warm or bright receivers.

[newfmp3]

Anyone that can't hear the difference between two receivers, and goes around saying that all receivers sound the same....well, they are not the great audiophile's they think they are. you can show me all the "studies" and survey's and what not. 30 years around audio, and I can definitely hear a difference.

If all amps/receivers sound the same, then Why...

...bother getting an in house audition of an amp before buying?

Heck, why bother auditioning it at all? They all sound the same anyways

..bother having tone controls? or eq's? We'll all just build our rooms the same.

...bother having different manufactures. Just build one and we'll all buy it.

...go with "high end" over "low end", what's the point? I guess we are all suckers.

... even have this forum in the first place?

...read reviews, opinions etc. Everyone must be nuts if they think they hear a difference


I'm sure anyone can add more to this, but you get the point.


then there is the playing with words the children do around here.

Amps vs receivers. Saying all amps don't sound the same, when you really mean, all receivers don't sound the same.

then there is the preamp section. to me, this is where the real difference is. The processing, dat's etc. but again, I am totally retarded for thinking there is a difference.

Of course, a capacitor is a capacitor. A resistor is a resistor....so everything is the same. Manufacturing differences do not exist in the audio world apparently. And 120V/15A from a wall jack is 120V/15A no les no more. There is no possible way to get more wattage out of a wall jack right? Of course, lets completely forget about the basic concept of what a capacitor really does. Ever see someone work on a TV that's been unplugged for a week and get fried? Getting off topic now.

Bottom line is, just listen to the music......no really, just listen. That's all. If your happy, great....but just listen to it.


Anyways, My Zaino ( Wax) is dry on the car....must go wipe it off.

Oh, speaking of cars... they all have the same Engines right? Maybe we should all drive Pontiac Sunfires, or Neons!

 

[markw]

I love the way you try to put words in other people's mouth's.

Anyone that can't hear the difference between two receivers, and goes around saying that all receivers sound the same....well, they are not the great audiophile's they think they are. you can show me all the "studies" and survey's and what not. 30 years around audio, and I can definitely hear a difference.

If all amps/receivers sound the same, then Why...

...bother getting an in house audition of an amp before buying?

Heck, why bother auditioning it at all? They all sound the same anyways

..bother having tone controls? or eq's? We'll all just build our rooms the same.

...bother having different manufactures. Just build one and we'll all buy it.

...go with "high end" over "low end", what's the point? I guess we are all suckers.

... even have this forum in the first place?

...read reviews, opinions etc. Everyone must be nuts if they think they hear a difference


I'm sure anyone can add more to this, but you get the point.


then there is the playing with words the children do around here.

Amps vs receivers. Saying all amps don't sound the same, when you really mean, all receivers don't sound the same.

then there is the preamp section. to me, this is where the real difference is. The processing, dat's etc. but again, I am totally retarded for thinking there is a difference.

Of course, a capacitor is a capacitor. A resistor is a resistor....so everything is the same. Manufacturing differences do not exist in the audio world apparently. And 120V/15A from a wall jack is 120V/15A no les no more. There is no possible way to get more wattage out of a wall jack right? Of course, lets completely forget about the basic concept of what a capacitor really does. Ever see someone work on a TV that's been unplugged for a week and get fried? Getting off topic now.

Bottom line is, just listen to the music......no really, just listen. That's all. If your happy, great....but just listen to it.


Anyways, My Zaino ( Wax) is dry on the car....must go wipe it off.

Oh, speaking of cars... they all have the same Engines right? Maybe we should all drive Pontiac Sunfires, or Neons!

Doing that is fairly obvious to the more widely read here and really doesn't make your position any stronger.

In fact, it makes you look desparate.

google "straw man" and get back to us.

 

[newfmp3]

dont get me wrong. I believe some people really can't hear a difference. More then likely a limitation of their ears. But to say that the rest of us that can hear a difference are just "thinking" we are, is nuts.

Wouldn't be the first time I was proven to be nuts though


....been a while since I' ve seen the straw man comment.

 

[markw]

I enjoy playing a guitar, I've played many models over the years and all sounded very different. All were made of wood, all had 6 new strings, all were of the dreadnaught style and all were tuned the same. So why is there such a variety of sounds? Some differences can be explaned by the type of wood or glue used, or the type of finnish applied in the process, I don't know,I am not a Luthier, but I truly don't believe a few manufacturing differences could possibly explain so many differences in the tones that different guitars can produce.

Guitars are music producers. They are purposely made to sound different.

Amps are designed to simply reproduce what's sent to them and, in this day and age when they are kept within their design limits do a pretty good job of that. Changes, if any, will be subtle. If not, there's a big problem problem. Most changes in sound in a ni-fi amp will most likely more evident as the amp is driven near, at, or beyond it's lmits.

And, if an amp is either warm or bright, they are either poorly designed or designed to cater to a specific market, such as guitar amps. Look up the word "euphonics" for more on that. Guitar amps are producers of sound more than reproducers.

Again, amplifiers are designed to simply REproduce what's fed into them and, in today's world, they get a lot more right than they do wrong.
But if you really want to buy into this then Yamaha has been reputed to be bright and Denon has been reputed to be warm. Remember, YMMV

But remember, choose your speakers first and love them before you commit to them. Don't buy something that's just OK and expect a receiver or cables to change the sound of them to your liking. You'll be highly disappointed if you do try it. ...ain't gonna happen

 

[mtrycrafts]

On this particular topic, wouldn't it be more helpful to just point out some of the things that can lead to the perception of brightness? Like the speakers or a room with lots of hard surfaces (empty walls, tile or wood floor), improper calibration, etc..

But, that was not the issue, what makes the setup bright. Presumably, the listener had the same speakers and room all along before a receiver or amp comparison, so those issues were already present and should have been obvious to the listener beforehand. If not obvious, then it is even more obvious that his bias is ever changing from moment to moment.
So, I don't see a reason to explain all the reasons that the perception was such when the claim is a basic one for the component itself being bright from reputation alone as is the case.

 

[mtrycrafts]

OK, fair enough. You know, there's a pretty big following for the old boomboxes. If you're as old as I am, you'll remember there were a few that sounded pretty good back in the day. Do these bring back memories - anyone? (pics courtesy of Pocket Calculator Show)

I am not sure how old you are not that it really matters
I think I have seen them but I could not pick them up to carry it home So, mine are much more reasonable.

 

[mtrycrafts]

mtrycrafts,

You don't trust your own ears/brain...the very things you use when listening to music. That concept alone puts you on a different planet from most of us.

Actually, I do trust my ears for things that matter, especially when I know that I don't have to rely on my eyes to mislead it, or my biases. I believe it is you who doesn't trust your ears alone and must rely on your eyes to hear for you.

Most humans choose their possessions based at least partially on data if they are savvy,


Ah, that is the question then, being savvy.

but ultimately, choices like the car they drive, the sofa they sit in and the shoes they wear are based on 'how it feels'.

Oh stile has nothing to do with a pair of shoes? Same for the others. How about some basic requirements first before you go into such subjective areas?

A few years ago I walked into an listening room at an audio dealer I had never been to. The room was rather dark and the system was playing a CD of English madrigals for soprano and lute. I got chills over my entire body and it wasn't based on what the audio hardware looked like or its price. The only delusion I experienced there was looking around the room for the two artists playing the music. That kind of reaction can’t be measured with a rat shack gizmo.

Ah, the room had great acoustics as well as the speakers. You didn't exchange components to see if that mattered, right? Oh, yes, I bet an acoustician would have told you that from some measurements.

. It’s crazy enough that we use electronics to bring music into our home. Using more electronics to confirm what we hear and prefer is one sad concept.

It may be sad for some, prudent for others in the know.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Oh, and to the OP; Denon = medium bright, Marantz = not so bright and Pioneer = very bright... Sorry for the sarcasm but these Rorschach Test questions crack me up.

Great analogy

 

[mtrycrafts]

While I do greatly appreciate the time all have given to answer my questions, I find myself ever more confused about what is the right sound for a receiver, speaker, dvd-cd player or even the wireing that makes up a sound system.

But if you keep coming back for answers, you may find some


It is my opinion that these devices can,t perceive all the information put forth by the audio components we use.

But, factually incorrect Human hearing has attributes because it is also connected to a memory bank. But, it has an awful lot of baggage as well. It has short memory for small differences, it has limits what it can hear, it has masking properties so that you don't hear everything that is vibrating in air in the audio band- one reason why perceptual coding works so well. And, it has many other shortcomings. That is what acoustic researchers do, been doing for a 100 years, to expand our knowledge in this area.



Given the above thoughts, would it be possible to get a few opinions on what receivers are considered bright and what are not so bright.

Thank you again for your time.
Frank


Modern components that are well designed are transparent, period.

David Rich and Peter Aczel, 'Topological Analysis of Consumer Audio Electronics: Another Approach to Show that MOdern Audio Electronics are Acoustically Transparent,' 99 AES Convention, 1995, Print #4053.

 

[mtrycrafts]

. But to say that the rest of us that can hear a difference are just "thinking" we are, is nuts.
Wouldn't be the first time I was proven to be nuts though
.

Well, I suppose you just have to demonstrate your claim then what you can hear. Not so easy though.

 

[mtrycrafts]

..why would an ADULT, NOT, just honestly acknowledge whether or not they hear a difference?...

Please. I thought you were paying attention to all the discussions. To them, their mind is telling them that they perceive a difference. Bias, not a lie. Uncontrollable human nature. It happens, period.




what would/could be established/proven, by not being simply truthful?..

Same as above.



..aren't we all adults and couldn't care less about winging anything or misrepresenting?..


Human nature is what is at work. But psychologists have know this and research this all the time. Maybe that is what you need to invest time in, understanding the shortcomings and fallibility of the sense/brain interactions.



.some who post here bring more confusion than information, and seem to post for attention more than anything, and THAT'S what is sad, and makes ME think of what I conceive to be a straw man......

Yes, one would be confused when not understanding what is stated or knowing about that subject. Perhaps investigating those personal unknowns would help understanding the issues?

 

[mtrycrafts]

.....grear proofreading.....

Why should I??? You are behind me doing a good job.

 

[WmAx]

.........

Damping factor has already been covered in other recent threads. It's ONLY relevant point being frequency response.... to find out why... refer to that other thread. It's not deserving of any special consideration, other than to ensure you have a high enough factor to keep a reasonably flat frequency response into a dynamic load. It's an easily measurable parameter. Amplifier sound is not something that can escape proper measurements. No one has proven a mysterious X factor to exist. If the amps you mentioned really do sound different[as opposed to an imagined difference] from each other, then it is measurable and correlatable to known human threshold parameters.

As far as the rest of your post, it's looks to me to be a mound of speculations, and in no way a reasonable rebuttal to mtrycrafts posts. Maybe it's your unusual grammatical structure, and maybe because of this I'm misunderstanding you[if this is the case please let me know], but what I infer from your posts is that you don't believe in an objective approach to the issue at hand. It is not debatable that human perception is easily biased. You can argue with it, but you would be contesting countless scientific papers concerning human psychology vs. your opinion, thus such a debate is not a debate[at least not a rational one] at all, just an empty argument.

-Chris

 

[mtrycrafts]

.....WmAx, it's laughable that you might know more than this....

.....straight from here.....
http://www.audiovideo101.com/dictionary/default.asp


Damping

An audio system’s ability to stop playing a signal after it has ended. For instance, a sharp drum thump should not drag on for too long a time. If it does, the system is exhibiting poor damping meaning that it is not properly ending the sound production associated with the drum thump. Such a system is generally muddy and not well refined making individual musical nuances difficult to make out.

The damping factor relates to how well an amplifier is able to control the movement of a speaker driver, stopping its motion after the signal has stopped. If the driver motion is not halted, the driver will continue to move creating back-EMF (voltages sent back into the amplifier from the speaker’s voice coil moving in the magnetic field) and unpleasant, distorted sounds. ""Look for an amplifier with a high damping factor when you go to purchase audio equipment. The damping factor should be at least 300.""


Damping Factor

The ability of an amplifier to tightly control the movement of a speaker driver and stop its movement as the signal ends (see Damping).

Ah, you read it on the internet. Must be factual.

But, how would you know if it is real or imagined? You don't want to know. That is the problem in itself.

 

[WmAx]

.....WmAx, it's laughable that you might know more than this....

.....straight from here.....
http://www.audiovideo101.com/dictionary/default.asp

You should not trust a generalized Q&A. Your reference is not very informative, nor even accurate in claiming a specific value. Your reference is wildly misleading. BTW, an amplifier can not have a known damping factor of 300 or any other fixed number, since damping factor is a calculation of output impedance, load impedance, frequency and series resistance components. Why does the reference you refer to not even mention this little details? Certainly, a good reference should not overlook such things.

[1]Did you know that when you have a frequency response peak, it is a resonance, a manisfestation of stored energy which has an extended decay time?

Did you know that as you raise outpout impedance[damping factor lowers as it is raised] that the voltage produced by the amplifier into varying resistances will become less linear with the varying loads? This means that with a standard speaker with a dynamic impedance, the amplifier will not be able to remain linear at all frequencies. If a frequency response peak occurs as a result, for example, as would happen at the bass resonance points[which have a high impedance compared to the average of the speaker], that this would be classified as a resonance. Refer to [1]. The reference to back EMF effects is nothing more than a fancy way of saying that the frequency response is changed. An effect, btw, that can be compensated for a known load[speaker] with a line level filter to inversely reverse the non-linearity. The damping factor must be very low[in the low double digits] to have an audible effect on frequency response on typical speakers.

Actually, why not just refer to the very informative article on this site concerning damping factor?

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/audioprinciples/amplifiers/dampingfactor.php

-Chris

 

[markw]

yo, Muleskinner.

Does that MAc have an autoformer?

 

[WmAx]

.....WmAx, now you say the guys who put together audiovideo101.com HAD to be wrong, and refer by link the thoughts and opinions of, here we go again, Richard Pierce....Chris, I don't CARE, what Richard Pierce thinks or says, period....I know what I heard with the two slave amps, and I believe these guys are correct in their definitions given, which only back up what I heard....this has gotten quite old, and I'm really very tired of being told that I DIDN'T hear something, by guys who only have as an opinion what they've read....that's ludicrous to an artform....go do an AB comparison with the two slave amps I used, or you have NOTHING.....

You do not appear to know what caused your difference in perception between the two amps. Did you do a level matched blind test to confirm there was a real difference, audibly? If you did... did you follow up with measurements to find out what real differences are within known human detectability thresholds? You may not care what Richard Pierce says, but he sticks with the facts, not abstract ideas and/or speculations. You jumped the gun, based on some very weak evidence[raw perception in an uncontrolled testing scenario], when you attributed such percieved differences as you have claimed to damping factor.

-Chris

 

[markw]

Perhaps, but I'm no genius.

.....BUURRRRRRRPP....whew, that Alton Brown sure knew what he was talking about when he advised to soak chicken pieces to be fried in buttermilk before seasoning and flouring.....

.....yes, MarkW, the MC 2200, and my MC 2105, and I believe all integrated and slave amps by McIntosh have an output autoformer to protect the speakers from a good frying, should an output transistor short and try to pipeline direct current to the speakers....this feature takes the direct current immediately to ground....please, does this enter into what I heard as being a compressor-like effect?....I don't see how, since it's only a protection device with choice of ohmage outputs, but,.....

http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/autoformer.aspx

The way I've always heard damping factor expressed was a ratio of the (forgive me for inexact wording here) resistance of the output device (transistoe, transformer, whatever) to that of the load (speaker). If a speaker has an impedance of 8 ohms, for the amp to claim a damping actor of, say 80, the resistance of the output device would have to be around .1 ohm, which is not too uncommon for a solid state unit.

When you have transformers involved, that kind of ups the amp resistance so they would have a lower damping factor or, the theory goes that a tube amp would not control a speaker as well as a SS unit.

Now, I thought I heard differences in the bass when I was using a NAD 1600 Tuner/Preamp first with the poweramp of a 28+ year old 70 wpc Marantz 2270 and, when I got the scratch to afford it, a brandy new (in '99) 80 WPC NAD 214 power amp. The NAD seemed to have less bass than the Marantz but, to my ears, after some time and comparisons (no scientific DBT's) it seemd that the bass simply didn't "ring" , or hang on as long with the newer amp. IOW, it seemed to stop the driver from continuing to play the bass notes.

But, I could be wrong.

P.S.. I still have 'em, use 'em and still love 'em.

So, you're a "Good Eats" fan, eh? Ever get the hots for W?

 

[buckyg4]

Forget the DBT, SPL level matching, etc... If you like the sound of one over the other than buy it. Its as simple as that. No one can tell you that an amp or any other equipment sounds great, only you can tell it since it is your perception. Anyone can give recomendations, but in the end you have to live with it. No two people have the exact same response to a sound. I come from a Pro Audio recording background and I like my music to sound as it was recorded and have set my system up to try to mimic it, so much so that I use the same DAC in my system as I used to monitor mixes in the studio. I've had some people say that it sounds too bright, too airy, the bass rolls off too fast, bass doesn't roll off fast enough, but for me I like the way that it sounds.

 

[mtrycrafts]

That is the problem with you. You don't care what learned men have to say. Maybe you are more learned? Your papers are published where? What? such achievement, yet you seem to know???


.I know what I heard with the two slave amps,

Yet another proclamation, because why??? You know more than what science knows??? How could that be? Especially when you have not demonstrated your prowess of such hearing ability.

and I believe these guys are correct in their definitions given, which only back up what I heard...


How convenient. Believing is easy, knowing is more difficult.


this has gotten quite old, and I'm really very tired of being told that I DIDN'T hear something,



Actually, you have not demonstrated what you think you heard. You do claim a lot. Demonstrating it, well, just a bit short on that. So, why should anyone take you claim seriously?





.....straight from here.....
http://www.audiovideo101.com/dictionary/default.asp
.

Do you think that by repeating this nonsense, somehow it will be factual and real???