Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 14:13:44 +1000, Tat Chan
wrote:


Stewart Pinkerton wrote:



This old warhorse gets dragged out regularly. I use insensitive 3-ohm
speakers, and while my Audiolab (and several other amps) sounds just
like the Krell, it gets *very* hot after half an hour or so at high
SPLs. Hence, the Krell is there because it drives the speakers with
ease, not because it sounds different.


so did you get the Krell or the Apogees first?
And what speakers were you using before the Apogees?


I got them at the same time, and Maggie 1Cs, which my older Audiolab
8000P drove quite happily.

Ah, so the Apogees were a significant improvement over the Maggies then?
I would like to listen to the MMG (retail: US$500) but Magnepan doesn't
seem to have an Australian distributor.

I should have kept that amp, since I ended
up buying another one when I did my own 'amplifier shootout' while
setting up my TV sound system.

"TV sound system"? What did we do in the days before DVD and home
theatre, eh?

Or is analogue TV reception in the UK that good? I am assuming you did
the amp shootout in the days before digital TV transmission.

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

she says what she can do better
than most is detect tiny amounts of sharp and flatness from a given
note....

Yup, what you described wasn't perfect pitch, but being able to tell the
interval between one note and another.

That's relative pitch, and in memory experiments with dummy keyboards musicians
with excellent relative pitch did almost as well as those with perfect pitch.

=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:- http://www.artsandmedia.com
Audio, music and health pages and interesting links.

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

In article ,
Tat Chan wrote:
Or is analogue TV reception in the UK that good? I am assuming you did
the amp shootout in the days before digital TV transmission.

Analogue reception will vary according to local conditions - as will
terrestrial digital. But the vast majority of the population can easily
get excellent reception. Not so in some rural mountainous areas, sadly.

If you mean the system, we have mono FM sound which is the equal of FM
radio - assuming a good receiver - and NICAM digital stereo on a separate
carrier. The distribution to the various transmitters is also digital.

It's capable of giving very satisfactory results - if the material fed
into it is of high quality. Unfortunately, with the universal trend to low
dynamics and heavy processing, this is getting rather rare.

I've never quite worked out why, given that the average TV set has rather
better sound than was once the case, the programme controllers think we
all listen on two inch speakers in a noisy environment...

--
*If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:08:20 +1000, Tat Chan
wrote:

Eiron wrote:

Tat Chan wrote:


... my amp gets really hot in the Australian summer just driving a
nomimal 8 Ohm pair of speakers ...

(of course, it could be because my room gets the afternoon sun and the
amp could probably do with more clearance in the rack for ventilation)


The Ozzie speaker makers like their 'difficult loads'.
perhaps they were in league with a certain Ozzie (ex) amp maker. :-)

Not too familiar with Australian speakers having difficult loads. I had
a look at the basic specs for several speakers from various
manufacturers and they seem to have a nominal impedance of 8 Ohms.

I think he's having go at Trevor Wilson, our resident zero global
feedback fan, who always drags out a particularly vicious speaker
curve when amp capabilities are mentioned. IIRC, the speaker in
question was however a US-made Infinity model, which dipped to below 1
ohm at high frequencies.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:12:58 +1000, Tat Chan
wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 14:13:44 +1000, Tat Chan
wrote:


Stewart Pinkerton wrote:



This old warhorse gets dragged out regularly. I use insensitive 3-ohm
speakers, and while my Audiolab (and several other amps) sounds just
like the Krell, it gets *very* hot after half an hour or so at high
SPLs. Hence, the Krell is there because it drives the speakers with
ease, not because it sounds different.


so did you get the Krell or the Apogees first?
And what speakers were you using before the Apogees?


I got them at the same time, and Maggie 1Cs, which my older Audiolab
8000P drove quite happily.

Ah, so the Apogees were a significant improvement over the Maggies then?

Yes, a massive improvement, although to be fair, they were also *much*
more expensive. A better competitor would have been the Maggie IIIC,
with the classic ribbon tweeter. Comparing those two, I thought the
Apogee was sweeter and more coherent through the wide midband (where
most of the music lies), and had noticeably deeper bass. The high
treble of the Maggie however, remains as good as it gets.

I would like to listen to the MMG (retail: US$500) but Magnepan doesn't
seem to have an Australian distributor.

A great value speaker, but as with most large planar dipoles, you do
need a lot of space around it, to make it work properly

I should have kept that amp, since I ended
up buying another one when I did my own 'amplifier shootout' while
setting up my TV sound system.

"TV sound system"? What did we do in the days before DVD and home
theatre, eh?

I remain surprised by just how good a well-mixed Dolby 2.0 track can
be, at generating ambience well outside the speaker plane. Until I get
a front projector, I'm unlikely to go for a full 7.1 system, since I
find room-sized sound and a relatively tiny picture *very*
distracting, preventing as good involvement with the film as I get
from 2-channel.

Or is analogue TV reception in the UK that good? I am assuming you did
the amp shootout in the days before digital TV transmission.

Yes, I was using only TV, VCR and CD sources at that time, although
subsequent DVD use did not reveal any weaknesses in the sound system.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

Tat Chan wrote:

"TV sound system"? What did we do in the days before DVD and home
theatre, eh?

We watched/listened to "Simulcasts" with the television moved
in front of the fireplace and the 'hi-fi' tuned to BBC Radio 3.

Some of us put an isolating transformer on the speaker output
of the live-chassis television and fed the signal through
a phase-shifter into the 'hi-fi' to give a sort of pseudo-stereo effect.

--
Eiron.

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

"Wally" wrote in message
...
Keith G wrote:

Swim doesn't have perfect pitch (I asked) she says she could not sing
a given note with any geat accuracy, she says what she can do better
than most is detect tiny amounts of sharp and flatness from a given
note....

Yup, what you described wasn't perfect pitch, but being able to tell the
interval between one note and another.


Which should be trivial to a musician.

Roy.




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Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

In article ,
Eiron wrote:
Some of us put an isolating transformer on the speaker output
of the live-chassis television and fed the signal through
a phase-shifter into the 'hi-fi' to give a sort of pseudo-stereo effect.

And some of us took the output from rather a better place via a buffer amp
and rep coil.

--
*"I am " is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

"Eiron" wrote in message
...
Tat Chan wrote:

"TV sound system"? What did we do in the days before DVD and home
theatre, eh?

We watched/listened to "Simulcasts" with the television moved
in front of the fireplace and the 'hi-fi' tuned to BBC Radio 3.

Some of us put an isolating transformer on the speaker output
of the live-chassis television and fed the signal through
a phase-shifter into the 'hi-fi' to give a sort of pseudo-stereo effect.

--
Eiron.

Ah the good old days of Simulcasts when sound and vision were in sync and
latency wasn't in most folks vocabulary....

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote

snip


I remain surprised by just how good a well-mixed Dolby 2.0 track can
be, at generating ambience well outside the speaker plane.


What, like a valve amp....??

:-)


Until I get
a front projector,


If you're thinking DLP (incredible technology) wait for the the three
chip/prism models to come out and go down in price. (The wheel's been
'reinvented'....!! ;-)


I'm unlikely to go for a full 7.1 system, since I
find room-sized sound and a relatively tiny picture *very*
distracting, preventing as good involvement with the film as I get
from 2-channel.


Yep, it's a simple equation: Big picture = big sound, anything else is a
waste of time.....