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Don't all amplifiers sound the same..

mhardy6647 said:
(and, yeah, I -- like all of us -- should know better than to respond to a troll thread like this one, but sometimes my level of maturity trumps even that of one of the US candidates for a major elected office)
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Yeah, what the hell was she thinking? Any idiot knows you'll get fired for keeping work email on private servers...
 
They say we're young and we don't know
We won't find out until we grow
Well I don't know if all that's true
'Cause you got me, and baby I got you...
 
Maybe no amp designer is competent enough to get it right yet. Once someone unlocks that door then all amps will sound the same.

chicks said:
Yeah, what the hell was she thinking? Any idiot knows you'll get fired for keeping work email on private servers...
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When your mate can make tens or even hundreds of thousands a day giving speeches, keeping your day job shouldn't be as important as preserving your liberty so you can spend all that money somewhere other than the prison commissary.
 
"If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must employ methods never before attempted."
Francis Bacon

Solid state design has settled down to some fairly well researched topologies. Maybe something completely different will come along, but more likely things are near to optimum. You can compare the input to output on any given amp to an incredibly high precision, seeing any misbehavior with real loads and a music input, and many amps do extremely well. There isn't much evidence that we can hear the small residuals that remain. IMO, the job of the successful amp designer is to create an interesting backstory to get people interested and maybe tweak the transfer function to be a bit more pleasing, but still within the rather loose and incomplete envelope we call "specs" that seem to cover everything except what's important.

BTW, if I remember right, one of the many caveats with the All Amps... argument/tests was that not only did they match levels, they even applied equalization to the amps so they had perfectly matched frequency response curves. That caveat leaves out pretty much every comparison people try to use as a counter-example.
 
stereofanboy said:
Maybe no amp designer is competent enough to get it right yet. Once someone unlocks that door then all amps will sound the same...
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I would argue that any audio company that has managed to stay in business and earn a profit has demonstrated competency.
 
And so the premise of the OP can lead to this outcome.

This:

MCINTOSH%20MC60%20MONOBLOCK%20PAIR%20%28640x381%29.jpg


must sound the same as this:

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You decide. I have already made my choice.
 
prolle said:
.. at equal volume, while both amps are operating within their capable dynamic range. Why should one competently designed amplifier sound different to the next?

I can understand that a low power amp, may clip when turned up too loud and perhaps not able to handle the transient dynamics of the particular track, but at normal listening levels, don't they all sound the same?

Have you been able to tell the difference between amps in a blind test? Or do you find amplifiers vary significantly? How much of this is marketing?
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If you're being serious..

Every amplifier processes the signal differently because of circuitry and component differences.

Yes I have been able to hear differences in amplifiers in a blind test. Some amplifiers can sound similar to one another and some can sound quite a bit different. It depends on many, many things.

Seriously though, your question flies in the face of audio from the beginning of its inception. If all amplifiers were the same, what would be the point of attempting to improve the technology or even offer different amplifiers? How would such a question even bother to incite a useful discussion? It should be fairly obvious what the majority of the users here think.
 
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I think the fact that the OP has made ONE post so far is a good indication of what this thread is really about. :sigh:
 
All receivers sound the same too! Seriously though,try comparing a Pioneer SA-9800 or SA-9900 to a Sansui AU-919. You'll need decent speakers and/or headphones,not to mention a hi-quality source.
 
Using headphones, in case the output of the amp uses resistors to get down the signal, is not a valid means of a/b testing if these internal resistors are not the same between amps if impedance of the headphones is higher than some 4 or 8 ohms, because of damping.

Additionally, signal levels should be calibrated at the headphone output with the headphone connected (because its resistance will get the signal down), so one needs a measurement setup.
 
I have a triamped system and the bass was a bit weak; also the midrange wasn't quite right. I switched the two amps in question and it was a night and day difference. The Pioneer SX-850 did much better in the midrange than the JVC 300 Mark II, and the JVC surprisingly blew the Pioneer away in the bass department. Using Sansui AU-555A for the preamp.
 
:ntwrthy::ntwrthy::ntwrthy::yes::yikes::cry::naughty:

okay.. if poster OP is a bit young. okay.. If fishing this is dumbest question and if you guys keep responding to these threads.. I feel more sane minus the notch replying to this one.
 
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