Advice: Amp building
 

On 29 Jul 2006 01:43:55 -0700, "Andy Evans"
wrote:

Keep working at it - you'll come over from the dark side eventually
(DP)

All you need to convince Keith is fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency,
an almost fanatical devotion to the transistor, and nice red uniforms

Four things, eh? And don't forget the comfy chair.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

Advice: Amp building
 

Keith G wrote:

The problem here is that some people like Don are conditioned by their
training and experience to *know* a SET can't be right (on paper), the
simple fact remains *for me* that (to put it very simply, by way of
illustration) if I swap from a SET to an 'ordinary PP valve amp' I am
*not* uplifted and if I swap from a SET to an SS amp I am quite
'disappointed' and can not really get confortable with the sound.

Seems to me that the problem is manifest as an intolerance of someone else
liking something different - something comes about by a different approach
from the one they think should be used (the hunt for accuracy). Some people
don't seem particularly into the live-and-let-live thing.


Plowie's problem is that admitting vinyl is *adding* something to the
sound is some sort of shibboleth that he needs to hear. What he
doesn't know (or want to know) is that I and a number of others don't
much care whether it is or not. I (and I suspect a number of others)
feel that all the equipment alters the sound and the end product,
which is is the ultimate goal, is the sum of all the components and
source material used.

Including the room, the listener's mood, and probably a whole bunch of
subtle things like the current state of one's ears (noisy day or quiet day),
when one last had some nosh, whether the neighbours are out for the evening,
etc.


--
Wally
www.wally.myby.co.uk
You're unique - just like everybody else.

Advice: Amp building
 

Don Pearce wrote:

I think the truth has to be that you simply like the fatter,
more "in your face" sound of the lightly distorted system. And that is
fair enough - but it isn't what most denizens of these groups are
looking for, and to describe it in terms like "better", that in
technical circles have objective meanings far removed from what you
are describing is bound to raise hackles.

This isn't a technical circle, it's a recreational one. He's under no
obligation to post scope traces or rabbit on about dB differences.


No it isn't in the form of advice - but you do tend to use such
adjectives in such threads, and that makes them advice whether you
like it or not.

Caveat emptor. If it isn't in the form of advice, then anyone who thinks it
is needs to improve their English.


--
Wally
www.wally.myby.co.uk
You're unique - just like everybody else.

Advice: Amp building
 

The recent history is that you were 'pontificating'[1] about DHTs and I
asked you if you could provide some evidence or explanation.

I remarked that in the opinion of myself and some colleagues who were
also working with small DHTs, they sounded better than all the IDHTs
we'd tried. This is completely banal blogging of construction
experiences by DIY audio people, who then refer to the collective
opinions on componants in web searches when they want to assemble
componants for their own builds. They value such comments in any way
they like - that's up to them. Contingencies are the first part of the
creative process - you work out the parameters on which you want to
proceed using available information as part of the process, but how you
then proceed is up to you. What I was annoyed about, continue to be
annoyed about and will continue to be annoyed about is your insatiable
internal need for evidence when it's imposed in a condescending way on
whatever people or circumstances cross your path, whether they need to
know, don't need to know or even are completely disinterested in your
internal needs. You don't respect people who do things differently -
you talk down to them. In this case, you have nothing whatever to
contribute to building with DHTs, yet you ask for evidence, double
blind tests etc etc. Nobody is going to go out of their way to provide
you with proof if it isn't relevant to what they're doing. For goodness
sakes, how many people use double blind tests as part of their A-B
comparisons when trying out different circuit or componant
modifications? Yet you talk down to such experimenters as if they are
on the lunatic fringe, dabbling in magic and voodoo.

My 'interest' was that I was curious to see what might cause a DHT to
produce the sonic differences you were asserting. IIRC You then failed
to
give any plausible physical explanation or any assessible evidence that

there was a real audible difference.

Of course I failed - why should I spend my time trying to dig up arcane
double blind tests which have nothing to do with the work in hand. Just
how important do you think you are? Pretty important I guess judging by
your string of websites trumpeting your achievements that you enclose
with each of your posts.


Fortunately, Nick *did* make some useful comments

Fortunately for WHO???? See above.

Unfortunately, Andy, you then interpreted my questions, and my noting
that you had not provided any assessable evidence as if it were a
personal attack on you.

Unfortunately, my dear Jim, you do attack people in a personal way. How
you fail to notice this I really have no idea.

I regret that, however I have a habit of trying to consider evidence
when I can

You don't regret it for a moment and you're not sorry when this annoys
people. You never have changed and you won't change.

Advice: Amp building
 

"Don Pearce" wrote


Keith you say I am conditioned by my training and experience - but you
are too, you know. You have just ended up in a different place. You
think your place is better (well, you'd have to really), and I think
that my place is. The difference in our two "places" is that mine will
allow a far wider range of possibilities in what it presents to me,
because it is not overlaid with a systematic "sound" produced by the
deliberate bending of the signal from devices like SETs - and I'm not
going to allow you to argue that one, because it is objectively
demonstrable, and nothing to do with opinion. I've made the analogy
before of viewing the world through tinted glasses (the SET world). It
may be pretty for a while, but I would want to take them off and see
ALL the colours, not just the ones boosted by the tint.


The effect of 'tint' will be tempered by the person's natural vision.

All you are describing is a situation which suits you better and which may
not do for me. Try the same analogy but substituting 'optical correction' in
clear glass as opposed to colour tinting of, presumably, plain glass....???




I use SS amps all the time - excellent for AV/telly and 'background sound'
throughout the house during the day, but I do not *prefer* them.

Keep working at it - you'll come over from the dark side eventually
:-)



I certainly am getting driven over to it by the need for shut windows (while
the music's playing) in the current heatwave!



Plowie's problem is that admitting vinyl is *adding* something to the
sound
is some sort of shibboleth that he needs to hear. What he doesn't know (or
want to know) is that I and a number of others don't much care whether it
is
or not. I (and I suspect a number of others) feel that all the equipment
alters the sound and the end product, which is is the ultimate goal, is
the
sum of all the components and source material used.

It is the glasses again. WIth vinyl not only do you have the tint, but
the glass is a bit wavy too. Great fun - a bit like one of those
distorting mirror halls.


No, I can't allow that - what you are talking about here is some sort of
silly Pinky and Perky effect. If you can't understand that I find the SET
sound much more *natural* then we are never going to see eye to eye, tinted
glasses or no...


And you are wrong about all equipment
altering sound; the good stuff genuinely doesn't - it will preserve
the sound from end to end.


Straight wires with gain, eh? ;-)


The equipment you prefer does alter the
sound, of course, but somehow it all ends up in a place you like.


Yes.


I'm
at a bit of a loss to understand how that happens, because all the
alterations are different, and you would have thought that with each
one it was fifty-fifty whether it got "better" or "worse" to your
ears. I think the truth has to be that you simply like the fatter,
more "in your face" sound of the lightly distorted system.


Think space, imaging, tone, depth, warmth &c. as opposed to grey, dull
(literally, like a leaden bell) and planar....???


And that is
fair enough - but it isn't what most denizens of these groups are
looking for, and to describe it in terms like "better", that in
technical circles have objective meanings far removed from what you
are describing is bound to raise hackles.


Only in people who are so bigotted, prejudiced and insecure they can't stand
to have their own *faith* rocked..


Don's words I think - no idea why he says that, I've never 'advised' a
newbie to do anything other than grab cheap (but good) off eBay until
recently now that Arny's 'low rent, adequate' stuff is down to damn near
eBay prices! (My last purchases for 'ordinary, thrasher' kit have all been
from Argos and Lidls...??!!)

No it isn't in the form of advice - but you do tend to use such
adjectives in such threads, and that makes them advice whether you
like it or not.


I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this...???

As I have said elsewhere, I used to 'advise' people to buy 'good, secondhand
stuff' but it's virtually disappeared from shops these days and gone on to
eBay where the prices can go quite silly. Now I advise people to buy cheap,
modern stuff which will comw ith a warranty, a remote control (likely as
not) and doesn't have all that *eBay crap* dripping off it!

Jeez, you go to a hifi shop and they just might let you take home a piece of
cheap gear on a 'sale or return' trial (if they don't know you) - go to
Argos for a bit of cheap 'n' cheerful kit and you've got 15 or 16 days to
try and it and can then take it back and say 'it's fine but I don't *like*
it' and you'll get a full refund!!



The problem is that they need to be caveated by a
government health warning "I think this is better, but I'm from St.
Neots and well, you know how it is" :-)


ITIYM if it's got blue LEDs it's gonna be good...??

(http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/show...0eater%202.JPG :-))



The DLP is hugely better, looking at those photos. The LCD has a green
cast to it. For me none of these technologies has yet reached the
point where I would be prepared to spend any of my own money on them.
And the clearer they get, the worse they get - all I see is pixels,
and they just aren't entertaining. For me those pixels represent the
kind of visibility in the output of the internal technology that you
get with SET, vinyl etc, so you are right - the analogy does hold to a
limited extent. With SS and digital, none of that stuff shows - it is
all smooth.


Gawd Don, how TF can you possibly say that - the LCD version is *SS
personified* and demonstrates perfectly all the attributes of SS/digital to
me - grey, grainy and two dimensional, the DLP is the 'analogue/valve'
version with its depth, richness, warmth and a spinning wheel, surely??

;-)

Advice: Amp building
 

"Andy Evans" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello Dave - I'd probably agree with you that detail and clarity are
pretty much the same, AE

Nope. A lack of treble might result in the loss of detail but it won't
necessarily
mean there is no clarity - Kieth

thinking about it again, I'd say "detail" might apply to a small sound
which may or may not be audible, could be masked as you say by a
falling response. Clarity I think of as clear textures, without
blurring, very much like distortion tests for SLR lenses ~(e.g. if
you're old enough to remember the AP tests of that warship in the
Thames) ~ where stopped down there is better resolution and textures
are much clearer without blurring. I suppose if we keep the analogy
then timbre is the quality of the textures themselves together with
faithfullness of colour.


I do remember the AP test photos but my recollection is that they would only
really be able to show you edge and centre definition (how sharp the images
of the portholes were) at different apertures. After a while it all became a
little bit academic and is a good example of how 'scientific measuring'
doesn't tell you the whole story - a camera's mass and the smoothness of its
shutter release mechanism has got a lot to do with how sharp the finished
result will be. Clamping a camera to a tripod only tells you how that camera
will perfom on a tripod!

Of course, nowadays it's all about shutter lag and how good the IS system
works.....

If you want an explanation of how I perceive the difference between clarity
and detail I would offer this: On a certain Laurie Anderson track (Mr
Heartbreak) she says the words 'happy as clams'. The sleeve notes say 'happy
as clams'. You hear the phrase 'happy as clams', then you break through into
a system with better *clarity* (valves and FR drivers) and you hear the
words 'happy as clowns' quite clearly.

If my recording kit wasn't so ****e I would offer a couple of comparison
clips.

I still might....

But then I'd get accused of blogging.....

But then who gives a FF about that, considering where the accusations come
from....??



Developing your system is a lot like an eye test. You use the same
reference (PQXZT or whatever it is) and then chose the better
alternative in each pair through a number of iterations. Result - you
get a pair of glasses. Yet another practical example of how people
develop thinks in real life and get acceptable results. You only have
your eyes to rely on for the choices you make, but then you only use
the result - your glasses - with those same eyes. If you evaluate your
system with your ears and then listen to the results, is this so very
different?


I agree. My method is to swap kit back and forth on a 'better or worse?'
basis. The only trouble with that is it will never sound as good to me as
the kit will that belongs to someone who can only afford to buy a system the
one time....

Advice: Amp building
 

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

The problem here is that some people like Don are conditioned by their
training and experience to *know* a SET can't be right (on paper), the
simple fact remains *for me* that (to put it very simply, by way of
illustration) if I swap from a SET to an 'ordinary PP valve amp' I am
*not* uplifted and if I swap from a SET to an SS amp I am quite
'disappointed' and can not really get confortable with the sound.

Seems to me that the problem is manifest as an intolerance of someone else
liking something different - something comes about by a different approach
from the one they think should be used (the hunt for accuracy). Some
people
don't seem particularly into the live-and-let-live thing.


I don't mind healthy (or even heated) debate, but what ****es me off is when
you see people putting words into other people's mouths or deliberately
twisting the meaning of words to create false arguments that can then be
declaimed as *wrong*. Currently, the word 'better' is causing a few problems
here simply because one or two haven't got the language skills to
differentiate between measurable facts and expressed personal opinions.
Examples:

A kettle that can boil a pint of water in one minute is *measurably* better
(at boiling water quickly, possibly nothing else) than one which takes two
minutes.

A nice, hot cup of tea is better in this hot weather is better than a cold
beer...

You can science either/both of these statements down to some last (sub
atomic?) nuance of technological verisimilitude for the purpose of a long,
dragged out argument or you can just take them at face value and move on.
(Guess which way the 'we/us' brigade usually like to go....??)

Advice: Amp building
 

"Rob" wrote


I think that works pretty well. Over on the digital tv ng (where DP is
sweetness and light!) you wouldn't believe the evangelism that goes with
the CRT/LCD/plasma etc debate (well, you would), all backed up with some
stonking technobabble. Understanding that 'preference counts' causes all
sorts of difficulties.


I've only just twigged 'DP' - I thought it was a typo for 'DLP'!!

:-)

Still telling people they are *wrong* is he??

Advice: Amp building
 

On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 14:00:17 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:


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

The problem here is that some people like Don are conditioned by their
training and experience to *know* a SET can't be right (on paper), the
simple fact remains *for me* that (to put it very simply, by way of
illustration) if I swap from a SET to an 'ordinary PP valve amp' I am
*not* uplifted and if I swap from a SET to an SS amp I am quite
'disappointed' and can not really get confortable with the sound.

Seems to me that the problem is manifest as an intolerance of someone else
liking something different - something comes about by a different approach
from the one they think should be used (the hunt for accuracy). Some
people
don't seem particularly into the live-and-let-live thing.


I don't mind healthy (or even heated) debate, but what ****es me off is when
you see people putting words into other people's mouths or deliberately
twisting the meaning of words to create false arguments that can then be
declaimed as *wrong*. Currently, the word 'better' is causing a few problems
here simply because one or two haven't got the language skills to
differentiate between measurable facts and expressed personal opinions.

In terms of things like amplifiers, they have just one job which is to
make the signal bigger - nothing else. An amplifier that can do that
is objectively better than one which can't. If you care to express it
in terms of preferring the sound of distortion rather than it being
better, there will be no problem. If you want to reduce it to a matter
of linguistic skills, then you must agree with that. There are
amplifiers that are better when they distort, guitarists use them and
they are generally called fuzz boxes.

Examples:

A kettle that can boil a pint of water in one minute is *measurably* better
(at boiling water quickly, possibly nothing else) than one which takes two
minutes.


Just as an amplifier that can make a signal bigger without distorting
it is better than one which can't.

A nice, hot cup of tea is better in this hot weather is better than a cold
beer...

You can science either/both of these statements down to some last (sub
atomic?) nuance of technological verisimilitude for the purpose of a long,
dragged out argument or you can just take them at face value and move on.
(Guess which way the 'we/us' brigade usually like to go....??)




If what you fancy is a cold glass of beer, a cup of tea isn't better.
But this is not a reasonable analogy because our appreciation of both
tea and beer is entirely aesthetic and there is no possible objective
measure of goodness that can be applied to both of them as a
comparison.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

Advice: Amp building
 

Don Pearce wrote:

If what you fancy is a cold glass of beer, a cup of tea isn't better.
But this is not a reasonable analogy because our appreciation of both
tea and beer is entirely aesthetic and there is no possible objective
measure of goodness that can be applied to both of them as a
comparison.

And sound from an audio system differs from this... how?


--
Wally
www.wally.myby.co.uk
You're unique - just like everybody else.