|
|
|
|
Differences In Audio Components That I've Heard And Not Heard
"Wylie Williams"
wrote:
"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote
It has been proven beyond reasonable doubt on many,
many occasions that all nominally competent amps sound the same.
This is an assertion seen often on RAHE. It sounds reasonable to me,
but not so straightforward and simple as it sounds. I would like to satisfy
my mind on my system's amp with as small an expenditure as possible. Last
year, thinking it would be nice to learn the criteria for selecting an amp,
I started a thread on RAHE asking how to identify "Nominally Competent"
amps. One would assume that on such a basic subject as this there would be
a set of objective measurements that established nominal competence, and
many RAHE members responded with suggestions re the appropriate specs. The
suggestions had some commonality, but were different enough to leave
considerable doubt. There were posts saying that there were such specs but
they were not available to the public. One of the best replies named brand
and models numbers and gave descriptions of the differences in sound between
many highly respected amps, which led me to wonder, if they sounded
different, if any were NC. One professional posted that he knew the
appropriate criteria but they were, like almost all his esoteric knowledge,
proprietary. (shades of Top Gun - "I could tell you but I'd have to kill
you")
It would appear that it is not as simple as I hoped to determine
whether an amplifier qualifies as nominally competent. So while I
appreciate the idea that all these "NC" amps sound the same, we all seem to
be on our own in finding which amps qualify. Even if someone were willing
and able to conducts tests he would have to have one reference amp that was
known to be NC. Then he would enter the dark realm of test methodology.
That prospect is daunting enough to make one want to buy an audiophile
magazine and check out the flavor of the month.
Nominally competent is easy. +/- 0.1 dB 100 to 10,000 Hz with less
than 1% clipping and no measurable odd stuff like a shut-down with
protection into the speaker in question. That's never been a secret.
|