How far have ss amps really come in the last twenty years?

MrDecibel...you said exactly this, "You stated you were in a band, so I believe your ears are shot, and unfortunately, you probably did not use ear protection." That's the comment I was referring to...and I also know different amps obviously sound different or I'd have no preferences...that would be boring...I can say that great amps get music to the speakers  in ways that can be tonally similar, but talk to any reasonably experienced electric guitar player and you can get the drift that all guitar amps are different, even among the same versions! I like the recent discussions about Nelson Pass researching (and atmasphere's further explaining) and implementing the adding of even ordered distortions into a circuit, as maybe that narrows the gap between a great tube amp's "musical" tone and that of well measuring SS amps, some of which also do a good job...my tube amps are a revelation of tonal "correctness," even to my recently cleaned old ears.

Mr decibel,

the problem with those two designs, is that they were only partially V-fet, as the transistors were not available to make them fully v-fet.

thus.. the chain of signal manipulation and amplification was inherently non-linear in gain, even though the V-fets in situ, were linear gain.

the whole chain must be linear gain v-fet, otherwise it will be colored enough that it is notably more difficult to discern what good the v-fets were bringing to the table.

Of the two, the Yammie was probably the better unit, as it had some middling sized v-fets in the driver stage, IIRC... and then the output stage was all v-fet.

Only ONE Sony unit had a second and singular ’small signal’ V-fet in it other than the final output transistor stage, and that is the Sony TA-5650 integrated amp. It had a set in the phono section.

wolf, I understand I said it. I was creating a situation, an excuse, for roberjerman, as to why he always claims " he hears no difference between amplifiers ". I could have said he worked in construction as a jackhammer operator, without using ear protection, but I wanted it to be music related. I am sorry, as I know and respect, that you are in the live music industry. BTW, I do know people in the music industry, and other industries, who have bad hearing because of their everyday life occupations. Atmasphere, I obviously missed that. Always, and Enjoy ! MrD.

wolf,
Non linear gain transistor (all fet and BJT): odd order harmonic distortion generated.

Linear gain transistor (Just V-Fets): Even ordered harmonic distortion generated.

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A general note:
the human ear: incredibly sensitive to non linear transient distortion. That’s pretty well all it does, is detect that. This is how the ear works, fundamentally. Down to the less than a few hundred thousandths of a second on a pair of transients.

Never mind the sensitivity to harmonic mixing and levels, and added in is that this is all done by the world’s most sophisticated FFT analyzing hardware: the human brain.

since this is directly tied to learning, discernment, intelligence neural connectivity and so on, it varies among people as much as the human IQ range.

So we can get to audio intelligence on a rarefied level and then back to the other end of the scale, where rudimentary hearing could be the description.

so we can’t let Mr rudimentary hearing yell at us that ’it is all the same’.

It is all the same..sure... if your hearing takes the shape of the IQ of a gut shot open sore covered pear on skid row.

These are indisputable established facts about human minds and human hearing.

One should not try to debate it, unless one wants to show everyone how little one understands and little one knows. To do so, is to come onto an audio forum and say something akin to : ’I just peed my pants’.

If a person can accept even just a whiff of that, then they’ve bought the whole thing as it’s like pregnancy, there is no ’just a little bit’ pregnant. If it is real at all..even in the slightest... then so is the rest.

Thus, stay out of the cable debates and out of the fuse debates and whatnot, as one’s place is not there. Leave it to the people who hear it as they are like high end physicists in debate - when it comes to hearing. It’s their area, let it go. If you don’t have the chops, STAY OUT OF IT.

This is why cable debates and whatnot are being banned at forums. For all the right reasons. All of those reasons are human, logical, scientific, and utterly real.

Daveyf- the DartZeel is still my favorite SS amp after all these years and I've compared it at a local dealer with the newer Dagostino stuff. I think it was released in the early 00s with a few upgrades since.

I owned the Concentra 2 integrated which I found a bit overrated at the time and later heard the 1 was actually better. When JRDG went digital, I picked up a pair of used 201s and sold them two weeks later.

I would agree with others that the move to lower or no global negative feedback in circuit design has been a positive. But Dart, BAT, and several others have been doing this for 20 years now.