One Amp To ‘Rule’ Them All....

No.


With amplifiers - **all** amplifiers- its all about distortion- what distortion the amp makes and what distortion it doesn't make.


Because the ear converts all forms of distortion into tonality (a fact that has been known since at least the 1930s) all amplifiers therefore also have colorations.


Solid state colorations are just as audible as tube colorations hence the tubes/transistors debate which is older than the internet.


Feedback reduces distortion, but adds distortions of its own (see Norman Crowhurst); we've known this fact for 60-70 years. So amps that employ feedback will be brighter and harsher than real music.

So there isn't and can't be an actual amplifier that is a benchmark, that is completely uncolored.

I wish to define for the whole audio community one or more common, competant, reliable, well executed, sonically comprehensive, reasonably affordable amplifiers that we can begin to use as ‘reference amplifiers’ to judge other amplifiers by. That’s it.

A lot depends on what you’re trying to do.

With any amplifier its all about distortion, and not all designers consider the same distortions important.


The human ear uses the higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure; if there are higher ordered harmonics as distortion, the amp will sound brighter and harsher than real life. This is fundamental to the tubes/transistors debate.


So are you looking for a benchmark that has the lowest distortion? If so, its unlikely that amp will ever sound right- such amps tend to use large amounts of feedback to linearize the voltage response of the amp (so its output is flat on all loudspeakers) and to eliminate distortion. The problem is that the application of distortion, while suppressing a lot of distortion, adds some of its own and its all that higher ordered variety so its audible even in very small amounts.


This of course is an argument against feedback; the problem is that the spec sheets we’re all used to seeing are designed to make the product look good on paper rather than allow us to tell how it sounds! This is why we have to audition the product regardless of what the spec sheet says.


If you want to eliminate the distortion caused by feedback, you have to eliminate the feedback. This means you can’t expect flat frequency response from the amp with many loudspeakers, but OTOH since the ear often favors tonality caused by distortion over actual frequency response, this might not be so bad, especially given that no speaker is really flat in the first place.


However there is a means of dealing with this, for more seehttp://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php

There must be amplifiers in the world that work well with almost any speaker and are consistent competent performers that are also reasonably affordable.

There aren't.

Generally speaking, transistor amps have a hard time sounding right on ESLs because the impedance curve of an ESL isn't a map of its efficiency unlike many box speakers. Part of this has to do with the simple fact that an ESL isn't in a box :)  As a result most solid state amps sound too bright on ESLs (and they already have a reputation of sounding too bright as it is).


If brightness and harshness is a problem for you, then you are more likely to gravitate towards tube amps. Tubes tend to make less of the higher ordered harmonics that the ear uses to sense sound pressure (and this is keenly sensitive to such harmonics, throw in the Fletcher-Munson curve and you have a problem). This is why tubes and tube amplifiers are still in production 60 years after being declared 'obsolete'. It just happens that tubes obey the rules of human hearing better than transistors.

You don't have to know anything technical here- all you have to know is that tubes are still around because people want them. Before you can have a 'benchmark' amplifier, you have to solve the distortion issues that separate tubes and transistors. My advice is don't hold your breath.