Short List of Amps I prefer over the Pass Labs XA25 or INT 25


I am anxious to see what comes.

If your response includes the word "But" please restrain yourself.
chorus

Showing 9 responses by niodari

@atmasphere,  interesting and beautiful theory /hypothesis on harmonic orders. it is not easy to imagine how it works in practice. how different harmonic orders are related in phase/time, why their combination should lead to a soft pleasing sound? how many amps with 0 distortion did you see, what you mean when you refer to an amp without any distortion? and what if the distortion is too small, say .001? would then still a several harmonic order sound with distortion be better, by the way, how many harmonic orders give tube amps (all of them the same number)? 

i was a tube fun for 15 year used only tube amps. once i tried a class ab/a amp i was indeed pleased and even released with a clean clear sound that it produced. if your auditioning experience is based on  a sound with distortion, you are merely in a wrong musical world. it is a personal matter whether you like it or not. in painting, i personally like impressionism the most, because i like to see the world in this alternative way. but ii think sound and music is something different, one naturally prefers a natural uncolored sound that come from musical instruments. if there is a luck of some details and sound is not clean,  you do not really perceive what the artists wished to express. 

 i personally do not like colored sound that produce many expensive and extremely expensive amps (and also speakers). they just to not sound right for me. currently, i am pleased with Cherry Megaschino class D amp which sounds very neutral, detailed and clean, is much smaller and consumes much less energy. 



It looks like that we are deemed to hear distortion from the day we are born. And that the audio engineers try to make the the pain easier, i.e., the distortion in audio reproduction a most pleasing possible. The impressionists also faced a similar situation and have decided to represent explicitly the "reality" with a distortion, that turned out to be a very nice idea. It seems that the audio engineers are on the same way,  not so bad.

Nevertheless, let me mention that i do distinguish and highly appreciate audio reproduction with "a little" distortion (0.001-0.005 is perhaps an acceptable range). Two class D Cherry amplifiers that i use now (a small integrated Maraschino and a larger Megamaraschino) do reproduce with little distortion, clear and detailed as far as i can see.
I wonder if they give just one or several harmonic orders(???), i.e., whether it is a well-masked sound with the distortion (impressionists vs realists question; ironically i like more impressionists in painting - perhaps, that is why i spent the most of my time in the past  auditioning  tube amps).  

 
@atmasphere , thanks for your comments. I am too far from understanding all this technical background, but am learning some new things. I would not ask you many questions, but please forgive me if my understanding of these things is too far from the reality and my questions  are stupid. 
Feedback is not the only way amps can give the gane? 
Somehow class d amps use double feedback  to get to the switching waveform to transform analog sound to digital one? But how digital amps transform that digital sound back to analog (do they have some integrated DACs)? 
It is then an interdisciplinary thing, very desirable but perhaps it rarely happens an engineer to be a musician, but it will help if he is an audio fan.  

Eric, i thought feedback was something to create the gain. I am too far from this field, but will try to have a look on some books (e.g. why the feedback is unavoidable). 

Could something similar to  switching waveform be used to create a correct and accurate digital signal from the source analog signal and "amply it digitally" without any distortion? Is there no way to amplify a digital signal directly from the digital sources (e.g., CD player), what this would really mean? Then you will again need a DAC just to output the amplified digital signal to the speakers (but i understand that "amplified digital signal" cannot exist, a binary number cannot be amplified and that  that the conventional amplification is analog).  

I was not aware of Technics class D players which is interesting. Cherry amps are produced by a US company called Digital Amplifier Company (DAC), there should be some reason for this name.  
Thanks for these notes.
Then you need a good DSP unit I guess. Perhaps in future a miracle can happen and digital speakers without any amplification will reproduce the sound. 

Meanwhile, another related practical question. Conrad Johnson preamplifiers have notably high thd I saw in specs of all the recent models et6 et7 and gat it is 0.15 (I was surprised to see this). I didn't have a chance to audition them but I assume they sound good.
Do they (do the higher order harmonics help)? I ask this question also because am considering to try one of these preamplifiers. Thanks
but high THD might not be so bad, if the harmonic content is mostly lower orders (2nd, 3rd and 4th) as the ear is far less sensitive to them.

Can we know, based on specs, whether THD referes to a lower or higher order harmonics? Is there another common parameter that refers to the higher order harmonics? I.e., is then a way to know about the "real" distortion (one we do not like) based on the specs? 
too fuzzy. this is what  Jeff Fischel answered on my question on the distortion: 

"CONRAD-JOHNSON preamps are designed for optimal sonic performance , yet this is not always reflected in the specifications of distortion." 

well, we know CJ amps and preams sound well,where from comes this high distortion, or can it be good high distortion or CJ amps sound good despite high distortion (or because of that)? 

i have three alternatives for a preamp for my Cherry Megaschino
(now I am using $650 class A SS Nuprime HPA 9 headphone amp/pre which is not really bad, still might be worth to look for a replacement) : 

Pass Labs XP-12
Conrad Johnson ET6, and
Conrad Johnson ET7 

all of them have some promo, Pass is a demo unit. 
Did some of you guys compare XP-12 with a CJ prse, or ET6 with ET7 
(ET7 costs double of ET6!)? 


 


response to the earlier post. i was also considering pass xa25 (according to reviews it gives neutral tuby sound) but i think made a correct decision because this amp would not drive well my thiel cs6 speakers. i am very staisfied with megaschino so far. perhaps, the overall performance might further be improved by replacing the nuprime hpa 9 with one of the preamps from my list, though i have no idea of how much it might really be improved. pha 9 is not bad and the cost of the replacement would be very considerable. both, pass labs and conrad johnson recommend to leave their stuff on all the time, which i do not do in my current settings. 
I agree, Pass Labs equipment delivers beautiful sweet chocolate sound. But this is not precisely natural poor chocolate flavor. Most people like artificially flavored sweet chocolate. I don't - i prefer a natural chocolate flavor.