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In Reply to: RE: TESTS: Round-up of Windows and Mac Audio Players. posted by Mercman on June 13, 2013 at 12:19:56
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He wrote in the day when high powered transistor amps were coming onto the scene and he loved to announce the latest and the greatest with more power and lower distortion.
They measured great on his test bench but they would make your ears bleed.... he thought they all sounded great.
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Follow Ups:
"{fill in the blank} at the {price point}, I can heartily recommend this!"
The Crown DC 300 was an example of an amp that tested great and sounded hard.But let's be fair, many people share Archimago's views. If he heard no difference, then there was no difference.
Edits: 06/13/13
My 1st big time attempt at a high end amp. Yes it was hard. Afterwards I felt burnt by the 'test only reviewers' crowd and I began seeking out subjective reviews.
the ICK-150 preamp. ;)
"The Crown DC 300 was an example of an amp that tested great and sounded hard."
But I heard one sound good. Once. So it's possible but what you described was far more typical and I've certainly heard that also.
I keenly remember my first visit to the Reuben H. Fleet planetarium shortly after it opened. They had a zillion channels of horrible sound. After the show we were looking around and I was admiring the Zeiss projector as it was the first one that I'd seen in person. As we were leaving the gal at the door stopped us and asked "was that you looking at the star projector?" and I owned up and was just getting ready to say "but I didn't touch it" when she said that there was a group of donors in the audience who were going to get a tour of the works and would we like to join them?
Well she didn't have to ask twice and it was a lot more fun than the show for me. And when we were in the sound room, there, racked up in the R/H wall were a slough 40? of DC-300's. I smugly said to myself, 'well, that accounts for the sound'...
But them were the days, I just had a HK Citation 12 but most of my friends had Phase Linear 350's and 700's. I was the only one without fried tweeters in my EPI's!
Rick
I never blew any KLH-6 tweeters with my Citation II, but I did lose three tweeters due to cat claws.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
In the early 70's I worked at a Tech Hi Fi. I sold the Crown DC300. I remember when we got the Ampzilla to sell. The Crown was blown away by this Bongiorno design.
Tech Hi Fi was great. Many of the local one here in Michigan had salespeople that allowed after hour listening sessions. Loved Tech Hi Fi. Bought a lot of stuff there.
Here is the original Ampzilla article. I wish I still had my copy of PE. :) It was actually a very nice sounding amp.
The DC300A had a terrible front end. The Crown were extremely brittle and harsh sounding. When running them with horn they became a death ray! The early SS amps actually killed horn speaker sales. Speakers that sounded wonderful with tubes, were suddenly garbage, and the Bose 901s ruled the world. :(
Ha! I built one of these off this article. I etched the board myself, built a chasis by hand, did the whole thing from scratch. It was great fun. It drove a set of speakers I built myself from drivers scrounged from an old "console stereo" from a garrage sale. My next door neighbor was a woodwoorker and helped me build my first set of speakers in his garrage with all his expensive tools. (I was in high school, ANYTHING was expensive!)
I was feeding it from a reel to reel tape deck that I had gotten for free and rebuilt the head amp. Mostly listening to tapes I had recorded myself. It sounded really good to me. My parents thought so too, until I built the subwoofer, they weren't too sure about THAT!
John S.
"Ha! I built one of these off this article. I etched the board myself, built a chasis by hand, did the whole thing from scratch. It was great fun. It drove a set of speakers I built myself from drivers scrounged from an old "console stereo" from a garrage sale. My next door neighbor was a woodwoorker and helped me build my first set of speakers in his garrage with all his expensive tools. (I was in high school, ANYTHING was expensive!)"
Hi John,
That was a big project! :) Nice! :) I prob read that issue one hundred times. Never built one though.
"I was feeding it from a reel to reel tape deck that I had gotten for free and rebuilt the head amp. Mostly listening to tapes I had recorded myself. It sounded really good to me. My parents thought so too, until I built the subwoofer, they weren't too sure about THAT!"
I had Dyna tubes. Built my own speakers (parts from Falcon UK) and later a TL sub. The older women in the apartment downstairs loved when I would play Olatunji Drums of Passion! She would bang on the pipes in rhythm! Parents were not too thrilled... :)
Ampzilla was a good sounding amp. I listened to the GAS amp many times.
One of the best systems I ever heard was at LYric Hi Fi. Mike Kay had the big Magnaplaner system with ARC D76As tri amped Ampzilla on the bottom with a coffin TL sub. Front end was a Linn with a Decca on an SME into a JC1. Just amazing sound back then! If I only had the $$$
regards
Bob
Great American Sound (GAS) made some good sounding amps. The company was formed after the kit was published.
"In the early 70's I worked at a Tech Hi Fi. I sold the Crown DC300. I remember when we got the Ampzilla to sell. The Crown was blown away by this Bongiorno design."
I don't believe that I ever heard one but everything I read about them was good.
Semiconductor technology is a whole different beast now than it was forty years ago, it's so much more precise. If home stereos were still important we would likely see some amazing products. Alas only cell phones now matter...
Rick
a case of loads of feedback to improve specs versus proper feedback loops and amounts.
How "great" does it measure in various ways compared to amplifiers today?
.
And they got it with lots of negative feedback. Much lower than what anybody is claiming these days. Levinson's flagship amp is rated at no more than .1% THD at full power. Back then they were claiming .001%
.
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It's not If he heard no difference, then there was no difference but rather If he heard no difference, then there was no difference that he could discern
The difference is still there. Some people say all Scotch whiskeys are the same. They are wrong.
The Phase Linear series of power amps was another one that tested great and sounded bad.
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So what I'd be curious to know from the "bit perfect is bit perfect" crowd is would you then say that the Teac DAC (assuming it is bit perfect) should sound no different than a DCS Vivaldi DAC with a Vivaldi Clock (assuming that equipment is bit perfect as well)?
Also true for USB cables, CD players, and the rest?
I realize that Archimago tested for frequency response, noise, stereo separation and the like (although not for jitter, best as I could tell). But I believe, whatever one's position, they should have to follow that position to it's logical conclusion.
While I'm not a technical guy at all, after quite a while in this hobby, I can't believe that all of the aforementioned product, assuming it measures the same as in the categories Archimago measured, are all going to sound the same.
Way too many listening experiences involving quite a variety of products, tell me (and many others) otherwise. Moreover, if bit perfect is bit perfect then the implication is that there's a very widespread conspiracy in the digital end of our hobby to sell hobbyists some very expensive snake oil.
I'm not buying that theory and I am buying some of that higher priced digital product.
Joel
What does "bitperfect is bitperfect" mean, by definition, and does everyone in the "bitperfect" camp believe all elements of that definition?Look at three aspects to DAC performance:
a) Some believe that two bit-identical files on the same drive can sound different. Some believe this is the case because of the "container" data (meta-data and file header info) can be different despite the CONTENT being the same. Others believe that totally identical files can sound different.
b) Some believe that perfecting the digital signal is critical. Others believe you can feed a GOOD DAC with even a poor digital signal and out will come beautiful music because of the DACs jitter-rejection and clock-deriving or reclocking ability.
c) Then we have the analog side of the DAC. Who is arguing about THAT? Only the "all gear sounds the same guys", I would guess...
So define the "bits are bits" mantra first - because there does not seem to be a single consensus in one single "camp"...
Cheers,
Presto
Edits: 06/13/13 06/13/13 06/13/13 06/13/13 06/13/13
Others believe that totally identical files can sound different.
What does it mean for two files to be identical? Do they have the same pattern of bits? Do they have identical patterns of magnetism on the spinning rust? Are the located at the same space on the same disk volume? Do they have the same file name? If so, then they are indeed totally identical. That is to say, they are the same file. Even then, the sound may still differ on each playing, for a variety of reasons involving environmental and psychological factors, among other things.
All of these details can, eventually, be worked through, assuming that one has the necessary motivation, time, knowledge and tools and comes in with an open mind rather than trying to justify a preconceived opinion.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"Then we have the analog side of the DAC. Who is arguing about THAT? Only the "all gear sounds the same guys", I would guess..."
Who is arguing about that?
How about JRiver for one, as regards JPLAY?:
From JRMC's website: "For his computeraudiophile.com blog, Mitcho tested JRiver Media Center and Jplay. Both produce measurably identical bitperfect output."
As a result, JRiver recommends uninstalling JPLAY. I'm not mentioning this to get into the JPLAY discussion here but rather to say that there a lot more people out there who believe "bit perfect" is the end of the conversation than I would have imagined. I was once one of those people but believe I understand (and have heard) just enough to realize the error of my ways.
Joel
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