For the analog electronic crossover discussed in the last segment 1:15:44, I’ve been using this type of product for years from a company called Marchand Electronics, where custom daughter cards are plugged in to precisely tune the crossover frequencies, slopes, etc. The professional offerings that were alluded to are/were available through companies such as Rane and dbx.
The THD conversation was one of the most game changing discoveries I’ve had in years of this hobby..like reading Malcolm Gladwell Outliers and discovering why professional hockey players and soccer players have similar birth months or why I interpret certain things in a certain way. Thanks John and Srajan.
Hi Darko and Srajan, this is possibly the best video from this channel yet, I've been advocating the importance of specks for years, technically speaking the better the specks the better the performance though not the be all and end all, but it can be used as an invaluable tool to at least assess and base an objective criteria as mentioned by Srajan with regards to THD and the type he finds most agreeable with an amplifier. If an amplifier (or another bit of kit) has vanishingly low distortion of any type and can consistently behave in this way to beyond the human audio spectrum then we have (technically on paper) a reliable means to predict its sound quality, at least in regards to flavour as John likes to put it. Over the 40 or so years, my interest in Hifi has taught me that people like the way hifi sounds not necessary correct or accurate but pleasing to the listener, some one likes warm whilst another likes cool (and the multiples in between), however in some cases Hifi enthusiasts and reviews can be susceptible to marketing BS (a lot of reviews bouncing of other reviews subjective BS). Thanks to people like ASR and the like who put out SINAD's and as you've mentioned on the Q acoustics speakers that marketing is their to fill you with verbal salad. In the pro audio industry which thankfully we are now seeing creeping in the Hifi scene, rely on specks and accuracy which can be quiet a shock for some Hifi enthusiast who for years would report on as sounding sterile, etc, ect... Speaker companies like Genelec, PMC, B&W, ATC and Kii (amongst others) are fine examples of pro entering Hifi industry scene. Please keep up this great work, I'm really liking your chats and appreciate Mr Darko making an attempt to learn the physics/electronics to better understand the products and therefore add real value to his viewers.
I have been using a pair of PSI Audio AAVA active bass traps (analog version) for about 18 months. Very happy with them. Srajans description of the benefits are spot on.
I now know that when I listen to my stand mounts and stereo pair subs I am subwoofing, love it my new description for listening to music. Great podcast/video.
Thank you JD for bringing us Srajan yet again, the two of you knock out some serious knowledge into our heads, very interesting. Watching this podcast is always time well spent for me.
Sarjan makes a great point that high harmonics are a bigger issue then low ones. You might not notice 2nd order at high distortion levels. What I don't understand is then saying a tube amp is better. Almost in all cases low and high order distortion is worse in the tube amp. Across the board. Using one number is not everything but at SNR od 100db+ you wouldn't hear any distortion anywhere. Biggest issue with tube amps it's you get abysmal power at very high cost. Like buying a hand build carburetted engine of 5.7L and only 190 horse power. Cutting edge in 1950 but now we know better. THD is overblown but able to drive speakers with confidence at 4 ohms is not.
Tube amps have few stages. Transistor amps have lots of stages. Each stage 'distorts' the signal. Linearisation using feedback feeds a time delayed signal back to an earlier stage to correct that waveform. Whether the phase distortions are detectable, who knows? A simple topography is quite often more ear friendly. And still nobody bothers with the fact that a speaker pushing is not the inverse of a speaker pulling.
This is the first time I have listened to you both after becoming a Patreon with Darko Audio. I must be getting older as I found it fascinating and listened to the end. The British Audiophile is an exposure advocate so interesting to hear about them. The crossover unit does sound interesting as well. Thank you for the discussion as a newer person delving deeper into hifi I enjoyed it very much 🙏
Thank you very much for this gentlemen. Couldn't get passed half hour, I am afraid. Quite poorly today. I studied music at school, so I got what you were saying. Here's my dilemma and my question. Because the vast majority of hi fi shoppers won't see this video and wouldn't think to ask, how are normal shopper's supposed to make a decision. Most salespeople wouldn't know either. If the low distortion figures are bunched together, but the instructions gloat about how good it is to get the lowest distortion figures possible, then how do we know what is good and what is bad. If I was to work in a hi fi store, I now feel that it is my responsibility to inform the customer that in some circumstances, higher distortion isn't a bad thing. And this will confuse most customers. What's the solution to this please gentlemen. Thank you.
What they are describing as far as even order vs odd order distortion, is basically warm vs bright sound in an amplifier. Even order is warmer, odd order is brighter, with the amount of distortion correlating to the amount of added warmth or brightness. Hence why some distortion, if placed right, could sound good, but too much, may be overbearing. The point they are trying to make is to not just chase the lowest distortion number as manufacturers market their products by the same specifications many consumers try to use to judge the quality of a product. But just like cheap receivers falsely advertising their wattage by rating it at one channel driven, 1khz, etc. some amplifier brands that are not reputable will try to boast of their lower distortion, at the cost of overall sound quality due to where that distortion is. What this means for the consumer is simply that they have to listen to a variety of electronics and find the brand and model that best complements their speakers. Audio is just as much an art as it is a science.
We do not know what is good or bad aside from hearing it. There is no strict correlation between local distortions and the system's global sounds. The complexity is too high. This holds true even in any one component in the system. The only solution is hearing and experience. The idea that we can see quality of sound in data is simply flawed.
That's a really good question. Sometimes its easy to overlook that videos like this are really not meant for the average person. Its more for people who already have an interest in audio and want better sound. The average person is going to a place like Best Buy, and they will get whatever the salesperson tells them. And if they do look into the technical details of the individual components, keep in mind that the different brands in the store are all competing for the same customer. For example, if you are shopping for a typical $500 receiver, companies like Sony, Yamaha, Denon, etc... understand that and do everything they can to make the specs close. The real world performance is also very close. 99% of the time, if you pick out something like a Sony, and it was a decent choice that meets all of your needs, you can drop an equivalent receiver from another brand and it should work just as well. Specs in the audio industry tend to range from poor to criminal, and everything in between. You can go to Walmart and buy a $99 home theater in a box that's rated at 1000 or more watts, and its in big print so you can't miss it, and then you find a big, single channel power amp made by a good company, and it costs more than a car. In the video, they didn't even go into all the details. Its even way worse than what you think. Distortion numbers have to be tied to a certain amount of power output. If you look at a spec sheet, it will say something like, 100 watts at 8 ohm at .001500 THD. The reason THD has to be tied to a specific power rating is that it changes. That same amp at 50 watts will put out less distortion, and over 100 watts, its higher. The reason I'm going into all this is because there are no set standards that every manufacturer has to go buy when rating the power output of an amplifier. If you take 5 or 10 amps from different manufacturers, all rated for exactly the same amount of power, and test them all the same way, every one will be different. How different depends on the manufacturers standards. At this point, I'm sure you already figured out what I'm going to say next. If the power output isn't measured the same way for different amps, that means THD is also not accurate. So, you can have THD ratings on amps that are the same, and they will be different if you measure both amps the same way. A lot of people get upset when they hear audiophiles say things like, trust your ears. I get it. Its not the most scientific way to go about things. But if you want to make the right choice, you have to listen to a piece of equipment before you buy it. And if you don't, you'll be very disappointed. The upside is, you learn a lot more about the equipment, and for things like amp power and distortion, its very easy to hear if an amp is struggling to power a speaker. Especially solid state amps. If the amp is not powerful enough to drive your speakers, you'll easily hear it.
This is possibly the *most* useful discussion on audio equipment I have heard - thank you! As a continuation of amplifiers and harmonics - maybe you can discuss how an amp handles a 1kHz *square* *wave*. A square wave is essentially a *sum* of all the harmonics. And if an amp can do a clean(er) square wave, it can have an open/clear/spacious sound. Also - percussion instruments - have an initial "attack" in their sound that is a lot like a square wave. And this also comes into digital sample rates - if 44.1kHz sample rates can *only* record frequencies up to about 20kHz - then they completely unable to record the harmonics of *many* instruments, including percussion instruments - like pianos and drums. Because the higher frequency harmonics have to be filtered out before the ADC. Filters affect the phase, as I'm sure you know. Edit: another use case for the active analog crossover is for DIY speakers - you can do the crossover with it, and use 2 or 3 amps (2-way or 3-way speakers). The advantage is doing the crossover at line level lets the amps "control" the drivers better.
Finally someone speaking truth about THD!! Great video, invaluable info! Thx! You need to hear the hear and decide if you like it, although the placebo effect is true.
I have pairs of both AVAA C214 and C20 they do a great job. Just don’t expect when you turn them on to all of a sudden the room sonics to completely floor you. You will have to sit down and slowly realize that your room sounds better and mainly when you turn them off, you then realize you miss them.
So I'm a vintage audio guy. My Marantz reciever was rated by the manufacturer at 0.3% THD circa 1974. According to some tech youtube videos I have seen these units (in good condition) tend to measure around 0.03% (if im not mistaken) at normal listening levels then fall off a cliff at close to max volume. So the manufacturer rating from Marantz in those days quoted the number they got at max output. I'm not sure if that is true of modern manufacturers. Edit: Long story short i dont give a lot of consideration to THD ratings.
Interesting if rather unbounded conversation about THD, yes different amplifier configurations produce different levels of THD however the only relevance is by comparing like with like. The simple idea of comparing a valve (tube) amp with AB solid state or class D is like comparing apples and pears. But of course this is an audiophile conversation, and therefore only objective to the listener. Keep up the information flow, i just find some of the technology discussion a little wooly. BTW I like Darko, BR A Sad old Chartered Engineer!
Funny you talking about tapes. I went up to my attic and dug out my old Aiwa tape deck in Jan this year and replaced the belts and its now in the hifi rack and I'm enjoying hearing all my old tapes!
Crack on! I've got all my old tapes laid out here, and I keep thinking "I should get rid of these…" But then I start looking through them, putting some of them on, and I discover some good music and great memories.
With regards to electrostatic soeakers - Stax also made a couple of models of these way back in the early 80's. I remember hearing them at Vince Ross Audio in Perth.
Pretty sure the audiolab 6000a does pre power mode so it could well handle this crossover which would be epic in fairness. Seriously tempted by the rca only version
Interesting discussions! Thank you. I used a Bryston Electronic crossover to horizontally biamp my Magnepans....it worked great, but those are $1K used...so the Sublime sounds like a good solution with more features.
No one does it that way, but using an active xover is the correct way to do it. You can't do this if you have mono amps, but if you have 2 stereo amps or a multichannel amp with 4 or more channels, you can also do a vertical biamp. Then you don't need the crossover. I have a pair of Ayre V5's in a vertical biamp in my main system for a while now, and it sounds amazing.
Great video, especially the THD part, thanks for your work! I always wonder why building a active setup with subwoofer is made so complicated/expensive, I just run from a streamer into an AVR where you can adjust crossovers as you like (without extra payment for cards) etc and use the preouts to the active speakers.
Love my Fiio CP-13. It just works. Doesn’t have the features of We Are Rewind WE-1 like recording and Bluetooth but I’ve found the Bluetooth to be very finicky and I lose interest trying to get it to work rather than just playing a cassette tape.
I use the Schiit Rekkr with Elac BS243.3 on my desk, fed by a Aune X8 Maxic Dac with Sparkos SS3602 OP AMP... they sound beautiful. I'm so happy to have this audio system, I know I could have gotten better speakers but haven't found any better ones nor I know what to look for. The sound is so insanely clear (to me), that even people listening how they play are shocked how big my small room sounds and how they can feel the notes in space... it's crazy. Sabrina Claudio - Stand Still ,, would be one song for example, there is this "fake" I assume Tube Amp noise... Also my pursue for clear and beautiful audio came with Darko (John), my uncle had Paradigm speakers but his sound wasn't very clean.
Audio-GD still produce a 1704 dac the HE7 mk3, 8 * PCM1704UK and regenerative psu. But most of their DAC's are resistor ladder dac's with FPGA controlled not sabre. You should test some Audio-GD dac's they are very good made with low feedback and 2rd and 3rd harmonics. Really appreciate the part about THD i have been banging my head against the SINAD crowd trying to educate them in what THD is and the audibility of THD, more awareness about the drawback's of negative feedback is needed!! Srajan for King!
Sublime Acoustic - without a Delay adjustment (for the Mains) a product such as this simply doesn't meet my needs (especially used as a Mains to Subwoofer crossover). If however you can do without the Delay adjustment, then $900 for such a high quality (SQ) piece of gear is awesome!
Beheringer and LD Systems offer (rack mounted) active crossovers (2- and 3-way), also available from Thomann. They cost 118-250 euros a piece. The only difference I see at first glance with the Sublime crossover (besides the huge price difference) are the lack of rca connections. These pro-devices use XLR only.
I’ve been using the k231 active crossover for about a year now and I really like it. I was previously using a miniDSP to do the same job. I honestly don’t know which is better. The purest in me just wanted to try all analog. With the miniDSP I was going from digital, to analog, to digital, to analog which just didn’t sound like a good idea. But honestly the miniDSP worked well too and added Dirac. 🤷♂️
There are some reviewers on the Internet that post charts with the HD spectrum for amplifiers they review. That could help for those looking for a particular HD profile.
Darko! I would love to get your take on matching tube preamps with solid state power amps. Shockingly few TH-cam videos on the subject other than ultra high end. Pretty please!
Really great discussion on THD. That number is worthless for the most part as to the sound of an amplifier. As a guitar player I love hearing about the various order harmonics and how it effects a HiFi amplifier.
Great conversation with Srajan, as usual. Just wondering whether you could do music recommendations at the end of the podcast, like you did with Michael Levornja? I imagine that Srajan's music would be wildly different, to yours. Could be interesting.
It's a time thing. I want to cover as many news items as possible in these podcasts -- but with some educational stuff included. That means recommended albums don't make the cut. Sorry.
Morning everyone I hope you're all safe and well 😁 I don't read or listen to how a piece of equipment measures but use my ears 😁 and as for cassette I own a nakamichi cr7e and love the sound, I have been messaging nakamichi for years about doing a run of spare parts but no success yet, there are thousands of nakamichi's out there not working due to parts not being available which is a pity as they are amazing sounding machines 😁 maybe someone will pick up the gauntlet and pull the old plans for the whole range and build compatible parts or even upgrades, they would make an initial killing 😁 anyway please stay safe everyone and look after yourselves 😁
Your discussion on Topping DACs is divorced from reality. Their cheapest DAC (the $100 E30 II Lite), has a light harmonic spray throughout the audible range, just barely peaking out of the (miniscule) noise floor at no more than -145dB below the primary. Truly inaudible. Meanwhile, the beloved $6,000 HoloAudio May has the same spray across the audible range, except each spike registers at about -130dB below the primary. Also inaudible, but far, far worse if you think that such things cause problems. And this information is pretty widely available, at least with anything reviewed by ASR or L7 Audio Lab, as well as companies that release their APX measurements such as Schiit.
Have you heard them both to compare ,what about build quality reliability ,UI ,power supply are those not important only measurements ,to make you feel better about your cheap junk
The goal of an amp should be to add and remove nothing to or from the signal expect power of course. Gain on a wire. It should have as minimal noise and distortion as possible. It should ideally be stable into any load and unbothered by impedance swings, and it should be as linear as a perfectly level and flat surface across frequencies ranges. That’s the “ideal” at least technically speaking. I’m not accounting for subjective preferences of course.
The chi-fi boxes usually have vanishingly low levels of IMD and higher order harmonic distortion as well as very low levels of low order harmonic distortion so its best not to generalise without measurements. Many low feedback topologies (say gryphon) have high order harmonic and IMD higher than these chi-fi dacs and often by up to 30 db so the alledged glassy sound of chi-fi can't be attributed to these reasons. Independent measurements are available on Audio Science Review. To claim that 16th order distortion which is at less than -100 db magnitude for some of these amps is audible is nonsense. Feedback itself is fine in a high bandwidth design where the feedback delay is on the order of nano seconds. Problems occur when high amounts of slow feedback are used giving rise to time based distortion like IMD or slew distortion but this is not an issue for chi-fi amps.
Hey Darko, as always: very interessting video! Could you please do a comparison test between the TEAC VRDS-701 and Exposure 3510 CD players? Thanks in advance!!!
Ok so the idea is that by analizing THD we still dont know what kind of harmonic distortion it is....even or odd, lower or higher row as specialy odd higher rows sound terrible ? :) Or am i missing something :) anyway thanks for the lesson! BTW. i have a topping dx3 pro+ and i love it anyway :)) i bought it also because of you !
Still listening, but... yeah, distortion can be good. However, what is the goal of your hifi system? To playback what was recorded or to modify the sound? If it is the accurate playback of the original recording, then surely less distortion is better? Any distortion you hear should have been added by the artist. Now, if you want a pleasant sound, if you want to make it nicer, modify the sound to your liking, then having more distortion can be desireable. Personally, at this point in my journey, I want what the artist has recorded. There is nothing wrong if you want this, there is nothing wrong if you prefer distortion.
Hi Darko! Been watching your stuff for the past few days and I really was wondering if you could maybe talk about the best way to get into some decent sound systems. I've managed to actually build a custom steel system but the trouble I don't know what baseline I can use for a good sounding system! I like the audio I get from it but as I listen harder I notice the imperfections more... What would you say would be a good place to start where I can get a good system and also learn about it? I do t mind building my own to be honest but it doesn't matter much if I don't :) thanks if you get around to seeing this !
I own a pair of their largest electrostatics. They’re excellent, but their marketing is lightweight. I have. Pie of old esl57s if you want to review them? They may have a bright future!
Dear John and Srajan great podcast indeed! I have a question about the active crossover. If a have a two-way speaker with two input terminals, how I would bypass the passive crossover inside the speaker?
You or somebody else has to open it up and bypass the crossover electrically. Very few speakers offer that option from the outside. Linn used to for example on their Katans.
There was a time when 1 or 2 % THD was an acceptable figure. Some people would swear by some amplifiers that had those specs. These amplifiers tended to have very few stages between in and output. Amplifying devices, valves, fets, and transistors (capacitors, transformers and inductors) are non linear. They distort the signal in some way. Feedback can linearise the signal, but introduces 'products' due to the delays inherent in doing so. Sometimes the distortion can be 'inverted out' internally by another stage. Distortions and the measurements will also change with how hard the amp is driven. An amp with lots of 'crossover' distortion may well measure well at high volumes but extremely badly at low volumes (this is one reason early transistor amps had a bad rep). Choose your poison. But as music today has been well and truly digitally murdered, is there any point?
Placement is EXTREMELY important with the AVAA’s The PSI doesn’t fix SBIR issues that the dude calls reflections. The guy should talk to PSI directly (I own too and have measured before vs after.) I needed up keeping mine after the extensive 30 day trial. Worth the coin but not magic
HD of 3rd, 5th etc... are in common the problematic distortions and indeed the HD of 2d and 4th etc... are recognized as more "harmonic" , but there is a misunderstanding. It is the ratio or let's day the distance, the level of those HDs. If the 3rd oder HD overtone the second HD it comes to the uncomfortable experience. But the amps are just the lesser problem, more are the speakers are problem, they add much more HDs and there can be done much more to prevent high distortions. One example if the chassis have mechanical problems it increases the 3rd HD extremely, that is an uncomfortable experience. In conclusion of course it is important to have low distortions as possible. It is a kind of skewed understanding of arguing that it is okay to have amps with rich second distortions because it ADDS tonality...
I couldn’t watch to the end. Yes, it is easy to see harmonic distortion introduced above a test signal but a very good amplifier will have a signal to noise ratio that is high enough that the added distortion is inaudible. Human hearing has its limits and a great amp will have distortion and noise below the level of human perception, such that the harmonic profile of the added distortion doesn’t matter. Yes, people love to defend tube amps and I’m sympathetic as a musician but I wouldn’t claim they were state of the art hifi.
THD is great and all, but what is the root cause of the tendency for tube amps and pure class-A amps (Pass Labs, Gryphon, etc) to display a physically wider soundstage in all 3 dimensions (height, width, depth)? It's an alarmingly regular finding that I have had from super cheap ChiFi tube amps to $40k+ tube amps (and the more expensive class-A amps). There is literally no possible mechanism that simple THD artifacts could account for the exposure of *more* information from the actual recording. SO, what else is happening???
Behringer CX3400 $150USD ($50-75 on eBay). Former analog studio owner and audiophile for 4+ decades. Suggest NOT discounting using items such as this for home audio. BIG bang for the buck. No cards. Caveat: Can't do the "notch trick". If you're happy with the way something sounds -- don't worry, be happy...
Wow! Looks like it does the same, and more, for £125 in the UK. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I never knew it existed. MiniDSP make similar devices but are more expensive and do a lot of other things I don't want. Also they operate in the digital domain I believe.
3K for a basstrap! - crazy, would rather buy speakers, you can build easily a DSP circuit driving out of of phase - PSI make very nice studio active non-dsp speakers.
THD is great because it can be measured. Then we have something to talk about. So is .0015% THD better than .00002? Got me. What can't be measured is time distortion and its reduction is where HiFi lives.
Can somebody explain this to me... Its a bit more of a technical question. Sooo just to be clear, harmonics are named by the intervals (2nd/3rd/etc). Those intervals are named relative to a certain pitch, the fundimental. But if an audio signal gets distorted then you aren't talking about one frequency so what is the "fundimental" of that signal then?
If the audio component adds, creates, the harmonics it is called distorsion. If those harmonics are of those low orders it sounds pleasant. Instead of one tone you hear a chord. This was my understanding and please correct me if I am wrong.
Hi, fundamentals are a particular frequency(s), the harmonics are multiples of the fundamental frequency induced by, in this case a power amplifier. So if the fundamental (input signal to the amplifier) frequency is 100 Hz, the higher harmonics will be 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, 500 Hz, and so on. If the fundamental frequency were 220 Hz, the harmonics would be 440 Hz, 660 Hz, 880 Hz, and so on. Total harmonic distortion (THD) is a ratio in % of harmonic distortion to the fundamental frequency measurement given to the difference between the input signal and the output signal from the amplifier. Generally and technically speaking, the lower the THD the better but different multiples of harmonics may vary in amplitude and wether they are odd or even, these have been described to colour or influence the sound of an amplifier to some degree and Srajan has described odd order harmonics as cool, edgy or harsh sounding and even order harmonics as warm etc (or was it the other way round), he also said this can be an advantage to either tame a bright sounding speaker or brighten a warm one. Another point worth discussing is how much these harmonics vary at different power levels. But please note, Srajan description is purely subjective as there are many distortion factors to consider. Hope this helps.
What Q Acoustics is doing is shameful, both regarding the power ratings and claims of Hi-Res when it's not. It's a bummer because small towers should be a hot category. I've got a pair of slim Dynaudio towers in my main listening room and they work great. They'd be even better if they were powered as these are.
I cannot see Taylor Swift fans getting their sleaves rolled up and getting stuck into tape head and azimuth alignments somehow. That's the bit they haven't been told about, Yet...
If you introduce second order harmonics (or third order) into your amplifier as discussed in the video, you are no longer reproducing what is on the recording. You are introducing distortion, THD that you prefer. If there was such a thing as a perfect amp, not many people would like it, so manufacturers design amps with a certain "profile". Having said that, there are other types of distortion that make an amp sound different. Even the typology of the amp makes it sound different. If you want to buy an amp, go listen to it.
Ok, so with respect to audio reviewers, what harmonics are chocolate, strawberry, vanilla?? Total THD figures are useless. Spectral analysis is far more telling. As an example, Shindo products generate some 2nd harmonics and not much ( very little actually ) of anything else. Combined with an extremely low noise floor , the Shindo presentation is free of fatigue and the few tenths of 1 percent of 2nd harmonic adds a delightful musical flavor to just about any recording. Too much global feedback can lower low order harmonics but significantly add upper harmonics.
This was a fantastic explanation of THD. Thanks👍. More of Srajan please.
For the analog electronic crossover discussed in the last segment 1:15:44, I’ve been using this type of product for years from a company called Marchand Electronics, where custom daughter cards are plugged in to precisely tune the crossover frequencies, slopes, etc.
The professional offerings that were alluded to are/were available through companies such as Rane and dbx.
The THD conversation was one of the most game changing discoveries I’ve had in years of this hobby..like reading Malcolm Gladwell Outliers and discovering why professional hockey players and soccer players have similar birth months or why I interpret certain things in a certain way. Thanks John and Srajan.
Thanks John & Srajan, This podcast was full of spicy findings !! Think I need a beer!
Hi Darko and Srajan, this is possibly the best video from this channel yet, I've been advocating the importance of specks for years, technically speaking the better the specks the better the performance though not the be all and end all, but it can be used as an invaluable tool to at least assess and base an objective criteria as mentioned by Srajan with regards to THD and the type he finds most agreeable with an amplifier. If an amplifier (or another bit of kit) has vanishingly low distortion of any type and can consistently behave in this way to beyond the human audio spectrum then we have (technically on paper) a reliable means to predict its sound quality, at least in regards to flavour as John likes to put it. Over the 40 or so years, my interest in Hifi has taught me that people like the way hifi sounds not necessary correct or accurate but pleasing to the listener, some one likes warm whilst another likes cool (and the multiples in between), however in some cases Hifi enthusiasts and reviews can be susceptible to marketing BS (a lot of reviews bouncing of other reviews subjective BS). Thanks to people like ASR and the like who put out SINAD's and as you've mentioned on the Q acoustics speakers that marketing is their to fill you with verbal salad. In the pro audio industry which thankfully we are now seeing creeping in the Hifi scene, rely on specks and accuracy which can be quiet a shock for some Hifi enthusiast who for years would report on as sounding sterile, etc, ect... Speaker companies like Genelec, PMC, B&W, ATC and Kii (amongst others) are fine examples of pro entering Hifi industry scene. Please keep up this great work, I'm really liking your chats and appreciate Mr Darko making an attempt to learn the physics/electronics to better understand the products and therefore add real value to his viewers.
I would care to think %THD is not MISLEADING but misunderstood.
I have been using a pair of PSI Audio AAVA active bass traps (analog version) for about 18 months. Very happy with them. Srajans description of the benefits are spot on.
I now know that when I listen to my stand mounts and stereo pair subs I am subwoofing, love it my new description for listening to music. Great podcast/video.
Thank you JD for bringing us Srajan yet again, the two of you knock out some serious knowledge into our heads, very interesting. Watching this podcast is always time well spent for me.
There are some wonderful explanations in this video Srajan, hats off to you! (and thank you)
Sarjan makes a great point that high harmonics are a bigger issue then low ones. You might not notice 2nd order at high distortion levels. What I don't understand is then saying a tube amp is better. Almost in all cases low and high order distortion is worse in the tube amp. Across the board. Using one number is not everything but at SNR od 100db+ you wouldn't hear any distortion anywhere. Biggest issue with tube amps it's you get abysmal power at very high cost. Like buying a hand build carburetted engine of 5.7L and only 190 horse power. Cutting edge in 1950 but now we know better.
THD is overblown but able to drive speakers with confidence at 4 ohms is not.
Tube amps have few stages. Transistor amps have lots of stages. Each stage 'distorts' the signal. Linearisation using feedback feeds a time delayed signal back to an earlier stage to correct that waveform. Whether the phase distortions are detectable, who knows? A simple topography is quite often more ear friendly. And still nobody bothers with the fact that a speaker pushing is not the inverse of a speaker pulling.
I am delighted that you two have added nuance to the whole THD discussion. I find the internet zealots a little tiresome.
This is the first time I have listened to you both after becoming a Patreon with Darko Audio. I must be getting older as I found it fascinating and listened to the end. The British Audiophile is an exposure advocate so interesting to hear about them. The crossover unit does sound interesting as well. Thank you for the discussion as a newer person delving deeper into hifi I enjoyed it very much 🙏
Absolutely fascinating content.
Dear John and Srajan,
Great podcast, very entertaining and as all always full of interesting things to learn. Congratulations. Please keep doing it.
Thank you very much for this gentlemen. Couldn't get passed half hour, I am afraid. Quite poorly today. I studied music at school, so I got what you were saying. Here's my dilemma and my question. Because the vast majority of hi fi shoppers won't see this video and wouldn't think to ask, how are normal shopper's supposed to make a decision. Most salespeople wouldn't know either. If the low distortion figures are bunched together, but the instructions gloat about how good it is to get the lowest distortion figures possible, then how do we know what is good and what is bad. If I was to work in a hi fi store, I now feel that it is my responsibility to inform the customer that in some circumstances, higher distortion isn't a bad thing. And this will confuse most customers. What's the solution to this please gentlemen. Thank you.
What they are describing as far as even order vs odd order distortion, is basically warm vs bright sound in an amplifier. Even order is warmer, odd order is brighter, with the amount of distortion correlating to the amount of added warmth or brightness. Hence why some distortion, if placed right, could sound good, but too much, may be overbearing.
The point they are trying to make is to not just chase the lowest distortion number as manufacturers market their products by the same specifications many consumers try to use to judge the quality of a product. But just like cheap receivers falsely advertising their wattage by rating it at one channel driven, 1khz, etc.
some amplifier brands that are not reputable will try to boast of their lower distortion, at the cost of overall sound quality due to where that distortion is. What this means for the consumer is simply that they have to listen to a variety of electronics and find the brand and model that best complements their speakers. Audio is just as much an art as it is a science.
We do not know what is good or bad aside from hearing it. There is no strict correlation between local distortions and the system's global sounds. The complexity is too high. This holds true even in any one component in the system.
The only solution is hearing and experience. The idea that we can see quality of sound in data is simply flawed.
That's a really good question. Sometimes its easy to overlook that videos like this are really not meant for the average person. Its more for people who already have an interest in audio and want better sound. The average person is going to a place like Best Buy, and they will get whatever the salesperson tells them. And if they do look into the technical details of the individual components, keep in mind that the different brands in the store are all competing for the same customer. For example, if you are shopping for a typical $500 receiver, companies like Sony, Yamaha, Denon, etc... understand that and do everything they can to make the specs close. The real world performance is also very close. 99% of the time, if you pick out something like a Sony, and it was a decent choice that meets all of your needs, you can drop an equivalent receiver from another brand and it should work just as well.
Specs in the audio industry tend to range from poor to criminal, and everything in between. You can go to Walmart and buy a $99 home theater in a box that's rated at 1000 or more watts, and its in big print so you can't miss it, and then you find a big, single channel power amp made by a good company, and it costs more than a car.
In the video, they didn't even go into all the details. Its even way worse than what you think. Distortion numbers have to be tied to a certain amount of power output. If you look at a spec sheet, it will say something like, 100 watts at 8 ohm at .001500 THD. The reason THD has to be tied to a specific power rating is that it changes. That same amp at 50 watts will put out less distortion, and over 100 watts, its higher. The reason I'm going into all this is because there are no set standards that every manufacturer has to go buy when rating the power output of an amplifier. If you take 5 or 10 amps from different manufacturers, all rated for exactly the same amount of power, and test them all the same way, every one will be different. How different depends on the manufacturers standards. At this point, I'm sure you already figured out what I'm going to say next. If the power output isn't measured the same way for different amps, that means THD is also not accurate. So, you can have THD ratings on amps that are the same, and they will be different if you measure both amps the same way.
A lot of people get upset when they hear audiophiles say things like, trust your ears. I get it. Its not the most scientific way to go about things. But if you want to make the right choice, you have to listen to a piece of equipment before you buy it. And if you don't, you'll be very disappointed. The upside is, you learn a lot more about the equipment, and for things like amp power and distortion, its very easy to hear if an amp is struggling to power a speaker. Especially solid state amps. If the amp is not powerful enough to drive your speakers, you'll easily hear it.
This is possibly the *most* useful discussion on audio equipment I have heard - thank you!
As a continuation of amplifiers and harmonics - maybe you can discuss how an amp handles a 1kHz *square* *wave*. A square wave is essentially a *sum* of all the harmonics. And if an amp can do a clean(er) square wave, it can have an open/clear/spacious sound.
Also - percussion instruments - have an initial "attack" in their sound that is a lot like a square wave.
And this also comes into digital sample rates - if 44.1kHz sample rates can *only* record frequencies up to about 20kHz - then they completely unable to record the harmonics of *many* instruments, including percussion instruments - like pianos and drums. Because the higher frequency harmonics have to be filtered out before the ADC. Filters affect the phase, as I'm sure you know.
Edit: another use case for the active analog crossover is for DIY speakers - you can do the crossover with it, and use 2 or 3 amps (2-way or 3-way speakers). The advantage is doing the crossover at line level lets the amps "control" the drivers better.
For amplifier transients reproduction has simply nothing to do with THD ...
Finally someone speaking truth about THD!! Great video, invaluable info! Thx! You need to hear the hear and decide if you like it, although the placebo effect is true.
What an informative and entertaining video, walking all over sacred ground.
I have pairs of both AVAA C214 and C20 they do a great job. Just don’t expect when you turn them on to all of a sudden the room sonics to completely floor you. You will have to sit down and slowly realize that your room sounds better and mainly when you turn them off, you then realize you miss them.
Love it. Will have to check the first conversation
So I'm a vintage audio guy. My Marantz reciever was rated by the manufacturer at 0.3% THD circa 1974. According to some tech youtube videos I have seen these units (in good condition) tend to measure around 0.03% (if im not mistaken) at normal listening levels then fall off a cliff at close to max volume. So the manufacturer rating from Marantz in those days quoted the number they got at max output. I'm not sure if that is true of modern manufacturers.
Edit: Long story short i dont give a lot of consideration to THD ratings.
Thanks.Very good information has helped me understand how Meridian designed system gels.
Interesting if rather unbounded conversation about THD, yes different amplifier configurations produce different levels of THD however the only relevance is by comparing like with like. The simple idea of comparing a valve (tube) amp with AB solid state or class D is like comparing apples and pears. But of course this is an audiophile conversation, and therefore only objective to the listener. Keep up the information flow, i just find some of the technology discussion a little wooly. BTW I like Darko,
BR A Sad old Chartered Engineer!
Funny you talking about tapes. I went up to my attic and dug out my old Aiwa tape deck in Jan this year and replaced the belts and its now in the hifi rack and I'm enjoying hearing all my old tapes!
Crack on! I've got all my old tapes laid out here, and I keep thinking "I should get rid of these…"
But then I start looking through them, putting some of them on, and I discover some good music and great memories.
With regards to electrostatic soeakers - Stax also made a couple of models of these way back in the early 80's. I remember hearing them at Vince Ross Audio in Perth.
Pretty sure the audiolab 6000a does pre power mode so it could well handle this crossover which would be epic in fairness. Seriously tempted by the rca only version
Interesting discussions! Thank you. I used a Bryston Electronic crossover to horizontally biamp my Magnepans....it worked great, but those are $1K used...so the Sublime sounds like a good solution with more features.
No one does it that way, but using an active xover is the correct way to do it. You can't do this if you have mono amps, but if you have 2 stereo amps or a multichannel amp with 4 or more channels, you can also do a vertical biamp. Then you don't need the crossover. I have a pair of Ayre V5's in a vertical biamp in my main system for a while now, and it sounds amazing.
Enlightenment for sure!
Great video, especially the THD part, thanks for your work!
I always wonder why building a active setup with subwoofer is made so complicated/expensive, I just run from a streamer into an AVR where you can adjust crossovers as you like (without extra payment for cards) etc and use the preouts to the active speakers.
Love my Fiio CP-13. It just works. Doesn’t have the features of We Are Rewind WE-1 like recording and Bluetooth but I’ve found the Bluetooth to be very finicky and I lose interest trying to get it to work rather than just playing a cassette tape.
John laughing at his pronunciation of ‘horns’ cracked me up.
Very interesting discussion. Thank you
I use the Schiit Rekkr with Elac BS243.3 on my desk, fed by a Aune X8 Maxic Dac with Sparkos SS3602 OP AMP... they sound beautiful.
I'm so happy to have this audio system, I know I could have gotten better speakers but haven't found any better ones nor I know what to look for.
The sound is so insanely clear (to me), that even people listening how they play are shocked how big my small room sounds and how they can feel the notes in space... it's crazy.
Sabrina Claudio - Stand Still ,, would be one song for example, there is this "fake" I assume Tube Amp noise...
Also my pursue for clear and beautiful audio came with Darko (John), my uncle had Paradigm speakers but his sound wasn't very clean.
Yes you can use the Audiolab as a Pre and Power simultaneously:-)
Good to know. Thanks.
Audio-GD still produce a 1704 dac the HE7 mk3, 8 * PCM1704UK and regenerative psu. But most of their DAC's are resistor ladder dac's with FPGA controlled not sabre. You should test some Audio-GD dac's they are very good made with low feedback and 2rd and 3rd harmonics. Really appreciate the part about THD i have been banging my head against the SINAD crowd trying to educate them in what THD is and the audibility of THD, more awareness about the drawback's of negative feedback is needed!! Srajan for King!
Sublime Acoustic - without a Delay adjustment (for the Mains) a product such as this simply doesn't meet my needs (especially used as a Mains to Subwoofer crossover). If however you can do without the Delay adjustment, then $900 for such a high quality (SQ) piece of gear is awesome!
Beheringer and LD Systems offer (rack mounted) active crossovers (2- and 3-way), also available from Thomann. They cost 118-250 euros a piece. The only difference I see at first glance with the Sublime crossover (besides the huge price difference) are the lack of rca connections. These pro-devices use XLR only.
great video with really useful information - though Srajans cup & stirring is killing me LOL
I’ve been using the k231 active crossover for about a year now and I really like it. I was previously using a miniDSP to do the same job. I honestly don’t know which is better. The purest in me just wanted to try all analog. With the miniDSP I was going from digital, to analog, to digital, to analog which just didn’t sound like a good idea. But honestly the miniDSP worked well too and added Dirac. 🤷♂️
This is great 🎉I've still have my tape deck. Japanese 😅💿 cd push pull valve amp and two way speakers 🔊 🤣 93db.
In my opinion the strongest audio content format on the internet. hot shit!😉
Will be dropping the word humdinger in my sentences today! Thanks John :)
There are some reviewers on the Internet that post charts with the HD spectrum for amplifiers they review. That could help for those looking for a particular HD profile.
Darko! I would love to get your take on matching tube preamps with solid state power amps. Shockingly few TH-cam videos on the subject other than ultra high end. Pretty please!
This is a must hear 8-36 min
Really great discussion on THD. That number is worthless for the most part as to the sound of an amplifier. As a guitar player I love hearing about the various order harmonics and how it effects a HiFi amplifier.
For amplifier transients reproduction has simply nothing to do with THD ...
Great conversation with Srajan, as usual. Just wondering whether you could do music recommendations at the end of the podcast, like you did with Michael Levornja? I imagine that Srajan's music would be wildly different, to yours. Could be interesting.
It's a time thing. I want to cover as many news items as possible in these podcasts -- but with some educational stuff included. That means recommended albums don't make the cut. Sorry.
I have the cayin n3pro that uses those tubes and while it's a chunky beast, it's got a great sound and plays will with the og andromedas.
Morning everyone I hope you're all safe and well 😁 I don't read or listen to how a piece of equipment measures but use my ears 😁 and as for cassette I own a nakamichi cr7e and love the sound, I have been messaging nakamichi for years about doing a run of spare parts but no success yet, there are thousands of nakamichi's out there not working due to parts not being available which is a pity as they are amazing sounding machines 😁 maybe someone will pick up the gauntlet and pull the old plans for the whole range and build compatible parts or even upgrades, they would make an initial killing 😁 anyway please stay safe everyone and look after yourselves 😁
Keep in mind harmonic distortion is just one kind of distortion affecting sound. People get hung up on it.
I almost bought a pair of Genesis speakers (with ribbon tweeters) in 2005. They were EXPENSIVE.
Don't fancy a pair of plasma's then?
Your discussion on Topping DACs is divorced from reality. Their cheapest DAC (the $100 E30 II Lite), has a light harmonic spray throughout the audible range, just barely peaking out of the (miniscule) noise floor at no more than -145dB below the primary. Truly inaudible.
Meanwhile, the beloved $6,000 HoloAudio May has the same spray across the audible range, except each spike registers at about -130dB below the primary. Also inaudible, but far, far worse if you think that such things cause problems.
And this information is pretty widely available, at least with anything reviewed by ASR or L7 Audio Lab, as well as companies that release their APX measurements such as Schiit.
Have you heard them both to compare ,what about build quality reliability ,UI ,power supply are those not important only measurements ,to make you feel better about your cheap junk
The goal of an amp should be to add and remove nothing to or from the signal expect power of course. Gain on a wire. It should have as minimal noise and distortion as possible. It should ideally be stable into any load and unbothered by impedance swings, and it should be as linear as a perfectly level and flat surface across frequencies ranges. That’s the “ideal” at least technically speaking. I’m not accounting for subjective preferences of course.
The chi-fi boxes usually have vanishingly low levels of IMD and higher order harmonic distortion as well as very low levels of low order harmonic distortion so its best not to generalise without measurements. Many low feedback topologies (say gryphon) have high order harmonic and IMD higher than these chi-fi dacs and often by up to 30 db so the alledged glassy sound of chi-fi can't be attributed to these reasons. Independent measurements are available on Audio Science Review. To claim that 16th order distortion which is at less than -100 db magnitude for some of these amps is audible is nonsense. Feedback itself is fine in a high bandwidth design where the feedback delay is on the order of nano seconds. Problems occur when high amounts of slow feedback are used giving rise to time based distortion like IMD or slew distortion but this is not an issue for chi-fi amps.
Well said
Hey Darko, as always: very interessting video!
Could you please do a comparison test between the TEAC VRDS-701 and Exposure 3510 CD players?
Thanks in advance!!!
Ok so the idea is that by analizing THD we still dont know what kind of harmonic distortion it is....even or odd, lower or higher row as specialy odd higher rows sound terrible ? :) Or am i missing something :) anyway thanks for the lesson! BTW. i have a topping dx3 pro+ and i love it anyway :)) i bought it also because of you !
Nice on the THD and reference to Pass amps. I'm assuming the even harmonics amps are the class A and odd harmonics are the class AB?
I would care to think %THD is not MISLEADING but misunderstood.
Exposure. Great company. Im old. I know that company for 40.years 🎉niam is a lot of advertising 😅
Still listening, but... yeah, distortion can be good. However, what is the goal of your hifi system? To playback what was recorded or to modify the sound? If it is the accurate playback of the original recording, then surely less distortion is better? Any distortion you hear should have been added by the artist. Now, if you want a pleasant sound, if you want to make it nicer, modify the sound to your liking, then having more distortion can be desireable.
Personally, at this point in my journey, I want what the artist has recorded. There is nothing wrong if you want this, there is nothing wrong if you prefer distortion.
Hi Darko! Been watching your stuff for the past few days and I really was wondering if you could maybe talk about the best way to get into some decent sound systems. I've managed to actually build a custom steel system but the trouble I don't know what baseline I can use for a good sounding system! I like the audio I get from it but as I listen harder I notice the imperfections more... What would you say would be a good place to start where I can get a good system and also learn about it? I do t mind building my own to be honest but it doesn't matter much if I don't :) thanks if you get around to seeing this !
I own a pair of their largest electrostatics. They’re excellent, but their marketing is lightweight. I have. Pie of old esl57s if you want to review them?
They may have a bright future!
Dear John and Srajan great podcast indeed! I have a question about the active crossover. If a have a two-way speaker with two input terminals, how I would bypass the passive crossover inside the speaker?
You or somebody else has to open it up and bypass the crossover electrically. Very few speakers offer that option from the outside. Linn used to for example on their Katans.
There was a time when 1 or 2 % THD was an acceptable figure. Some people would swear by some amplifiers that had those specs. These amplifiers tended to have very few stages between in and output. Amplifying devices, valves, fets, and transistors (capacitors, transformers and inductors) are non linear. They distort the signal in some way. Feedback can linearise the signal, but introduces 'products' due to the delays inherent in doing so. Sometimes the distortion can be 'inverted out' internally by another stage. Distortions and the measurements will also change with how hard the amp is driven. An amp with lots of 'crossover' distortion may well measure well at high volumes but extremely badly at low volumes (this is one reason early transistor amps had a bad rep). Choose your poison. But as music today has been well and truly digitally murdered, is there any point?
What's more misleading is why amplifier manufactures don't measure IMD.
Placement is EXTREMELY important with the AVAA’s
The PSI doesn’t fix SBIR issues that the dude calls reflections. The guy should talk to PSI directly (I own too and have measured before vs after.) I needed up keeping mine after the extensive 30 day trial. Worth the coin but not magic
🙋♂️ THANKS JOHN AND SRAJAN,FOR EXPLAINING FOR THIS FOR US LAYPEOPLE 🤗💚💚💚
HD of 3rd, 5th etc... are in common the problematic distortions and indeed the HD of 2d and 4th etc... are recognized as more "harmonic" , but there is a misunderstanding. It is the ratio or let's day the distance, the level of those HDs. If the 3rd oder HD overtone the second HD it comes to the uncomfortable experience. But the amps are just the lesser problem, more are the speakers are problem, they add much more HDs and there can be done much more to prevent high distortions. One example if the chassis have mechanical problems it increases the 3rd HD extremely, that is an uncomfortable experience. In conclusion of course it is important to have low distortions as possible. It is a kind of skewed understanding of arguing that it is okay to have amps with rich second distortions because it ADDS tonality...
I couldn’t watch to the end. Yes, it is easy to see harmonic distortion introduced above a test signal but a very good amplifier will have a signal to noise ratio that is high enough that the added distortion is inaudible. Human hearing has its limits and a great amp will have distortion and noise below the level of human perception, such that the harmonic profile of the added distortion doesn’t matter. Yes, people love to defend tube amps and I’m sympathetic as a musician but I wouldn’t claim they were state of the art hifi.
mind blown
Srojan and John! You forgot MagnePlanar!!!!
;)
THD is great and all, but what is the root cause of the tendency for tube amps and pure class-A amps (Pass Labs, Gryphon, etc) to display a physically wider soundstage in all 3 dimensions (height, width, depth)? It's an alarmingly regular finding that I have had from super cheap ChiFi tube amps to $40k+ tube amps (and the more expensive class-A amps). There is literally no possible mechanism that simple THD artifacts could account for the exposure of *more* information from the actual recording. SO, what else is happening???
Behringer CX3400 $150USD ($50-75 on eBay). Former analog studio owner and audiophile for 4+ decades. Suggest NOT discounting using items such as this for home audio. BIG bang for the buck. No cards. Caveat: Can't do the "notch trick". If you're happy with the way something sounds -- don't worry, be happy...
Wow! Looks like it does the same, and more, for £125 in the UK. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I never knew it existed. MiniDSP make similar devices but are more expensive and do a lot of other things I don't want. Also they operate in the digital domain I believe.
3K for a basstrap! - crazy, would rather buy speakers, you can build easily a DSP circuit driving out of of phase - PSI make very nice studio active non-dsp speakers.
This will be a good one. Been reading 6 moons fir years
I just wish Srajan would get a better mic... ideally audiophile podcasts would sound good!
THD is great because it can be measured. Then we have something to talk about. So is .0015% THD better than .00002? Got me. What can't be measured is time distortion and its reduction is where HiFi lives.
I turn all of my super low THD £10 equipment up to 11.... I also get confused on the difference between objective and subjective 😂
Does anyone actually here such small distortion? I have my doubts.
Can somebody explain this to me... Its a bit more of a technical question. Sooo just to be clear, harmonics are named by the intervals (2nd/3rd/etc). Those intervals are named relative to a certain pitch, the fundimental. But if an audio signal gets distorted then you aren't talking about one frequency so what is the "fundimental" of that signal then?
If the audio component adds, creates, the harmonics it is called distorsion. If those harmonics are of those low orders it sounds pleasant. Instead of one tone you hear a chord. This was my understanding and please correct me if I am wrong.
Hi, fundamentals are a particular frequency(s), the harmonics are multiples of the fundamental frequency induced by, in this case a power amplifier. So if the fundamental (input signal to the amplifier) frequency is 100 Hz, the higher harmonics will be 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, 500 Hz, and so on. If the fundamental frequency were 220 Hz, the harmonics would be 440 Hz, 660 Hz, 880 Hz, and so on. Total harmonic distortion (THD) is a ratio in % of harmonic distortion to the fundamental frequency measurement given to the difference between the input signal and the output signal from the amplifier. Generally and technically speaking, the lower the THD the better but different multiples of harmonics may vary in amplitude and wether they are odd or even, these have been described to colour or influence the sound of an amplifier to some degree and Srajan has described odd order harmonics as cool, edgy or harsh sounding and even order harmonics as warm etc (or was it the other way round), he also said this can be an advantage to either tame a bright sounding speaker or brighten a warm one. Another point worth discussing is how much these harmonics vary at different power levels. But please note, Srajan description is purely subjective as there are many distortion factors to consider. Hope this helps.
What Q Acoustics is doing is shameful, both regarding the power ratings and claims of Hi-Res when it's not. It's a bummer because small towers should be a hot category. I've got a pair of slim Dynaudio towers in my main listening room and they work great. They'd be even better if they were powered as these are.
Espetacular conversation!!!!
Energizer
How is anyone going to hear 0.001% distortion?
I cannot see Taylor Swift fans getting their sleaves rolled up and getting stuck into tape head and azimuth alignments somehow. That's the bit they haven't been told about, Yet...
And you miss how the human brain 🧠 perceives distortion.
If you introduce second order harmonics (or third order) into your amplifier as discussed in the video, you are no longer reproducing what is on the recording. You are introducing distortion, THD that you prefer. If there was such a thing as a perfect amp, not many people would like it, so manufacturers design amps with a certain "profile". Having said that, there are other types of distortion that make an amp sound different. Even the typology of the amp makes it sound different. If you want to buy an amp, go listen to it.
Piano is a percussion instrument
Just tell me the capacitans in microfarads and I'll be good...period.
Ok, so with respect to audio reviewers, what harmonics are chocolate, strawberry, vanilla?? Total THD figures are useless. Spectral analysis is far more telling. As an example, Shindo products generate some 2nd harmonics and not much ( very little actually ) of anything else. Combined with an extremely low noise floor , the Shindo presentation is
free of fatigue and the few tenths of 1 percent of 2nd harmonic adds a delightful musical flavor to just about any recording. Too much global feedback can lower low order harmonics but significantly add upper harmonics.
What is that? 😂
Your are completely wrong about the what is creating the harsh sound of a high global feedback amplifier.
Too far about my ability to understand
Anojing back ground picture, what is meaning of all picture change 🤢🤢🤢.
I listen only to your voice , pictures made me dizzy