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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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Propeller Head Plaza Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics. |
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In Reply to: Re: More answers posted by morricab on December 21, 2005 at 06:28:51:
> "Would you not consider fidelity to be a single well defined criteria?"
> Sorry, I would just like to comment on this statement.Do not apologise. So long as you are not an "objectivist" your answer will be of interest to me.
> Types and levels of distortion that look to be of no consequence on a computer screen can have profound effect on the listener.
Why do you believe this to be true?
> So the question of fidelity is not as easy to assess as you propose.
30 years ago fidelity was not an ambiguous term in home audio nor is it to an engineer today. It is interesting that its meaning might have shifted in home audio circles today.
> I hope you will agree that exact reproduction of the source material would be an ideal definition for fidelity;
It is the definition of fidelity to many including myself.
> however, the question that arises is this, if a piece of gear measures nearly perfect and yet still doesn't sound right (subjectively speaking)
How do you determine sounds right?
(I can see how to determine sounds different.)
> then why is that small residual imperfection playing such an important role in the sound that is reproduced?
As far as I am aware, all experiments have shown that significant levels of distortion need to be present to be audible. Your statement is counter to my knowledge, do you have references?
> Why is another piece of gear measureably further from an exact replication of the source material subjectively much closer?
Again we are back to this closer business. I can accept sounds more pleasant but not closer unless I can see a valid way to determine it.
> If it is impossible to make a truly distortion free amplifier, then isn't it smarter to put that distortion in the blind spot of human awareness rather than make it really small but sitting right in the open where even very tiny levels are obvious?
This would be the case if we could not make good enough amplifiers but we can, given a few caveats, and for a reasonable price.
> Amplifier design for the last 4 decades (until recently) was obssessed with pushing it down as low as possible, and they did push it low, but invariably pushing it where it was the most obvious.
As far as I am aware, there has been little development of traditional class AB designs for a couple decades since it became demonstrably good enough to do the job albeit at a fairly high cost in efficiency and materials. Getting that cost down and efficiency up would seem to be the major force behind the design of amplifiers in recent years. (This is audio rather than just high end audio.) Is this not your impression?
> The result was often poor sound quality. Poorer measuring but better sounding amps tend to have their problems more in the human blind spots.
Are you sure you are not confusing this with having nice sounding problems?
> This brings up a further question: Who are the engineers designing high fidelity gear for, the test bench or human listeners?
Neither, they are designing them to be sold. This means giving the customer what they want. It also means finding someway to distinguish your products in a postive way in the customers eyes which is why marketing is so vital in this case.
> When designers make a real effort to apply what has been learned to date about psychoacoustics to electronics design then we might begin to see a directed progress in sound quality rather than the hit or miss results we see now.
Hmmm. What do you think the market is for a modestly priced linear amplifier with a niceness control which adds valve sound?
> The sound of gear would also likely begin to converge (as it should if fidelity to the recording and to how humans hear is the goal.).
My understanding is that as far as amplifiers are concerned this happened a few decades ago when people stopped being able to distinguish well designed amplifiers (subject to caveats) in audibility tests. Do you consider these results to be invalid?
How do you explain the fact that large numbers of people prefer the sound from valve amplifiers? Is this because the valve amplifiers have a higher level of fidelity or that they sound nicer or perhaps both?
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Follow Ups
- Re: More answers - andy19191 07:51:24 12/21/05 (1)
- Re: More answers - Tom Dawson 15:09:41 12/22/05 (0)
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