state amplifier exhibit the same rolloff as the tube amplifier, and therefore sound the same. If the tube amplifier really sounded better, then modifying the solid state amplifier to sound indistinguishable from it for a few bucks should be a great improvement."
From that, you concluded this: and this: You can operate your amp that way if you want to but keep in mind, that was for comparing tube vs solid state amps (to see if tube amps have something other than frequency response roll-off that made them sound different), not all amps.

That's a lot of reading. Please repeat your interpretation of the article along with quotes from the article that you think supports your interpretation.

I'm not going to cite every line of text for you. Clark basically modified the amp design to sound the same as any other amplifier. Modifying the design to make them sound the same and then not hearing a difference because of that is kind of a pointless test. It seems like common sense that modifying the response to be the same would result in the same sound. So what does he actually prove? What he did doesn't show anything useful. It actually nullifies his results.

You need to brush up on your reading comprehension. What he did was to equalize one amp in the unusual case that one amp had a non-flat FR. The most common reason he'd need to do that would be the case of a tube amp with a high output impedance—where the FR anomaly is caused as much by the speaker as by the amp. But again, those cases are unusual—and for solid-state amps, exceedingly rare.

But why equalise the tube amplifiers? If the test is to hear a difference in amplifiers, you are taking this difference AWAY and then proclaiming that you can't hear a differences. So what is the POINT?

Which amp was it? Which were those any other amplifier, tube, solid state or chip amp? If you answer those questions above, it will clear up your confusion.

Does it matter? EQ was involved in his testing. Whether it was used for tube designs or for solid state to match the tube designs or vice-versa is irrelevant. It was involved which would take away the qualities of the amp, any amp under test. So again, what was the point of doing that? Let me guess, it was to ensure both amps sound the same?

OK, so in addition to not reading the Clark details carefully, you didn't read my post correctly. The difference is that the FR anomaly is not caused by the amp alone, but by the interaction with the speakers. In fact, the FR tends to follow the impedance curve of the speaker, so it's really an error determined by the speaker, not the amp. And the amp will sound different with every speaker you hook it up to, so it can hardly be considered an inherent sonic signature of the amp.

Also, note that the only thing he's correcting is FR, nothing else. It's the contention of the amps-are-all-different crowd that there are differences we cannot measure. At the very least, Clark's test puts that canard to rest for all amps.

Common sense would also dictate that if two amps have the same response without modification (the vast majority of amplifiers tested by Richard Clark), they would sound the same.

Common sense would also dictate that we therefore shouldn't be surprised if the results of his tests over thousands of listeners confirmed that prediction, which they did.

But I don't see a lot of common sense displayed in your posts, which I suppose offers an explanation for your continued confusion despite many very clearly worded attempts to clarify that confusion.

My common sense tells me your mind is made up, you are stubborn, and no amount or type of evidence will ever be sufficient to cause you to reevaluate your beliefs.

Yes, it does. So would you mind answering?
1. Which amp was it?

2. Which were those any other amplifier, tube, solid state or chip amp?

But in this discussion, it shows that substituting an amp with greater distortion may improve the fidelity of the sound reproduction system, if the distortion corrects for another distortion elsewhere in the system. And that shows the fallacy in assuming that reducing distortion in an amplifier will result in greater fidelity. I call that progress.

It's not possible to "counter" one distortion with another. Well, it is possible in theory, but you need special contrived circuitry or DSP. That will never happen with normal audio gear.

I think you misunderstand the very definition of fidelity:

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fidelity

--Ethan

How do you know that is the case? Can you prove it?

And I call that moronic. Given how few amps have audible distortion in the first place, it is inconceivable that you could find one that exactly—or even partially—offsets frequency response errors elsewhere in the system.

And consider the likeliest possibility: That an amp with a high output impedance produces, in combination with a speaker, a FR curve mirroring the speaker's impedance curve. In that case, the obvious solution is to buy a better amp, not a worse one.

There are nearly an infinite number of different kinds of distortion in an infinite number of different degrees.

There is really only one practical way to reliably correct distortion generated by an audio component and that is with a specially adjustable compensation, tailored for each particular application and distortion.

The idea that one off-the-shelf audio component will be suitable to adequately compensate for some other essentially randomly selected audio component is a flight of fantasy.

You could mix and match components for the rest of your life and not even make a tiny dent into the problem.

There is a special class of components called equalizers that are designed to be used to reduce overall system linear distortion. However, they still have to be carefully adjusted for each application. This is often best done using test equipment. They also don't address nonlinear distortion. Theoretically a DSP could be developed to compensate for both linear and nonlinear distortion. However the better approach is to first minimize the distortion in equipment by more conventional means.

Audyssey, MCACC and YPAO are examples of equalizers for reducing system linear distortion that essentially adjust themselves under the control of a built-in computer,

And better is a flat response ... because? So a tube amp is worse because? This is a matter of TASTE. You can't dictate preference here. A better or worse amplifier is subjective - what you deem is "bad" amplifier could sound good to someone else.

Sure, but then it's not high fidelity, it's just a bad amp. If someone prefers that more power to them! But then it's preference, as you said, not "better" in any way one could define "better."

--Ethan

I don't understand your arguments at all. A flat response is better because it's not changing what your source provides into something that emphasizes or cuts frequencies for no reason. Look, if you think that all frequencies above 8.5 kHz should be attenuated by 7dB that's great, but don't argue that an amplifier that does this is somehow a good piece of equipment.

I have bench tested several hundred commercial home and professional audio power amplifiers over the yeasr. With a few exceptions, over the normal audible range from 20 to 20 KHz, they generally have flat response within+/- 0.5 dB or better. Over the more critical range of 100 to 10,000 Hz where the ear is far more sensitive to variations, they generally have response within +/- 0.1 dB.

If you read published test reports of audio gear, you will usually find similar results

In general you can compare them in a listening test with no other equalization or correction and they will be impossible to distinguish by ear. .

Most exceptions are vacuum tube power amps of esoteric design that have been engineered to have high distortion by means of reducing or elimination feedback correction loops. Some switchmode power amps have larger variations in the top octave.

That is not what I asked for. I do want you to read the portion of the article that supports your claims. If you can't do that then we have no choice but to think that your claims are false.

Clark didn't keep detailed records. However, his test was almost exclusively if car audio amplifiers for the first fifteen years according to the summarization you linked to. How many tube car audio amps are there? Once again, common sense or the lack thereof.

You seem to be grasping for any little sliver that allows for some doubt of the tests to remain, even if you grossly misunderstand the meaning of that sliver. Its amusing. You hope for the extraordinary explanation when the obvious will suffice. You know, quantum mechanics may allow for the possibility of you walking untouched through a brick wall, but if you tell me you have I'm going to laugh at that too.

Yeah, that was the point I was getting at (but I thought I'd let him dig his own grave by answering for himself), namely, that "control" is one of those terms that sounds meaningful, but it actually says nothing.

Is there feedback in this control system? No. The amp doesn't sense the speaker output and adjust its response accordingly.

So I suggest "control" is one of those audiophile terms that sounds like it means something, when in this case it really doesn't.

That's why I asked him the (rhetorical) question.

So I can't even conceive what I just wrote down?

I read it as saying that actually finding one is inconceivable, not that one cannot imagine such a thing.

Leprechauns are conceivable. Encountering one in the broad light of day while sober isn't.

Is this engineering reasoning? Following your method, I can prove that it's impossible for a human to ever tune an musical instrument requiring octave intervals by merely listening and tightening or loosening strings. Here's why. There are an infinite number of pitches, hence an infinite number of pairs of pitches, and you could tighten and loosen the rest of your life, listening for the octave, but never finding it. In fact, if you measure your progress by the number of pitch pairs you've auditioned divided by those that are possible, since that fraction would always be zero, you could "not even make a tiny dent into the problem."

Why not?

Wow. That may be the most amusing and most misguided analogy I have ever read. I suggest you at least make an attempt to understand the original argument before offering another such insightful analogies.

Actually, I have another suggestion. Perhaps you should refrain from making posts that include words such as engineering, method, reasoning, and especially any sentence that begins with "I can prove..." I think this would save you a fair amount of grief. Just stick to your position that your beliefs are immune from facts, evidence, or logic and you're sticking with them. A much safer position from which to spout your nonsense.