One Amp To ‘Rule’ Them All....
brettmc...do yourself a favor and find an old nad 3020 as a reference amp for your ears. wont cost you much...love them..the musical tone is awesome. Once you have had a good listen to that please tell me your thoughts.If happy buy a power amp and have fun.its all in the preamp! remove the links and hook up some power! |
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 |
I agree with many here that "it depends on what you are trying to achieve". Some are getting sort of heated in this discussion. I would step back and make the scenario of your best friend wants to purchase the "best amp" for his/her system. Wouldn't the first question you ask be, what speakers are you going to use? I need to know this first. I also need to know your level of music appreciation to determine what you mean by "best". If you couldn't tell whether you are listening to a real instrument vs an electronic instrument, or know what dimensionality, space, soundstage, etc. are, then your idea of "best" is not what others would consider best. I would also want to know you price point. Within a certain price point and taking the other things into consideration can help determine what is "best". If you have 102 db/watt speakers, then you really don't need 500 wpc amp. where about 10 watts would drive you out of the room. So for that speaker, you would need a low powered, very clean amp. If you have extremely difficult to drive speakers, well, that is another story altogether. you basically need an arc welder. If your listening room is stupidly huge and you are sitting very far away, well, you need something that can help the speakers project. People have their favorite amps, pre-amps, etc. However, their favorite "best" amp won't work for you if you situation is different. 1. What speakers are you driving? 2. How is your appreciation of music? 3. What is your price point? 4. What is your listening room like? 5. What are your other system pieces composed of? If I know these things about you, then I can narrow the range of amps for you to demo. enjoy |
The best amplifier if you dont have a roof for the limits amount of money invested,i dont know, and nobody knows,even the guy who can afford anything... The best amplifier at the lowest cost,I know ..My Sansui AU 7700 is one of the possible choices, 100 bucks paid, 100 other bucks to clean it and upgrade some components... Few amplifier can drive headphones or speakers,or turntables etc with so more ease and quality, it is an amp so flexible with the utmost qualities of sound of his era that to beat it on ALL counts,flexibility and sound quality, it is nearly impossible... Then absolutely not the best amplifier there is for sure, but on all count with his used price,yes the best there is for me ...I am not even looking back... |
