what's the point?

Oh boy, here we go ...    😐

Should have been posted, four days ago.      Then again: perhaps, the deaf also have a special day?

if they sound the same to you, then of course buy the least expensive one made, and beyond that it's all wasted, not diminished returns...

Hard to understand labguy. You’ve been a member since 2014, and you still ask a question like this? What's the point indeed!

looks like looks like someone is trying to get a rise out of us. 

I might need a pill for that ... ;-)

Of course they all sound the same. Just ask georgehifi. And it doesn’t matter which direction they go either .... also if you follow geoffkait you would know the best amplifier in the world is his iPod. It runs on Morphic Fields and Flying Saucers and sounds best connected to erik squires DIY speakers with the full Phase Level III kenjit mods.

How do I know so much, I hear you asking. Easy. I read it on the internet. Everything on the internet is true.

@millercarbon,

Did we get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

Mission #1 should always be to avoid clipping at all costs. CLipping is public enemy #1 when it comes to good sound.

Most tube and many Class D amps soft clip which alone gives them a heads up on the competition. Soft clipping is much easier to digest than hard clipping which is the weak spot for many SS amps.

With clipping out of the picture most good quality amps should at least sound good but even then no two things are ever exactly the same. 

with Class AB amps too much power is never too much.  I have found that 300wpc in my living room is just right for my speakers and what I listen to. 

Why are there posts like this? The “no difference in sound” group is over at ANA where all the other deaf people reside

Seconds on Crown. I absolutely LOVE mine; great value for the cash and rock solid performance.  Mine drives 4 four ohm monitors with great ease at 450 RMS WPC. Have had at least 15 power amplifiers since I was in my teens. Wasted a lot money; should have bought one from Crown to start. 

Roger Modjeski argued that since most amps will occasionally be driven into clipping, how an amp behaves when it does so is an important factor in how good an amp it is. A reasonably good tube amp clips more "gracefully" than do many solid state amps.

bdp24,
Your classic straw man argument above simply says: This controversy over amplifer differences is just as beneath consideration as the ones you name...but why?  Can’t one carefully set up well designed speakers, tastefully match choices of interconnects and speaker wires, use good judgement on room treatments to optimize everything possible...and then drop in a Crown amp...and get very satisfying results?  I think that’s the OP’s point and Bob’s. 

and then drop in a Crown amp...and get very satisfying results?

No. Not at all.........

Actually, GK's system is So Passe'....

I finally got my shipment of DOD equipment I can't divulge the nature of.  I can 'infer' that it was used to stun opposing forces...got diverted from deployment @ Creamfields in the UK....
....but I've already said too much.....

stereo5....you're assuming MC sleeps......I suspect only when the lava lamp is on....

I think the OP's question is "too legit to quit", for sure.  Now whether he's asking it sincerely or just trolling...well, maybe only his "hairdresser knows for sure"!  (Wow, did I just date myself with that one!)  The article referenced is an oldie but it too, is legit.  It goes right along with the old STEREO REVIEW article from many moons ago comparing an inexpensive Pioneer stereo receiver to an expensive separate amplifier, conclusion being most folks could not hear a consistent difference.  Whichever side of the great divide you may recide, it is food for thought, now as then.

jdmccall56

The article referenced is an oldie but it too, is legit.

The article is just hearsay, with opinion and speculation ladled on top.

....perhaps like this....

http://www.wfmu.org/Gfx/user_images/headinsand_5845484661972267.png

too bad OP is deluded. don’t we wish it was so.if a cheap amp is all one needs think of all the money left to buy all the other components that sound the same. except the speakers of course. 

Hey, you know, some people just don't have "the ear" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Ok, If you've completed the first part. 
"Dropping the Crown amp". Preferably off of a very tall cliff. And of course, "Into an abyss from where it may never return".
 Your halfway there!

Rejoice!

According to this article; the challenge began in 1990, for CAR STEREO amps, and- the question of home audio amps being included, didn’t arise until 2005.     Then; they were included, in an added line to the rules.     There’s no mention, as to whether any(home audio amps, that is) ever have been tested/compared, but- there are no records of anyone taking the challenge, since 2006, either.      . https://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/topic/193850-richard-clark-10000-amplifier-challenge/      Verbatim, from the article:  "Do home audio amps qualify for the test?    Yes.    In the 2005 version of the test rules, Richard explicitly allows 120V amplifiers in a note at the end.    How can people take the test?    They should contact Richard Clark for the details.    As of 2006 Richard Clark is reported to not have a public email account, and David Navone handles technical inquiries for him.    Most likely they will need to pay a testing fee and get themselves to his east coast facility.    Is this test still ongoing?    As of early 2006, there have not been any recent reports of people taking the test, but it appears to still be open to people who take the initiative to get tested."

Julian Hirsch was one such proponent of that idea, the man had no ear at all.

OK, to better and thoroughly answer your question, there's a couple of points I want to make:

- We are limited by measurements defined by about the 1970's and 1980's. These measurements have not progressed, despite the progress made in technology such as A/D converters, computer power, etc.

- One thing I've noticed in general is that amplifiers are more susceptible to impedance changes in the load than we think. I think the traditional math / models of a voltage source, output impedance, load, don't really predict how amps sound with different loads or speaker cables.

- Our ear/brain mechanism is capable of learning to pick out a lot more nuance than we think. Just as we are now using AI to train neural networks to distinguish cancer from images, I believe our neural networks also can lead to different tastes as well as levels of discernment.  Now, as you may have seen, I sometimes question whether this is a good thing.

- Amps with meters are much better than amps without meters.

Best,

E

This is like going back to 1973 being a teenager and trying to learn about audio. Yeah. Seriously. Almost 50 years ago. Yet reading this it feels like half a century and nothing has been learned.

Pestering the guys at Radio Shack, killing time in the store reading all the books and magazines I couldn't afford to buy, I learned that back then people were free to make just about any claims they wanted. If they could get an amp to spike 20 watts on a peak at a certain frequency then presto, 20 watt amp! If the amp would produce any power whatsoever at 20 Hz or 20kHz then presto! 20-20kHz response! There were no standards. 

(Useful point of reference for those not around back then, an amp that made a legit 4 or 5 watts was doing pretty good. Nobody knew how efficient the speakers were, they were just barely getting around to that, but you could get good volume from those amps so they were probably around 90 dB, well some of them anyway.)

RMS was little more than a mathematical concept. Years later things that were known even then would become industry standards. THD, IMD, RMS, stringent conditions of temperature and frequency response and more all became standardized and regulated. 

To what end? Marketing. Not music. Anyone around long enough will know that. All these technical standards accomplished, at least in the beginning, was wars for ever lower THD, ever more watts and ever flatter response curves. 

For all the good it did. The phrase measures great sounds bad came about for a reason. 

The whole time this was going on, and even before, and even to this day, there was a tension or competition between the measurers and the listeners. The hardest part to get across to audiophiles is that the listeners have always had the upper hand. The only real thing the measurers have going for them is marketing.

Which turns out to be a pretty good advantage. Oh, it don't do s--t in terms of making anything sound good. But it takes time and effort and energy learning how to listen. Takes like 3 seconds to say "200 watts flat 20 to 20K at 8 0hms with .0026% THD" and to top if off you sound all impressive. Ohms! Oooh! Don't know my ohms from my mhos but it sounds impressively technological! 

Yes, I know, hard to believe, but word salad was a thing even before we knew to call it word salad. 

That fricken moron Hirsch was the epitome of the egghead dope that ruined the game while pretending to be a player. He was a player all right. Just not the way we thought.

Be a phile not a phool. Learn to listen. All the rest is noise.

Yes just pick something randomly and listen and all will work out in the end....decades later.

Or just give MC a buzz. He will tell you exactly what you should do.  🙏

He has Van Gogh's ear for music.....

I couldn't resist

What's the point indeed. The blind test tells all. As someone who has taken two blind tests it was a subject that interested me, so I looked for all the blind tests I could find and the only one that ever showed a hint of a possible difference in amps was John Atkinson's (of Stereophile), who said there was a "slight" difference between amps. And he admitted there was a measured frequency response difference between the two amps and that the difference heard could be the interaction with the particular speakers used. He seemed to be fair in his analysis that given the small difference between those who could tell the difference and those who couldn't, along with a myriad of other explanations (and excuses), he didn't come down with a hard-core "Yes" or "No" answer, but one with a ton of caveats and leaning toward the suspicion that only a few highly trained people could "really" hear a difference.

You can read the whole test for yourself.
https://www.stereophile.com/features/113/index.html

And just in case you missed the Stereo Review article that stirred this whole subject into a firestorm, here it is.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060313071857/http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf

though Julian H did say he would choose the Mark Levinson of all the amps he reviewed...(I forget which model it was)...

If a blind test has negative results it doesn’t mean anything. There are simply too many things that can go wrong. Besides, conclusions are reliable only after many tests have been performed, both for same system and tester as well as independent systems and testers. Repeatable and transferrable.

All my amps sound exactly alike with the volume off. 

There is no point in buying an expensive amp or an expensive anything for that matter. Buy what you can afford and components that take you to the experience you are looking for. Be reassured that amps etc. do make differences and nothing sounds the same. I have a good friend that debates this with me endlessly until we finally took the speakers out of his system and inserted them into mine. Of course my room is different, components etc. and so we tried our very slack A/B in the near field in both systems. Less than a minute, he couldn't believe it. Next my amp went to his system. Couple of minutes later he is trying to buy it from me. Not really a revelation. I do find the diminishing returns part of this interesting though. Of course how fat your wallet is the biggest factor but for me things start getting weird at about 10 k for amplification. I tend to look at the whole system and component synergy. This is where a crown amp suddenly for some inexplicable reason may work as strengths and weaknesses gel in your system. 

It's all for "fun factory" really. In the past year I've switched between a $1,500 Primare Class-D integrated, a Kenwood solid state integrated from the 70's, a $300 Kenwood power amp producing 150 wpc from the 80's, and a pair of $1,750 Cary Audio tube monoblocks. The difference between *all* of them has been extremely subtle. The tube monoblocks are definitely more different than the solid state stuff; kinda feels like I tweaked my EQ a bit. But the solid state differences were all very subtle "tip of the tong" sort of things. Not differences I would prioritize in any other hobby.

Get something that has enough power to drive your speakers to the highest listening levels you will achieve in your listening room. Get something that looks good, and is built to a quality level that makes you happy. And don't worry about how much it cost.

I would say that a lot of equipment out there doesn't really break new ground and therefore offers subtle differences and so a Crown amp may sound similar to an older Bryston. Finding those special pieces is where the journey lays for me. Rarely does price guarantee anything sonically in this hobby but the journey can get expensive and so worry about the money.  

I think technically all amps are supposed to sound the same below clipping, but they don't. And is probably due to coloration or so due to the designer wanting his sound signature a certain way. Just my opinion.

Simple test. Blind. With help from a barely interested gf.   I have 2 odyssey amps, khartago extreme and kismet ref.  No other changes were made in the system. The difference was, and repeatedly, immediate to 4 out of 5 listeners.  Preference not withstanding...(.Kismet for me. Others disagreed)...
that’s  enough evidence for me. And the amps were voiced by the same designer. So...test this Q yourself...take the time.  Trust you own perceptions. After all, the whole hobby is about perception. 

Once I learned to level match most modern solid state amplifiers I found the differences between them pretty subtle. For years I compared amps by adjusting the volume of the system using my ear. Well, as you can guess, I heard lots of differences that weren’t there once I started using a multi-meter to match voltage output! I still hear differences, but as I said they’re subtle.

Its all subtle. Until you develop an ear for it. Then it becomes significant.

This might not seem like such a big deal. Most people who have been over and heard a demo between any two things, even when they do easily hear a difference and have a preference still almost always they will say its pretty subtle.

The difference between my system and everything else they have ever heard, they all agree is in no way subtle. It is night and day.

And so then I point out that the difference is a whole bunch of those supposedly subtle improvements. They all add up. So don’t dismiss it. Subtle is the name of the game.

PS- When you have an ear for it then volume no longer matters. Volume is irrelevant. You hear it plain as day regardless of volume. When you have an ear for it.

I have to confess that I found the information in the link posted by to OP and the related article interesting. It tends to substantiate my own experience. If two amps have a flat frequency response between 20Hz and 20KHz and provide ample non-clipping power output to the speakers  (e.g. 300 Watt @ 4 Ohm in my case), then a listener will have a very hard time in discerning a difference between them under the same testing conditions, no matter how "golden" your ears may be.

I have some hearing loss but could immediately tell the difference in my new Bryson 14b3 and the 14sst it replaced. Next question please. 

According to this, all amps that are played below clipping sound the same (indiscernible).

Obviously the statement is false.

It presumes that all amps have the same amount of feedback (they don't) and further that the feedback renders them a perfect voltage source. It doesn't.


The differences we hear between amps has mostly to do with distortion and to a far lessor degree in the case of zero feedback tube amps (which have a high output impedance) frequency response errors. The ear tends to favor tonality induced by distortion and so if the amp has inaudible distortion (small amounts of lower orders being the only kind that might be considered 'inaudible') it will appear to be quite neutral despite the FR errors. This is due in no small part to the simple fact that loudspeakers without FR errors don't exist; they tend to be the source of the most FR errors in any system.

Back in the 1970s and clear into the 21st century, no-one made an amplifier that was able to employ enough feedback (due to poor gain bandwidth product) such that higher ordered harmonics were rendered inaudible. In a nutshell this is why solid state amps (and to a lessor degree, tube amps with feedback) tend to sound bright despite being flat frequency response on the bench.

The hubris involved with the statement in the linked article of OP is really off the charts, made by someone who clearly had no clue of what they were writing about.