Transients hurting my ears on hifi solid state amps

I currently have a Primaluna Dialogue Premium integrated and I'm very happy with it.

Are you happy with it, and it does not have the shrillness?

The amp I tried to replace was a Marantz PM6005, which is also very smooth. Both are under the recommended power rating of the speakers (even though that's relative for a tube amp), so I'm wondering whether that could be part of it.

Is the Marantz the shrill one?

I listen mostly to vinyl (Graham Slee Reflex M preamp) with some digital too (Denafrips Pontus II). Both are relatively smooth and vinyl, while usually being softer, doesn't solve the issue. 

Ok - so digital and vinyl both showing thing the same thing, sort of rules out the digital and vinyl being bad - or they are both equally bad.

I'm looking to switch back to solid state (class AB) for various reasons

What are those?

… and I was wondering if anybody had had similar experiences and recommendations for amps…

I currently have my main system in the living room, which is also connected to TV and used for background music, so the hassle of warm up time, no stand by, etc. is leading to less listening. Also, I'm trying to avoid something that heats up as much and uses that much current.

^This *mirrors my thinking. I have PL amp, and while it is pretty good… I have the same thoughts, but the warm up time is not a deal breaker for me… but then again I do not wait an hour, I just fire it up and go.

We are moving house, so about 1/2 moved, and the new location is a lot cooler than the old one… but I get the heat part.

So I am at a bit of a crossroads whether to sell the PrimaLuna, and sell some mono block VTLs, and get a SS amp, or just stick with the PrimaLuna or VTLs.

In your case it seems like you have the PrimaLuna, the Marantz and the Puccini… which are all ones that produce good sound.

Hence either move them all on, and get something else… or keep one/all and stick with what is a known working commodity for you.

Given the budget, and the fact you have 3 amps that were/are fit for purpose… seems like it is a safe bet to just stick with what works.

Based upon Duckworp's post, have you scheduled an appointment with an audiologist/ENT?  All the suggested equipment fixes are nonsense if you don't address the root cause of your problem!

I thought that @duckworp post was veery good, and something that I had a similar reason to visit an audiologist for once.
But the fact that the OP said that three of the amps they mentioned were fine, that sort of runs counter to it being the OP’s ears. 

I didn't indeed react to that part in detail. I have been to an ENT and although he could see that subjectively I was sensitive to loud noises, there was nothing physiologically wrong and nothing that could be done from a medical point of view. I've been more sensitive than average for as long as I can remember, feeling the need for earplugs when others didn't, struggling with headphone listening, etc. I play instruments and have been in bands.

When I had my bout of needing to see an audiologist it was a sudden onset, and it went away in a few weeks.
So I suppose if the amps that were good in the past are still around it would be worthwhile to use them to see if they are still good, or whether the hearing is now sensitive.

As said, listening on a speaker system, I never had this issue before going to higher end models and my theory was that the higher precision and faster transients translate to a higher perceived air pressure.

It is sound pressure, not air pressure.

I doubt that the amps are any “faster”, as most amps play 20kHz just fine, and nothing is going to arrive faster from a 2kHz signal, than a 20kHz signal.

And if it is grating harmonics that spray into the upper frequencies then that could be cured with the amps that were mentioned as being good sounding.

But a fishbone diagram would include things like:

• ears
• distortion signature
• clipping affecting distortion signature

so we sort of need a way to ameliorate or exonerate the most probably causal mechanism (candidates).

Once we know the mechanism, then we can determine the best equipment to use to mitigate the mechanism.
(But I do not go straight to power cords, power conditioners, now cables as mitigation mechanisms… I like to take a more direct approach than a “buying festival” to play “pin the tail on the donkey”, where I am hoping to hit the solution by accident or chance.)

 

Thanks @holmz for the various very good points and suggestions. Just a clarification on one point, as this is one of the things I’m trying to understand here:

I doubt that the amps are any “faster”, as most amps play 20kHz just fine, and nothing is going to arrive faster from a 2kHz signal, than a 20kHz signal.

With fast I mean that the transients, the typical example being the hit on a snare, are quick and powerful. So in a graph measuring the sound pressure, the peak would be higher and narrower on a "fast" amplifier and lower and flatter on a "slow" amp. The sound is more compressed in a "slow" amplifier and thus the hit of a snare or the initial transient of a piano note will be felt as softer by the ear.

I understand that there are other factors discussed that heavily influence the perception, but I do believe that this is part of the equation. Low powered amplifiers would in my understanding be therefore more suitable to avoid the problems I’ve had. It is not so much sustained notes that cause issues for me, but the percussive sounds and initial attacks on many instruments.

I get the description of the hypothesis.
If the speakers were hard to drive then more instantaneous current would help if, and only if, one did not have enough current to keep up.

It would be like speaker compression, but I suppose for the amp.

And I suppose one could (maybe) see if it shows up in the impulse response of the system.
But it might be easier to have the same snare drum hit recorded from the 4 amps (3 good and one bad one), and compare them in the time domain?
If the bad speaker was high amplitude than the other three, then it would show as you describe.

My hypothesis is that the bad sounding amp likely has more harmonics or IMD.
So I am thinking exactly along the lines of what @helomech mentioned:

I recommend looking into separates. Pre-owned Parasound A21 amps can be found for ~$1200. Their distortion profile is primarily 2nd order, which is very rare among amps below $5K, and output enough power to provide plenty of headroom for nearly any speaker. Pair an A21 with a low distortion preamp like the Topping Pre90 and you’ll have a very smooth and low-fatigue setup that can takes up little more real estate than an integrated.

(And user atmasphere talks about in various threads.)
… So it might be better to take the snare drum recording and do the comparison in the frequency domain.

Of course going to that effort one would want to do both.

I am not sure there is any way to reach an objective conclusion as to what the causal mechanism is for what you are hearing, without doing some measurements, But I also know that I also usually have problems with the SS gear showing up only in those sorts of sounds. And also I find sibilance to be distressing to me ears.

If it is as you say, then I would think that it would show up more in music with has a high dynamic range, where the peak level would be much higher than the RMS level. And then on music that’s more compressed, we would not have the snare drum attacks at the higher amplitude to begin with.

Have you noticed something like ^that^ which correlates with the bad sounds?

^I think we are making progress.^

Unfortunately, I don't have the two offending amplifiers to do measurements with, but that would indeed have been very interesting.

Don’t worry about the offending amps.

Just take the offending albums and try them with the amp that works well, and use it tio test out candidate amps.

But you already have the PrimaLuna and like it?
The reviews and measurements in stereophile look good.

If the main reason to move away from tubes was the heat, then I am not sure it will get better.

It seems like a sideways move to me.
But I’d probably trade my PrimaLuna for a Pass.

Ok - WRT my contrarian and questioning post, it looks like you’ve thought it all through.

well done sir!