Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...
Bob Latham wrote:

I have no way to deal with the fact that you don't believe me.

You're a liar. I offered you 10Gs to prove to me the effect is real. You
failed to take it up in true cowardly fashion.


Hoo boy, just what this group needs - another 'Keyboard Kommando'......

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...
Don Pearce wrote:

Autosuggestion is an unbelievably powerful thing.

Even when you are aware of and expecting it.

The number of times Ive done something like rebuild X-windows, run Quake



Quake?

WTF's that when it's at home, a REL sub or summat??

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...
Bob Latham wrote:

I am asking you to believe what I said in the story is in no way
intentionally fabricated.

No-one doubted that.

What people are annoyed about is your insistence that the effect can be
generalised to all SS amps,



Interesting hypocracy - it's OK to generalise about valve amps but not about
SS.....???

(Figures.....)

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Jim Lesurf
wrote:
[snip]

Yes okay, I got carried away whilst writing that and missed out an
important few words. Unfortunately, that looked like it fitted in with
another of my arguments anyway what i meant to say there was...

I do know that amplifiers sound different ON DIFFERENT SURFACES
because I proved this some years ago......

If I may, I'd like to suggest a slight re-statment of the above which might
be more reliable. You performed some listening tests and perceived changes
which, from the circumstances, you associate with the surfaces/objects upon
which the amplier(s) were placed. You are satisfied that you (and others)
could hear these differences.

Does that seem reasonable as a re-statement? I have done this to take out
the terms "know" and "proved" as these may be contentious for various
reasons, but want to adequately describe your actual experience and your
conclusions.

The clear problems here for other people are in two areas. One is the way
you use the terms "know" and "prove". Hence the above alterations. As you
can tell, people simply doubt that there was an audible difference due to
this, and don't accept what you state as "proof".

The second area is more subtle...

Let me give an example which may be a relevant parallel. I find that I can
sometimes hear changes when using the same system, but having altered the
placement of the units. However investigation in my case showed up an
interesting effect.

My experience is that very low levels of hum/buzz can have an audible
effect even when wo don't specifically indentify that we can hear hum/buzz.
I have spent some time on this over the years for two reasons. One was
professional experience in audio making me realise that poor transformers,
etc, with 'the mains' sometime being far from a nice 50Hz sinewave could
cause mechanical 'buzz' that was distracting. Thus there can be a real
problem at times finding *mechanically* silent mains transformers for
audio kit.

The other was finding that sometimes I'd find that the sound was less
'natural' somehow that I would hope/expect, and investigation showed that
switching off a given unit - even with no music playing - had an audible
effect. Switching the unit back on and listening, I'd notice the 'buzz'
after a while. But when listening in a normal way I'd not explicitly hear
the 'buzz'. Instead the effect is a bit like the sound not emerging against
an 'inky black' background. Hard to describe, but the correlation is with
hum/buzz at low levels. This seems to act as a sort of
edge-of-perception-level distraction when listening to music that has quiet
passages or silences.

In some cases the hum/buzz is electronic and emerges from the speakers. In
others it is direct mechanical hum/buzz. In such cases the support for the
unit may well affect the level and spectrum of the buzz.

I don't know if this is specifically an effect which might be at the root
of your experience, but it may be something like this for all I know. Hence
you might - for example - be reacting to changes in the very low level of
mechanical buzz produced by changing the support for the amplifier(s).

Also, I would hesitate to use my impressions to say that I "know" that
this effect is "proved" to be a cause of audible differences for most
people or in most circumstances. I can only report it as my impression
and my conclusions for my own perceptions, etc. For all I know, I may
on some occasions have mislead myself.


Also, by "proved" do you mean:

A) An objective and testable method which demonstrates your assertion

or

B) You decided you could hear a difference in the circumstances

To the satisfaction of all present in a very good if not perfect test.
This was not subtle.

My problem here is that my experience having spent many years testing,
listening to, and using amplifiers, is that I have not had the same
impression. In general I don't find the surface/object upon which an amp is
placed has any effect - the exception being the above factor I mention.

(Another rare exception has been metallic surfaces that may alter the
distortion or stability to a small extent due to EM field interactions,
but again, I'd say this was very rare in my experience, and of doubtful
audible significance.)

Components can be microphonic. However my experience with solid state amps
is that the level of this should be very low. Hence I'd not normally expect
even a subtle effect due to this. This means that I can see that *some*
solid state amps may be audibly microphonic, but I'd not expect this to be
the usual situation.

Hence my own general view of what you say is that I accept your honest
intent, whilst doubting that your conclusions are correct, but accepting
that they may be correct despite that doubt. The problem is that carrying
out reliable tests for such things can be very difficult for all sorts
of reasons.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Stewart
Pinkerton wrote:
On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 20:31:51 GMT, Bob Latham
wrote:

[Snip]

That is of course just the kind of lying distortion that we've come to
expect - because you have *no* substantive argument, you're just wind
and ****.

With the exception of Jim who seems to remain mature and well mannered
at all times the above paragraph seems to sum you all up.

When I told my wife someone had called me "mature" she laughed out loud. We
then had a discussion about if I was in my second childhood, or had never
mentally made it past about 12 years old... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Jim Lesurf
wrote:


So why would you describe the Yamaha as a "good" amplifier? Why not
simply conclude that it wasn't a satisfactory design (or had a fault)?
- i.e. not good at all...

Fair point, but are we saying that some of the worlds biggest names in
hi-fi are producing amplifiers that are audibly distorted and not good
after all these years?

The problem here is that "good" should mean "in the relevant circumstances
of use". Hence what may be "good" in some cases may not be so in others.

I mean it would satisfy the "all good amps sound the same" diatribe if
many amps were not good, is that what we are saying? Is the AVR300 not
good?

in engineering we have to ask "for what purpose" when assessing this. Hence
it is hard to make a global statement. Instead we have to specify the
required conditions of use.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

Keith G wrote:

"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...

Don Pearce wrote:


Autosuggestion is an unbelievably powerful thing.

Even when you are aware of and expecting it.

The number of times Ive done something like rebuild X-windows, run Quake


Quake?

WTF's that when it's at home, a REL sub or summat??



Quake is a computer game, or more precisely, a First Person Shooter. Ian wasn't
refering to the REL sub.

(now rebuilding X-Windows ... I remember the days when I was happy to recompile
the whole Linux kernel in less than 5 minutes. Ah, the good old days).

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

"Tat Chan" wrote in message
...
Keith G wrote:

"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...

Don Pearce wrote:


Autosuggestion is an unbelievably powerful thing.

Even when you are aware of and expecting it.

The number of times Ive done something like rebuild X-windows, run Quake


Quake?

WTF's that when it's at home, a REL sub or summat??



Quake is a computer game, or more precisely, a First Person Shooter. Ian
wasn't refering to the REL sub.


I know - I was taking the ****! ;-)

(My son used to play it - when he was *younger*....... ;-)

(And 'Doom'...???)

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 19:38:25 GMT, Bob Latham
wrote:

I simply could not think of a better description at the time. How
about 'the object' it was placed on?

How about the location with respect to the speakers? I'm still
thinking microphony here...

Well yes I'm sure it was microphony I was just amazed at how great was
its effect on solid state devices.

Whereas I am in the situation of accepting that you might be correct in
your report, but on the basis of doubting it was microphony. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Good amps all sound the same do they?
 

In article , Stewart Pinkerton
wrote:
On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 16:37:40 GMT, Bob Latham
wrote:

In article , Stewart
Pinkerton wrote:
On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 20:31:51 GMT, Bob Latham
wrote:

[Snip]

That is of course just the kind of lying distortion that we've come
to expect - because you have *no* substantive argument, you're just
wind and ****.

With the exception of Jim who seems to remain mature and well mannered
at all times the above paragraph seems to sum you all up.

Jim is more polite, as he is used to dealing with students,

Not so much "polite" as "worn down..." I suspect. :-)

but what you fail to understand is that we agree about you.

I am less sure of that. :-) I doubt what Bob says wrt to his conclusions,
and am unhappy with his test method, but do not necessarily dismiss it
entirely as a report (as opposed to "proof" of anything specific beyond
being an honestly-intended report).

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html