Just some thoughts on Mcintosh MC601 vs Theta Prometheus Class D amps

[jdwk]

one thing I can add here, and I even like vinyl. Cd's and digital mediums can completely beat vinyl if they hadn't gone with the wrong sampling rate, and Brickwalling the hell out of it so it will sound good on a phone. Some vinyl I have purchase that was made recently from digital masters suffer from the same odd sound that most cd's have (because of a majority of cd's being mastered poorly) if they would stop thinking "louder is better " all the mixes on " remastered cd's "( read : we turned it up so loud, you will get lot's of transient distortion) this is the reason vinyl can be superior to cd's is they have almost NEVER implemented the technology properly. The record industry was hurting BAD long before the internet existed. Video games and anime put music in the back seat or in second place, thats the bigger reason sales were falling off a cliff. when you hear a very well recorded performance on a properly mastered cd, on a good piece of high end gear, you will see what I am saying.

sorry this was mostly in responce to the "is the brain analog or digital" part of this thread.

 

[ossidian]

In the immortal words of Daniel von Recklinghausen, if it measures good and sounds bad it is bad. If it measures bad and sounds good you've measured the wrong things.

So true. Dr Hirata performed a study some 30 years ago. The amplifiers with poorly performing specs were chosen over their better spec performers. Marantz 9b was the winner. Interesting study. I will see if I can find the paper written online.

 

[4-2-7]

one thing I can add here, and I even like vinyl. Cd's and digital mediums can completely beat vinyl if they hadn't gone with the wrong sampling rate, and Brickwalling the hell out of it so it will sound good on a phone. Some vinyl I have purchase that was made recently from digital masters suffer from the same odd sound that most cd's have (because of a majority of cd's being mastered poorly) if they would stop thinking "louder is better " all the mixes on " remastered cd's "( read : we turned it up so loud, you will get lot's of transient distortion) this is the reason vinyl can be superior to cd's is they have almost NEVER implemented the technology properly. The record industry was hurting BAD long before the internet existed. Video games and anime put music in the back seat or in second place, thats the bigger reason sales were falling off a cliff. when you hear a very well recorded performance on a properly mastered cd, on a good piece of high end gear, you will see what I am saying.

sorry this was mostly in responce to the "is the brain analog or digital" part of this thread.

I'v digitally recorded nice all analog records with great equipment to 24bit WAV and they sound fantastic.

 

[ossidian]

one thing I can add here, and I even like vinyl. Cd's and digital mediums can completely beat vinyl if they hadn't gone with the wrong sampling rate, and Brickwalling the hell out of it so it will sound good on a phone. Some vinyl I have purchase that was made recently from digital masters suffer from the same odd sound that most cd's have (because of a majority of cd's being mastered poorly) if they would stop thinking "louder is better " all the mixes on " remastered cd's "( read : we turned it up so loud, you will get lot's of transient distortion) this is the reason vinyl can be superior to cd's is they have almost NEVER implemented the technology properly. The record industry was hurting BAD long before the internet existed. Video games and anime put music in the back seat or in second place, thats the bigger reason sales were falling off a cliff. when you hear a very well recorded performance on a properly mastered cd, on a good piece of high end gear, you will see what I am saying.

sorry this was mostly in responce to the "is the brain analog or digital" part of this thread.

The horizontal scan rate of NTSC TV was 15.750 kHz and 44.1 kHz is exactly 2.8 times that.

There was discussion of making it 48.0 kHz (it was nicely congruent with 24 frame/second films and the ostensible 30 frames/second in North American TV), but given the physical size of 120 mm, there was a limit to how much data the CD could hold, and given that an error detection and correction scheme was needed and that requires some redundancy in data, the amount of logical data the CD could store (about 700 MB) is about half of the amount of physical data. Given all of that, at the rate of 48 kHz, but it could not hold all of Beethoven's 9th, but that it could hold the entire 9th on one disc at a slightly slower rate. So 48 kHz is out.

Still, why 44.1 and not 44.0 or 45.0 kHz or some nice round number?

Then at the time, there existed a product in the late 1970s called the Sony F1 that was designed to record digital audio onto readily-available video tape (Betamax, not VHS). That was at 44.1 kHz (or more precisely 44.056 kHz). So this would make it easy to transfer recordings, without resampling and interpolation, from the F1 to CD or in the other direction.

 

[damacman]

Just because you think the brain is analog, does not mean it can't deal with digital. I think it all depends.

There are some fantastic digital amps out there. My friend has an Audio Research DS-225 and is using it with a pair of Wilson Sophia II's. It is a very stealer combo and these are 4 ohm speakers too. His room is acoustically one of the best I have heard and that may be a huge part of the equation that most people don't add in to the equation.

What would be interesting here would be to sub an equivalent Class AB amplifier for your friend's "fantastic" Class D amplifier. I bet he never goes back ...

 

[damacman]

He has several. He likes the Audio Research - it does everything well. Just saying. I have heard the system and was amazed by it as well. If you have not heard the system, you don't know - bias is showing is all.

He also has a beautiful Cary Tube amp.

As I said, this is starting to be a bash and a religious discussion. Have fun all - I am done.

I'd be interested to learn what he likes about the amp. Ask him to reply to this thread so we may learn more.

 

[Kevin M.]

Most today's D class amplifier are similar to DSD DAC. They just operate an high power levels. But all of them have switching frequency below 500kHz. Would you rave about DSD if it used 500kHz instead of 2.8MHz sampling rate? Class D amplifiers do get better, but they will still be a compromise unless switching speed reaches at least what DSD encoding is using. This will not be cheap though as it will look much more like RF device than audio amplifier.

I'm not ready to switch to a class D amp yet. Mcintosh isn't making them perhaps for the reasons you cite. Over the years, I've compared Mcintosh amps to other brands in same system. Some of the amps, I liked as much as Mcintosh, like the Classe CT-M600, look what happened to Classe. I don't think I'll ever own another brand of amplifiers and speakers not because I'm brand loyal, but because Mcintosh has never lost a comparison, tied a few times, but never lost.

 

[jdwk]

sorry, but what happened to Classe?

 

[Mamrak1]

I'm not ready to switch to a class D amp yet. Mcintosh isn't making them perhaps for the reasons you cite. Over the years, I've compared Mcintosh amps to other brands in same system. Some of the amps, I liked as much as Mcintosh, like the Classe CT-M600, look what happened to Classe. I don't think I'll ever own another brand of amplifiers and speakers not because I'm brand loyal, but because Mcintosh has never lost a comparison, tied a few times, but never lost.

And McIntosh is still around.

 

[Kevin M.]

sorry, but what happened to Classe?

Classe closed its doors and let the employees go. Warranty is handled by B&W.