On Fri, 9 May 2008 18:14:43 +0100, "Steve Goodwin"
wrote:


"Don Pearce" wrote in message
news:6eOdne7qqc4lwbnVnZ2dnUVZ8qOknZ2d@plusnet.. .
Bob Latham wrote:
In article ,
Eeyore wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Concentrate on decent main speakers and simply switch off the surround
when using it as a Hi-Fi.

Excellent advice.

Following on from this would you subscribe to this thinking?

1) All competent amplifiers operating within their design limits sound
the
same.

2) Because of 1 above, unless you wish to drive very hard loads or play
very loud there is no point in spending more than budget say £250 UKP
for an amplifier.

Just curious.


Bob.


I would say that is pretty good, apart from number 2. You can play very,
very, very loudly for £250. The 2400W Behringer EP2500 can be had for
£253. You'll need a preamp, though.

I thought the point of a good amp was that you could play very quietly?
Surely the Primare A32 at £3k would be in a different league to one costing
£250?

Equally curious ...


Huh? You can play any am,p quietly; you just turn the volume down. It
is the loud bit that separates the men from the boys.

d

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

Don Pearce wrote:
Bob Latham wrote:
In article ,
Eeyore wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Concentrate on decent main speakers and simply switch off the surround
when using it as a Hi-Fi.

Excellent advice.

Following on from this would you subscribe to this thinking?

1) All competent amplifiers operating within their design limits sound
the
same.

2) Because of 1 above, unless you wish to drive very hard loads or play
very loud there is no point in spending more than budget say £250 UKP
for an amplifier.

Just curious.


Bob.


I would say that is pretty good, apart from number 2. You can play very,
very, very loudly for £250. The 2400W Behringer EP2500 can be had for
£253. You'll need a preamp, though.

d

I think a problem is that the design limits are very rarely
known/published, and selected specifications that are published are of
limited use. In addition, it's seldom known whether design parameters
translate into real world use (manufacturing anomalies and age for example).

I've had several 'named' amplifiers that sound different to my mind.

FWIW I can't tell the difference between the power amp stages of a
Behringer A500 and a Cambridge Azur AV amp.

Rob

Don Pearce wrote:

Huh? You can play any am,p quietly; you just turn the volume down. It
is the loud bit that separates the men from the boys.

d

Well, you might worry about things like noise, crossover distortion for
class B and inaccuracies in channel balance at low volumes for a macho amp.
Maybe the ability to play quietly separates the ummmm... nightingales
from seagulls?
There must be a better analogy somewhere.
Roger tThorpe

Roger Thorpe wrote:
Don Pearce wrote:

Huh? You can play any am,p quietly; you just turn the volume down. It
is the loud bit that separates the men from the boys.

d

Well, you might worry about things like noise, crossover distortion for
class B and inaccuracies in channel balance at low volumes for a macho amp.
Maybe the ability to play quietly separates the ummmm... nightingales
from seagulls?
There must be a better analogy somewhere.
Roger tThorpe

The state of the art in amplifiers has reached a stage where these
things should be history, although there are obviously amps where they
aren't. These won't be found at the cheaper end though, but mostly among
the boutique "high end" efforts.

Many low to mid range amps these day will use one of the integrated amp
chips that really perform quite brilliantly. Integrating a power amp
really is a smart thing to do because most of the residual problems with
them stem from temperature gradients between the output devices and the
drive. In a single chip these are essentially eliminated, so the amp is
always performing as it was designed. For the rest of the circuit, in a
chip it costs nothing extra to current mirro the input stage, buffer the
voltage amplifier stage and generally do all the good things that push
up the cost of a discrete amplifier.

d