Can YOU hear the difference between amplifiers?? - Page 8  

Thanks, that helps. Not in your own environment means a lot. Speakers are very room specific. Driving time is irrelevant.

They weren't demoed in different rooms. When I told them I was unhappy with what I was hearing he brought the BAT in from another room. Bingo.

Last year, i replaced my Hafler 500 for QSC GX5 amps expecting to hear at least some small bits of difference;

more so because the Hafler was around 28 y.o.

 

Result!   NO difference to my ears detected after listening to movies at Reference Volume and music at a realistic level for many weeks.

 

(disclaimer: your results may vary.)   ;-)

Hehehe.... No it wouldn't. All it would do would be to raise the voices of those who would proclaim the test must have been flawed.

 

LOL!  Yes, the nerve of it! In a science forum!  The muddy bass he mention is usually caused by room interraction - unless we know something about the room, his opinion has absolutely zero value as to what is actually going on. Of course, a few measurements of the in-room response would clear it up once and for all - but hey, who needs all that messing about when one has some 'golden eared' dude telling us all how it is.... 

The Class A amp in my music system is more than 25 years old and I sometimes think of changing that too. But then I come to my senses because I know the conclusion would the exactly the same as yours!

 

:)  Sadly this probably 100% true.

One other area where amps may actually differ is in self-noise. Self-noise can be heard through the speakers sometimes (hiss, but be careful that the hiss is from the amp and not merely the amp amplifying a noisy input signal caused either by a bad part upstream, or a poorly optimized gain structure), or from the amp itself (humming transformers, fan noise, etc.).

Since few people have posted in-home experience with the QSX GX line (though for pro amps they're reasonably attractive, and certainly well-priced) a question for you: how's the fan noise? Do the fans run continuously, and if so, are they audible with the music paused from the listening position?

Within the narrow confines of the question, the answer is, "No." However, as I have repeatedly said, people hear differences between amplifiers all the time, and I have been one of them. What we hear are things outside of that box. It is generally the difference between amplifiers that are overdriven in some way that makes them different. This has always been the reason for "tube sound", and it makes a difference to solid state amplifiers as well. They don't have to be clipping. Many speakers present radically changing, and low valued, impedances at their bass-midrange crossovers, and the response of the amplifier to this can also color sound.

when the 2 amps are on, i do hear the fans from my MLP, about 6 ft away, but i can hear them as long as no sound is coming out of the speakers.

the slightest sound makes the fan noise disappear so, for me, it's a no-problem situation. i sit about 6 ft away from the amps. (check the link below).

the fans do run continuously and i think they're 2 speed, but i have never been aware of them running at high speed, even after playing Terminator Salvation at Reference Level (by the way,

this is the only film where my ears were a bit desensitized for about one hour after watching it; very high noise levels most of the time).

the amps always run very cool; for a few weeks i stuck a thermometer's sensor right at the front speaker's amp air output, and it never went above 32 c.

 

i measured the noise level from the MLP, with everything off except the amps' fans;

it's difficult to measure, but i guess turning on the amps increased the noise level from about 38 dBA to about 39 dBA.

About 6 years ago I did extended listening using my 2 "Stereophile Class B" amps in my living room stereo and my not-really-a-home-theater. Living room: LPs and CDs. HT: CDs, DVDs, DTV.

I found it relatively easy to detect the differences between the amplifiers when listening to music in both systems. I was unable to notice any differences when watching anything. As always YMMV.

There are reasons for buying a more expensive amp over a less expensive one but it has to do with quality control rather than "unique" designs. I have a Behringer EP4000 that has a severe channel imbalance along with other problems such as a loud fan that needs to be replaced in order to be useful (which I did). I've also read that some Behringer's bias is set wrongly causing audible switching distortion at high frequencies. This is easy to deal with in my system as Audyssey has a subwoofer balancing routine but those using it as a general purpose amp without Audyssey might find it unusable. A Crown, on the other hand, for $300 more, would probably not have these problems. But we're still talking about whether a $5000 amp will sound different from an $800 one. I'm not even envious of those who can spend $5,000 on an amp, I just shake my head and think "I'm glad I don't have such golden ears."

I agree with this 100%. Folks sometimes don't realize that there are other things causing them to hear "differences", and not the actual "sound" of the amplifier. Great response!

Some bickering and name calling posts removed and infractions issued. The next step is to ban the member(s) from participating in this thread and a suspension from AVS.

I don't believe it.

Nope, the most I'd spend on amps is what Outlaw's cost. I really don't believe there is any difference between properly designed and functioning amps other than QC.

 

:)  You and I should have this on a macro, Theresa :)

Yes, because levels are rarely matched.

Actually, "tube sound" mostly comes from midrange colorations caused by the interaction of the amp's source impedance and the speakers' impedance.

While you make a good point that visual stimulus makes one less sensitive to differences in audio quality (which is why I don't really get spending much on HT, to be honest), what you're really hearing for the most part is difference in setup (gain structure, etc.), not anything intrinsically "sound quality-ish" about the amps.

Preamps or preamp sections usually produce considerably more random noise at their outputs than amps though neither should be audible from the listening position, as long as we're talking about nice systems.

The higher the speaker efficiency, the greater the chance of the noise floor being audible but the amp doesn't have to be as powerful, and less powerful amps have a lower noise floor than more powerful amps if all else inside them is the same. (It doesn't make high SNR in the preamp any less a priority.)

Some people measure noise by putting the ear next to the tweeter. Keep two things in mind - this is not normal use so if the noise can't be heard from the listening position there's hardly a reason to lose sleep over it, and if the preamp is a preamp/processor, note that DSPs, DACs, and volume controls can mute themselves when there's no input therefore playing a digital track that's all 0s may be needed to open up the real noise floor for testing.

I voted doubtful but that is my own opinion. I purchased a B&K 200.7 amp as I wanted to see if I noticed this huge increase in sound quality some here have stated and I didn't notice any. I still like having my amp but I don't think it was really necessary.

For some of the people on here who tried different amps and noticed this big difference whether at home or at a vendor, I am curious how you determined you were comparing apples to apples. If you were at a vendor, how do you know the gain on the amps were the same? If they were different I could see someone hearing differences that could be big due to a higher or lower gain.

For other that think that amps should sound the same, when I was looking at different 200x7 amps I considered a Sunfire amp. They have two sets of binding posts, one for voltage and one for current. Depending on the different posts used, the sound was supposed to be different, more tubelike, for the current posts. If Sunfire is able to change the sound based on this, is it not possible that other amp manufacturers can do the same to create a different sound?

Yes, some, myself included, call this "amplifier as tone control." There are esoteric amps including DIY ones that sound quite different. They do this by introducing distortion. The sound of tubes is because of such distortion. Some even find the sound of clipping in such amps as pleasing. I see no reason to try to discourage the usage of such amps but the user should know that the sound produced, while pleasant to some, is because of distortion and not because of some "magical" qualities of their particular amp.

I don't either for the most part. The sticking point though for me is the usual litany of qualifiers. If you essentially test an amp against itself why would you expect any difference?

In real world amps have different capabilities and not everyone uses them within the same benign parameters. In these cases it matters.

Thread is a joke.

What's the "punch-line?"

There's about 8-pages worth, take your pick.

The punchline is after reading this stupid thread I'm giving away my amps and gear and getting a damn dog.

LOL, what kind of dog?

.... never mind, all barking sound the same

heheheh, the first thing I'll do is have him de-barked.

Well..I guess this is a no win thread..there's two sides to everything,I for one noticed a nice improvement when I got my parasound halo amp in my system...but I notice improvements OR differences with interconnects,speaker wire..power cords etc...some people don't hear these things..some do
If were happy how our systems sound that's all that matters..we just have to enjoy what we have..and our beliefs...I love this hobby...obsess over it my speaker cable alone cost more than my first car!...but that's my belief..my ears..etc..would not want it any other way..land of the free!...now back to my music..with MY mega buck amps'cables,speakers..etc
Let's all just enjoy our systems...no matter what we have or what we believe in..