Just got mine last week. After 24 hours of play all I can say is that this is not your father's class D amplifier. There is not one thing about its sound that reminds me of the class D gremlins that I do not like. The low end filled in and now has deep impact, the midrange is the love child of a beautiful tube and clean hybrid amp - just gorgeous. Highs are very clean and extended. Spatial cues are top notch. My system has had some damn good tube and solid state amps in it before and it has never sounded this good. I am blown away with the quality of sound coming from class D amplification at this price point.
After reading what corepowertech said about the care and testing that
went into producing this amplifier, I feel that if increasing the wire
diameter would have increased the sound quality it would have been
increased. Probably less than $1 cent total cost.
Most amp designers/builders are trying to produce an amp that does one thing: produce an output that is as close to the input as they possibly can, only larger. That's what an amp is suppose to do, by definition. Anything that produces a noticeable change in the output, unless it can be shown to be a truer representation of the input, is noise. It may be that some like that noise. It may be that some don't. It may be that the noise is too small in magnitude to matter either way. All of this tweak nonsense assumes that every change is audible to all, and that everyone will agree that the new output spectra is "better". All of this without any factual basis, just "trust me". Are people really that gullible?
kuribo, You are one of the few people on any Agon forum to agree with
me that the ideal of high fidelity is best achieved with
neutrality/transparency. The "straight wire with gain" is indeed what
an amp is supposed to do. Good for you to imply boldly that coloration
is just noise.
When you ask any of these tweaker snakes what they mean by "better", they almost by definition bring out a slew of subjective judgments. There is nothing inherently wrong with stating an opinion but to opine that what one likes better must be some sort of objective truth is naive at best and tends more towards pure salesmanship when coming from the purveyors of all this audio shamanism. Wake up people! There is no "better" when it comes to subjective opinion- there is only different and what YOU perceive to be better. When someone says "A is better than B" without any factual evidence of objective superiority, what is actually implied is "I like A better than B". Will you? Maybe yes, maybe no. Confirmation bias after shelling out the extra money makes it almost impossible for people to evaluate the "tweak" objectively.
Sure you can put racing stripes on your new corvette and claim it rides better. You can put a gold leaf label around your bottle of $10 wine and claim it tastes better. You can claim your amp sounds better when your dog is in the room. And for you, it can certainly be true because opinions are not facts, they are based on individual perceptions. And if we know anything for certain, we know that individual perceptions and tastes vary greatly.
So, yes, give me an amp without any "sound" please. When I order a steak, I want to season it to MY taste, not someone else's, thank you.
Perhaps it would improve the signal to noise ratio if those with commercial interests in their recommendations either mention such in their posts or not be allowed to post in non-commercial forums.
He says the improvements he made will be easy for me to hear. They also sound like what I was hoping would improve.
I
am looking for more clarity and detail. A bit quieter would be nice,
but the new LA4 preamp I am getting may solve that issue. More musical
engagement or the wow factor would be the best improvement.
Clarity and detail improvements would require reductions in distortion. The distortion of this amp is probably already below the threshold of audibility. Anything he does is likely to decrease performance. Does he have ability to measure before and after to provide any sort of proof that he has actually improved the performance of the amp? Let me answer: No. It will just be his subjective opinion.
More musical engagement and wow factor? How to do quantify these? You can't. It's subjective. He will monkey around with the amp and add noise to it. You can use software to add effects and tune it to your own specific likes easier, cheaper, and with much more control.
The stock Voyager sounds really good after I replaced the leading edge
muffling stock rubber feet and got better still as I replaced all my 5+
yo machina dynamica springs with these. Outstanding improvement
The mind is indeed a miraculous thing....
What frequency and amplitude vibrations are you trying to damp? What was the spring rate of your old springs versus the new ones? Are they even different? What is the old versus the new damping ratio? Have you checked to see if it is different or for that matter an improvement? How do you know the damping hasn't worsened?
This is why these "tweaks" are nonsense. It's all in your head until you have some objective basis to actually show a change based on reality.
I hear if you smear peanut butter all over your amp it will sound chunkier.
@kuribo You
are making conclusions about something you have not heard. So you
really do not know anything about this specific amp or mods.
I am commenting on your methodology- I don't have to hear anything to know that your conclusions aren't based on anything factual, just your own opinions. That's fine for you but it really has no value to anyone other than yourself unless you back it up with evidence.
Funny the Benchmark is the one with the most clarity. It is also the one with the lowest distortion. Imagine that!
We are all different with varying levels of curiously and open mindedness.
Yes, exactly my point, we all are different, with different tastes and preferences. You can order a steak rare, medium rare, medium, or well done for a reason- what might that be?
There are people who swear by tubes, vinyl, and horns. There are just as many people who swear at them. Class A is best! No, class D! Ribbons! Horns! And on and on it goes.
So it is only reasonable to state that something that is "better" to one person may only be "different", or worse, to someone else. "oh, I can see 10 things I can do to take it to another level" is not going to be truth for everyone, despite the manic pleas of "just trust me, I have been doing this for years". Every time anyone asks for any objective proof, the answer is always "trust your ears". Well, I do trust mine, but I don’t take your money and tell you to trust my ears, I say trust your own. If you want to pay someone money to mess around with your equipment based solely on blind faith, a wish, and a prayer, without any basis is tangible reality, go ahead. Like old PT said, there’s a sucker born every minute.
You don’t see people like Bruno Putzkeys asking you to "just trust your ears". He publishes the results of his efforts. These tweak people are like parasites that live off the work of real engineers- what do they produce? Nothing- they take someone else’s work, wave their hands around and pronounce "I took it up another level". If they are such audio wizards, why don’t they have a go at designing and building something of their own? No wonder it’s called snake oil, fraud, and a con. They pray on the insecurity of others, nothing more. And heaven knows there are few groups as insecure as audio nuts. Put your cd in the freezer lately?
I really do not understand what you are trying to communicate here. You
do not like mods and think they are a waste of time. Great! However, I
do not think that way and I have an example of where mods took a ground
breaking audio piece, Sony SCD-1, to much greater levels of audio bliss.
If this is to become a religious argument, so be it. I am a believer.
No, I didn't say I didn't like mods and think they are a waste of time. I don't like charlatans bilking people out of their money by claiming they can do a few superficial "tweaks" and suddenly take a solidly engineered product with state of the art performance and, wave hands, dramatically "improve" the product. It's a con. People want to believe and there's always a prophet willing to accommodate them, for a fee. History is full of these scammers and the world full of those all too willing to believe their tale.
There are mods that surely improve the performance of any machine, based on science and engineering. You want your car to go faster? Modify the engine to produce more horsepower, don't put racing stripes on it.
Can you think of another industry where you charge people to improve the performance of something and then denigrate those who ask for proof that they have actually received something for their money? "Trust me"....um, no thanks.
one of the best DACs in the world in the late 90s.......only 15 of these incredible hand made things exist.
Sounds like it really took the market by storm. And the other one sold 100...Wow, not much love it seems for these mind blowers...So much for building a better mousetrap.
But you did soldier together some resistors and "create" an attenuator. Bravo.
And this is why people should believe you can improve and optimize state of the art products like Purifi, Voyager, etc., to heights their designers were not capable of achieving? And you wonder why there are skeptics? It just keeps getting better.
Every improvement by every manufacturer is a mod/tweak of what they did before.
It’s called product development. Like when Bruno Putzkeys developed the UcD amp, then improved it through r&d into the Ncore, and now, after developing mathematical models to define the feedback behavior of his circuit, testing, analyzing, and measuring, it has been refined and the result is the Purifi amp. They don’t give patents to tweaks to someone else’s work. What product have you developed?
To try and frame your racing stripes as somehow on the same level as the development work Bruno has done to perfect his circuit is ludicrous. Like comparing a brain surgeon to a prison tatoo artist. Pathetic.
Bad sounding this, good sounding that...the Oracle has spoken...
Only listening to something gives real knowledge.....your opinion.....is based on nothing real
Indeed, your opinion is based on nothing real. It's all just a wave of the hands, a wink and a smile, send money.
“Perception
is merely a lens or mindset from which we view people, events, and
things.” In other words, we believe what we perceive to be accurate, and
we create our own realities based on those perceptions. And although
our perceptions feel very real, that doesn't mean they're necessarily factual."
Is this the Ram Dass forum? Did I just bear witness to someone's Timothy Leary flashback? I thought this was audio, not some peace and love new age electric koolaid acid fest... I suppose when you have nothing of substance to back up your opinions you can always try to dazzle with smoke, mirrors, and emptiness.
"The small deviations due to filter implementation cannot be heard. "
-Tweakie Ric
Wait, you can hear the differences between solder, caps, resistors, fuses, hard wired speaker wires vs binding posts, etc., etc., ad nauseam, but you can’t hear the differences due to filter implementations?
Be careful, you might be hurting your nonstop self-serving self-promotion.
Tweakie Ric says trust your ears but what he really means is trust his ears because only he knows what sounds better and best. All his money making self promoting tweaks that take an amp to an 11 are all done without any basis in objective reality- he preaches "everything makes a difference" yet nothing he does can be measured- just "trust him" and his magic ears that everything he thinks is an improvement will be an improvement to all.
Yes, experiments have been done which show that certain measurements can in fact be indicative of the perception of sound. Certain distortion harmonics are generally preferable over others, for example. The job of an amplifier is to reproduce the input at the output as accurately as possible, only larger. Measurements provide an indication as to whether or not the amp is doing it's job. Some people can tolerate or even prefer certain distortions, others want an amp that delivers the input as accurately as possible. Tastes differ but the only people that claim measurements are meaningless and their golden ear is the only arbiter of truth are usually those trying to sell something, like Tweakie Ric.
Why do audio designers listen to the equipment they build before putting it on the market, could it be because measurements don't tell the whole story.
Measurements do tell the whole story- the objective story. Designers listen for the same reason chefs taste their food before serving, despite having used a recipe for years- final qc- does the sound/taste meet their standards.
Peoples tastes differ. An amp that performs well objectively will not suit everyone's taste- some like certain kinds of distortion. Some listeners aren't as descriminating, etc. Some amps don't play well with all ancillary equipment.
The only one who can judge the subjective quality of a meal or amp is the end user and the reason people don't all agree is simple- tastes differ. This endless debate measurements vs ears is really quite meaningless on an end user basis. Some people simply want an amp with state of the art measured performance, others want an effects box. To each his own.
I never said all audiophile products are unnecessary; only you are unnecessary. People can choose for themselves what sounds "best" to them. They don't need some self serving self interested guru peddling bs to them about what tweakie wire or rubber band sounds "best". Some people like 10 scoops of sugar in their coffee, others prefer it black. To each his own.
What you are saying is that if an amp measures great then it is neutral and if it does not measure great it is colored.....this is pure BS
If an amp outputs an exact version of the input only larger, then it is adding nothing to the input signal and is indeed a neutral wire with gain. If the output signal deviates substantially from the input, it is not an amplifier, it is an effects box. That isn’t BS, it’s simple physics and common sense.
What is "good sound"? There is no absolute definition- it's whatever the listener likes! You parade around like you have some sort of secret to universal listening bliss when you are selling the unobtainable. Engineers and scientists have established what objective performance demands- nothing added, nothing removed, from the input signal. All you do is add coloration and call it "improvement". It may sound better to some, but it's just sugar to the ears, not high fidelty to the input signal. That is if all your nutty tweaks actually produce anything audible at all, which itself is a major stretch of reality.
You can make all sorts of wild and crazy claims, wave your hands and shout all you want about how all your unsubstantiated, untested, unmeasureable, subjective opinions are the "truth" but they are nothing real- they only exist in your tweakie little world of one. And that would be fine except you are constantly preaching and promoting your self serving dogma as reality in an effort to drum up business. You are the definition of a snake oil salesman.
in fact, an amp designed by anyone to have the distortion structure that Ralph says can sound blah, OK, good, very good or great depending on the implementation of a million different factors.
True of any amp regardless. There will always be people with the above opinions about any piece of equipment. Thank you for once again sharing the obvious amidst more self promotion bs.
You can say what you want about ASR but at least they had the good sense to remove your noise from the signal.
Who wants to be a member of a forum where 100 people vote that an amp or speaker stinks regardless if they actually heard it or not? Worthless
When an amp has poor measured performance that doesn't meet the standards set at that price point, who would want it regardless? I don't think anyone intelligent needs to drive a $100,000 sports car with an engine that dynos at 100hp to known it can't compete with similarly priced cars with 700hp.
For all we know the channels could have a 10-20dB spread of THD+N between them.
You are missing the point: the guru's followers simply don't care if there is a channel spread, if the amp is a safety hazard, or if there is absolutely no scientific basis for any of these nutty tweaks. They don't care if science, logic and reason dictate human hearing is incapable of hearing any differences. Why? Because it isn't science, it's religion. And rather than use their own brain and sensory faculties, they have found a guru to make all of their audio insecurities better by telling them what sounds good, or better, or best. They no longer have to obsess and fidget, they can just rely on their guru. Cha-ching.
Here is an intelligent way to deal with them......when they,....or a group of them (there are only about one half dozen of the worse) of these guys says something not true then one person should counter with the truth.
You have no concept of "truth" , only your subjective opinion which you are constantly falsely marketing here as "truth". You are selling a religion, for which there is no truth, only unsupportable, unverifiable, "trust me" opinion you put in a glass and have your followers slurp down. You are the anti-truth.
The ear can hear what is lower distortion. Those that listen to parts and execution absolutely know this. Most manufactures know this. This is why you see more expensive parts being used.....it is not just to "sell" you something....it is mostly because they have spent hours and hours trying to find the lowest distortion sounding parts to make the sound the best.
It has been widely proven in scientific studies that certain types of "euphonic" distortion are actually preferable by many over a lack of such distortion. The fact that many people prefer certain tube amps with much higher distortion levels than other available amps proves your thesis that "they have spent hours and hours trying to find the lowest distortion sounding parts to make the sound the best" is wrong.
By your logic, the amp with the lowest distortion sounds the best. Halcro tried that. It didn't work. It is much more complicated than "the amp with the lowest distortion" sounds "best".
Once distortion levels are below audibility, it doesn't much matter in any case.
This amp has rising distortion with load impedance, much like other class d amps which do not have the output filter inside the feedback loop. It makes their frequency response load dependent. This is yesterday's class d amp. Smart designers like Bruno Putzeys have the output filter within the feedback loop to create a flat response with load impedance and reduce distortion below audible levels.
What is the compliance of your springs? What frequency range are you attempting to attenuate? Are you overdamped? Underdamped? Critically damped? Do you know anything about damping harmonic motion? "it sounds better" is not evidence that you have done anything meaningful to reduce the vibrations in your components- heard of confirmation bias? It's how all these nut job tweaks and tweakers make a living fleecing people.
LOL---Machina Dynamica--
"Posted by geoffkait (M) on January 23, 2013 at 14:20:08
Machina Dynamica.
Obtain a roll of adhesive-backed copper tape, width 1/2 inch. It can be either conductive or non-conductive adhesive. Adhesive-backed copper tape is available at Amazon and eBay, Radio Shack might carry it, who knows. Cut the copper tape into 1" x 1/2" rectangles - one rectangle for every window pane or glass door in the house or apartment. Attach one copper rectangle to each glass window and glass door. The copper rectangle can be placed anywhere on the glass, upper corner or otherwise out of view is OK. Be sure and attach a copper rectangle to glass in all rooms of the house or apt."
This is the level of sophistication we are at with these tweakie scammers....
FWIW some of us are interested in actual listening experience, and especially when people mention how it sounds vs other amps they know.
Due to the variability of this amp’s frequency response with load, unless two people are using the same speakers, any listening impressions, putting aside subjective differences in taste, will be meaningless as the amp will be performing differently with different speakers. Thus, trying to draw any conclusions of this amp’s performance, objective or subjective, from other user’s experiences, is fundamentally futile. As is sharing one’s super tweaks- due to load dependency, they won’t translate.
This is yesterday’s tech. If you want a state of the art class d amp, you need to look elsewhere.
Pre, versus post filter, feedback in class d amps is a known source of variable frequency dependency and a second class technology. Of course it is audible- remember the words of the guru: "everything is audible". Frequency response should be independent of load and all the better state of the art implementation use post filter feedback- Orchard, Icepower, Hypex, Purifi. Do a little reading and educate yourselves to the advantages. Any amp that sounds different with different speakers is not something any serious audio person would consider state of the art simply because of GaN. It's like putting new Michelins on a Model A and calling it state of the art.
I only have my ears to go by with the help of others comments regarding using 1-3 springs, instead of the full compliment
You have no idea then whether the results are real or imagined. It's also possible that you are adding distortion which you may find pleasant. That's the issue with these tweaks based on pseudo science. Most people don't understand the underlying physics and either through confirmation bias or added distortion, they "believe" there is some real benefit.
You seem to have an AX to grind with Wally and LSA.
I have just as much right to post an opinion as anyone else. I have no axe to grind with Wally and LSA, I am simply pointing out the less than optimal implementation and resultant load dependency of the amp's frequency response. Funny that someone should take a simple fact personally.
As I mentioned, this load dependency means the amp sounds different with different speakers, and even with the same speaker with a widely variable impedance. This can't be fixed with changing the topology of the amp's feedback circuitry. You can change speaker binding posts, add wood or springs under it, or sprinkle it with the tweakie scam of the day but that won't fix this deficiency. Maybe with some speakers, some will like the added distortion. To each his own.
I prefer and recommend an amplifier designed and tested to add as little to the signal as possible. That way you have a flat response to start with and can then toss your money to scammers who will add some distortion for you. Maybe you think it sounds better that way with a coating of kitty litter or what ever you are willing to believe will take it to 11 without anything other than confirmation bias or blind faith.
There is no trophy in audio because none of these fake scientists have ever performed a test that has any meaning. It is really a belief system based on wiggles on a scope and numbers....all signifying nothing. It is a lie....plain and simple. I would not go so far to state that these people are all lying for they are just converts of this religion and believe it to be the truth. However, there is not one test that I have ever seen that correlates measurements with sound......none.....please show me one.
The Age of Enlightenment called. They want their Scientific Method back....
Yes, it’s a belief system based on science. It’s what’s gotten us out of caves and to the moon. What is your belief system based on? Your business model is "Trust me"- it’s a cash faith based religion which preaches results that can't be measured, verified, or explained by any rational means.
Engineering is indeed based on numbers. No one with any serious knowledge of science would deny the importance of math, physics, and rigorous testing/analysis to determine the performance of any engineered product, from bridges, airplanes, spacecraft, to audio. None of these audio products would exists without designers thoroughly familiar with the science behind their products. This should go without saying and I think any intelligent person understand this.
When someone claims numbers, science, engineering, etc., doesn’t matter, that it’s a scam, a religion, all faith, especially someone whose livelihood is dependent on denying anything that might give evidence of the veracity of his claims, it is an obvious and clear fraud.
There have been innumerable studies which verify the link between numbers and audible performance. Most people know this. You can measure the distortion from your tweaked out transistor radio and compare it to the distortion of a modern system and it’s rather obvious.
No, there is no accounting for personal taste. Some like distortion of a certain variety. That has been proven time and again. Others don’t. But I think everyone agrees that fraud, deceit, and making unsubstantiated claims to bilk people out of their money is bad.
The only double blind tests that were ever done showed that people cannot hear anything in a double blind test........so show me the results of phase shift of an amp....or .001 versus .1 percent distortion
If people can't hear a 3 dB difference in distortion when a controlled test is performed, then either your "everything matters" mantra is wrong or your tweakies produce a greater than 3 dB increase in distortion. Seems people can only hear these claimed "improvements" if they pay you for them. More "trust me" as the money changes hands.
You'll be waiting a long time. I believe everyone has their own personal taste so rather than tell people what good sound should be I prefer to let people find their own way.
but that measured distortion numbers and signal to noise, etc.....have any correlation to sound?......show me. show me the test results that prove it.
Isn’t it obvious that any audio device which injects spurious noise into the input signal which is measured at the output is not true to the source? If you like distortion, that’s fine, enjoy. But it’s called "hi-fi" not "hi-di".
This GaN amp is like the old tripath class d amp of 20 years ago- output dependent on the load. It may play nicely with some speakers but not with others. You can add or change the distortion all you want, it still isn’t state of the art and a second class implementation in comparison to other class d amps available for much less money. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, so they say.
And the only thing ASR sycophants care about is 1khz SINAD.
Try as I might, I can’t fathom why you come to this forum to piss and moan about what is going on at a different forum. If you have an issue with ASR and the owner, why aren’t you over there ranting? I don’t, and I am pretty sure most others don’t, care about your issues with ASR.
Just noticed that Amir deleted most of my likes from my old ASR profile. He was so jealous when I had more than he did.
I told Bruno the only way you would know if you got rid of the hysteresis in a ferrite coil would be to A/B his coil with an air core coil and listen. This is how you know somethng.....by actual listening tests......not by a made up measurement test that has no basis in sound quality.
Measurements are objective, they have no bias. They have a basis in reality, unlike subjective listening that varies from person to person. If there was one best sound, there wouldn’t be so many different and successful amps in the market place. Your idea of good sound is just that, your idea. It has no basis in reality for anyone else. Eye witness testimony has been proven time and again to be unreliable. Your ear witness testimony is flawed for the same reason.
If Bruno listened to everything he did and was all knowing.....then maybe not. He does not listen to everything he does and is not all knowing.
Bruno produces products that amplify a signal as cleanly as possible. If people like distortion, they can add it themselves in any flavor they prefer. He doesn't push his subjective tastes on others and claim he knows what sounds "best" -he isn't all knowing but he does know that.
Think of Bruno as a modern vintner. He grows grapes, measures the sugar content, the acidity, etc. that he knows produces what he wants. He measures. He tests. He produces a wine based on his knowledge of chemistry as it relates to wine. Of course, as he has said many times, he also tastes (listens). Science got him there, his palate confirms it. Not all like it- because tastes differ. Some claim they can add some root beer to it and it tastes better. To some people, it might. To others, not so much.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
