* It may have been the liquor talking, but
Audio Empire wrote:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:08:36 -0800, Rockinghorse Winner wrote
(in article ):
If they sound different than at least one has failed to be sonically
transparent. Any CD player that fails to be sonically transparent is either
broken now or started out that way.
I'm not one to try on different speaker cables searching for the right one,
because there are math-based reasons why this is futile.
However, a CD player contains so many different components and varying
circuits in both the digital and analog sections, that it would be
unreasonable to suppose that there would NOT be differences in the analog
signal that comes out of them.
You have hit the nail squarely on the head. Double-blind listening tests for
cables merely confirm what physics tells us MUST be the outcome of such
tests. Therefore both the math and the listening tests back each other up by
finding that that there is no reason why two interconnects or two speaker
cables SHOULD sound any different, and the DBTs show that no differences
exist.
In more complex active electronic components such as amplifiers, preamps,
DACs CD players, phono stages, etc., there is no electronic theory that
predicts how these devices should sound beyond a certain point (obviously an
amplifier of amplifier stage with 5% THD is going to sound different from one
which has less than 1%, and that is predictable and demonstrable). That's
because there many paths to analog design and different quality and type
components are going to yield different results. For instance, if you build
two identical amplifiers, but one was made with carbon composition resistors
and then other one was built with metal film resistors, the amps should sound
the same - but they won't. The one made with the metal film resistors will be
significantly quieter than the amp made with carbon comp resistors and this
difference will give the amps away in a double-blind test every time.
What DBTs show with amps and other analog devices (such as DACs) is that
while modern units do show differences, they aren't great. In fact, I have
never been party to a DBT of modern amps, preamps of DACs where I couldn't
happily live with any of them, the differences are so trivial that they will
literally fade from memory after just a few minutes with any one of them. The
days when components sounded wildly different are long gone. Even fairly
cheap amps sound neutral enough to not cause most people to object to them on
sonic grounds.
I have a pair of identical Crown IC-150 preamps. One I bought new back in the
late 1970's and one I purchased at an electronics flea market 10 years later.
The flea market Crown I have left stock , but the one I bought new, I have
continually upgraded as op-amp technology has improved. This is kind of an
ongoing experiment to me. I don't actually employ either pre-amp in my stereo
system, but I do connect them up whenever I upgrade my original one. I invite
my audiophile buddies over for an impromptu DBT.
The IC-150 is ideal for this kind of test because it only has a single IC (1
for each channel) in it. The phono stage is discrete and the National
LM-301A used in the original unit was a mini-DIP package that has a single
Op-amp in it. This pinout has been kept by the industry and so every time
there was a breakthrough in op-amp technology, It was a simple matter to
just plug-n-play the latest and the greatest. Since I kept the other IC-150
stock with it's ancient, wheezing, LM301A intact, the differences were easy
to hear. In the late 1980's, National came out with a line of Bipolar/FET
hybrid op-amps. The difference between that op-amp and the original LM301 was
probably the greatest, but even the latest LM49710 MA (which has vanishingly
low distortion and noise) was a big improvement. Anybody who doesn't think
that advances in op-amp technology make a difference between two otherwise
identical components, should hear my two Crowns. The original one sounds
awful. It's strident, dirty, and very unpleasant sounding with a very soft
top end. The modified IC-150 with the LM49710s (which I also put in my DAC)
sounds clean and extended with noticeably more top end and a much cleaner
midrange. It's easy to hear the difference in a DBT. Nobody has ever mistook
the stock unit for the upgraded one.
OK, but your timeline seems to say that by the late '80's these op amps had
improved greatly since the 70's. However, I have owned a mass market
reciever from the mid 90's that I paid about $300 for (not a cheapo amp).
The difference between it and my current tube amp is profound.
True, I have not compared it with a high end SS amp, but I'm sure the high
end amp would sound just as improved over that crap receiver as mine does.
You can't tell ME that all amps sound the same!
*R* *H*
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