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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: What would that be? posted by John PA on April 27, 2003 at 04:51:20:
The question is: What is a good autoformer?Some good products are around and the ASL autotransformer is excellent sonic *and musical* value, but only *in its price range*. It is actually killer value! But on the other hand a well designed shunt pot like the Audio Synthesis is in several important sonic parameters better than the ASL, whatever others may have written. The superb musicality of the ASL is bought at the price of a certain homegenization of the sound. Timbres, soundstage and other important resolution aspects are better already with a good 15 kOhm shunt attenuator. Not to speak of a 1k EVS Ultimate, in case the source can swallow it. (More do it than feared). So much for the *inherent* superiority of transformer attenuators.
To conclude from that experience that 'autotransformers' as a genre are inferior to 'the stepped attenuator' would be very silly though.
The opposite case would IMO be as silly: Concluding the autotransformers superiority because one sample of an autotransformer sounded better than another sample of a separate winding transformer.I don't know why a company known for radical minimalistic concepts, and known to push the envelope of transformers *and coils* as far as sonically possible, would then *not* use an autotransformer for their best product, the Silver Rock (www.audio-consulting.ch)?
I agree that it is *possible* that an autotransformer could sound better than the Silver Rock, but i haven't yet heard anything in reality coming close. (the same way it is possible for human beings to travel to the mars, but nobody actually has been there.)
As you may have guessed, the Silver Rock is that attenuator i prefer to the EVS Ultimate (at a higher price though ;-)Infering eg. that a S&B in certain situations sounded less transparent than eg. a Placette would prove that 'the TVC' as a topology is inferior is complete non-sense, the same with critical conclusions about the silver S&B against the copper one:
What you hear is the implementation as a whole, not an abstract topology. Optimizing all aspects in the reference frame of superb reference replay systems in a circular correction process pays big dividends in product quality.
Application of engineering theory can only be a hint in this process. Even professional experience is not more than an admittedly good hint.
What engineer would have recommended us roller bearings for audio 20 years ago? They explain it to us after the fact, often...I accept that Paul Speltz's post-amplifier autotransformer has positive effects as found by many users.
But this does not prove that other transformers, eg. with separate windings wil not sound better, whatever in theory will be sayed pro or contra: The final proof is eating the pudding, the sound!
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Follow Ups
- Re: What would that be? - Arbelos 12:01:35 04/27/03 (0)
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