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One Amp To ‘Rule’ Them All....

Is there one amplifier that everyone can agree on as a contemporary standard? An amplifier that can be considered a standard in both the studio and in a home stereo setup?

What one amplifier does everything very well and can be found in homes and in professional audio engineering environments?

What amp covers all the bases and gives you a glimpse into all qualities of fine musical reproduction?

...something Yamaha? ...something McIntosh?

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dekay's avatar
dekay
2,959 posts
 
"Is no one else alarmed that on the consumer side of things that there really are no standards?

Its all very, very subjective and arbitrary."

Really...

What righteous standards are you referring to for the non-consumer side of things?

Also how many commercial recording studios have you used/accessed?

As far as your very basic query goes (about amps) most of us "home" users do not require or want balanced runs, unlike the need for such in every recording studio I visited up until the late '80s.

DeKay
magnaryder1
8 posts
 
No, you’ll need to spend a lot of time listening and a lot of money on amps you don’t like to  figure it out. Go to trade shows and listen. It’s a journey and a lot of fun.

ray
michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio
643 posts
 

The OP has given us one heck of a great question to answer, and there has already been some great answers. These recent threads that are pointing to the HEA bubble popping is starting a new and way over due playback hobby. Watching the one volume control hobby coming to an end is worth the price of admission alone.

mg

erik_squires
5,268 posts
 
I don't know everyone can agree on a best, but I find Parasound are an excellent gauge of great price/performance.

I find they tend to be slightly warm, robust, and neutral. A number of Class D designs sound the same to my ears, so it seems they are reaching towards a very similar, uncolored, powerful middle.


michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio
643 posts
 

Hi Ray

"Go to trade shows and listen. It’s a journey and a lot of fun."

This is another topic that is of much importance right now.

What's going to happen to the HEA trade shows over the next few years will be interesting as the gas runs out of the "only a volume control" hobby comes to it's end. The realization that the professional world has been trying to gently help HEA with is finally breaking through the minds of the HEA audiophile.

When HEA should have turned right they turned left a drove way down a road that makes no sense. Now watching this vehicle try to politely turn around in the middle of traffic is going to be interesting to see.

Can I paint another picture for you guys?

What if you drove to the next HEA trade show and instead of walking into rooms where everything sounded different and there was only a volume control to adjust, you instead walked into rooms where you could sit down and make everything and every recording sound your way?

We could have made that move around the mid 90's, but even though we're slow as a hobby's people, we're making that move now. Now it's more a matter of how fast the conversion will take. The plug & play hobby is almost over. Enter the variable wars :)

mg

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