jamesd
pfm Member
Widely held in hi fi? Or pro audio/engineering?
Name a 'beautiful' amplifier.
- Thread starter Rockmeister
- Start date
Widely held in hi fi? Or pro audio/engineering?
Tony L
Administrator
Only if you don’t know what you are looking at! Point to point wiring is the cleanest and most direct way to build a circuit and Croft manages quite large assemblies without even a tag-board. Think about it, which is the most direct/shortest signal path: soldering the resistors and capacitors to a PCB, or directly to one another? It may not look pretty or blingy, but it is a very logical way to work. It tends to be a very repairable approach too.
PS Not hi-fi, in fact the exact opposite, but here’s some point to point done to truly obsessive levels of perfection:
It being beautiful doesn’t necessarily make it sound any better, but it really is fuzz pedal as art form (it’s my Reeves Electro 2N2Face).
Wolfmancatsup
Empire State Human
If it had a pizza inside it I wouldn't be able to lift it - it's heavy enough as it is!It looks like a fancy hifi platform to put something else on. Or a walking pizza box. Or both.
Mick
By pretty much everyone whether interested in audio or not or whether the amplifier is used for audio or other purposes. The number of people that classify "good" amplifiers as those that amplify and distort to sound nice is very small. It might be a significant proportion of "subjective" audiophiles but that is still a tiny number. Most people classify "good" amplifiers as those that amplify and distort as little as possible. It is implicit to a fair extent in the word amplifier rather than amplifier and sound effects box.
Fretbuzz
pfm Member
Yup. And plenty of other places to go if you want to pay for bespoke/heavy casework and extra (potentially unnecessary) componentry!..Only if you don’t know what you are looking at! Point to point wiring is the cleanest and most direct way to build a circuit and Croft manages quite large assemblies without even a tag-board. Think about it, which is the most direct/shortest signal path: soldering the resistors and capacitors to a PCB, or directly to one another? It may not look pretty or blingy, but it is a very logical way to work. It tends to be a very repairable approach too.
PS Not hi-fi, in fact the exact opposite, but here’s some point to point done to truly obsessive levels of perfection:
It being beautiful doesn’t necessarily make it sound any better, but it really is fuzz pedal as art form (it’s my Reeves Electro 2N2Face).
jamesd
pfm Member
I absolutely could be wrong, but I’ve been reading all the audio forums for decades and haven’t found that even close to being true.
It looks like a fancy hifi platform to put something else on. Or a walking pizza box. Or both.
It looks like the base of my old Sun SPARC computers which were referred to as pizza boxes. We stood old Sony Trinitron CRT monitors on them.
Darren
So gentle when he tries to understand.
What a great album Zen Arcade is. Still love Husker Du.Only if you don’t know what you are looking at! Point to point wiring is the cleanest and most direct way to build a circuit and Croft manages quite large assemblies without even a tag-board. Think about it, which is the most direct/shortest signal path: soldering the resistors and capacitors to a PCB, or directly to one another? It may not look pretty or blingy, but it is a very logical way to work. It tends to be a very repairable approach too.
PS Not hi-fi, in fact the exact opposite, but here’s some point to point done to truly obsessive levels of perfection:
It being beautiful doesn’t necessarily make it sound any better, but it really is fuzz pedal as art form (it’s my Reeves Electro 2N2Face).
I agree point to point can be nice, but the Croft innards posted earlier in the thread don't look great or especially serviceable IMO:Only if you don’t know what you are looking at! Point to point wiring is the cleanest and most direct way to build a circuit and Croft manages quite large assemblies without even a tag-board. Think about it, which is the most direct/shortest signal path: soldering the resistors and capacitors to a PCB, or directly to one another? It may not look pretty or blingy, but it is a very logical way to work. It tends to be a very repairable approach too.
PS Not hi-fi, in fact the exact opposite, but here’s some point to point done to truly obsessive levels of perfection:
It being beautiful doesn’t necessarily make it sound any better, but it really is fuzz pedal as art form (it’s my Reeves Electro 2N2Face).
Tony L
Administrator
That is the stand alone RIAA stage. To my eyes it is a really clever bit of construction resulting in the shortest possible signal path with all the passive components attached directly to the valve bases. There is a lot of work in that, it really isn’t easy to do, and anything you did to ‘pretty it’ would lengthen signal paths etc. I’ve owned one and it is a very nice phono stage. My only criticism was it was in such a big box I had nowhere to put it! He could so easily have fitted it in an EAR 831P sized box!
Assuming you are not winding me up that says a fair bit about how unaware "subjective" audiophiles might be about how abnormal their views could be compared to the mainstream. To hold an unusual view and consider it better is understandable. For example, "flat earthers" considering certain brands to possess musical properties that are unmeasureable and unknown to science. They can only be perceived by listening and then only if the person is receptive. It made the believer special/sophisticated because it wasn't mainstream. To assume the mainstream holds an unusual audiophile view is rather different. I suppose it would validate the view to some extent. Perhaps I am reading too much into it but the beliefs of audiophiles continues to surprise me in little ways like this. Interesting stuff.
jamesd
pfm Member
You’re citing “the mainstream” and I don’t know who you’re talking about. There are thousands of threads asking about amplifiers where people know that the amp of their choice is colored and has a unique characteristics. Most amp threads are not about pro audio amps or Benchmark AHB’s.
if there’s a mainstream audiophile world that is predominantly made up of people looking for truth of source/wire with gain, I’m not aware of it. Admittedly, my experience with the audiophile world is online only.
Tony L
Administrator
Given almost all the distortion in any audio system comes from the speakers the most logical approach is to view the amp and speakers as a unit and buy what matches best. With some speakers that might be some high-tech class D amp, with others it might be a vintage SET. Just looking at paper specs in isolation is to totally misunderstand the basics of system building IMHO.
Darren
So gentle when he tries to understand.
What do you regard as the basics of system building please Tony?
Tony L
Administrator
Just understanding the big picture really. The point I was trying to make is that it is only the overall distortion that matters, and that may well be vastly, vastly less in say a huge efficient SET/horn system than in a typical modern solid state amp throwing tiny inefficient drivers around in little ported boxes. After running this place for so long I do notice folk kind of missing the wood for the trees at times. One has to view things a) as a whole, and b) in a specific usage context. There is certainly not any ‘one size fits all’ and those who tend to preach from any specific hymn sheet are usually best ignored IMHO.
Darren
So gentle when he tries to understand.
Hmmmm..... I've never considered my system in terms of overall distortion.... That's thought provoking.
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The mainstream is everything outside the tiny closed audiophile world. Consumer audio, pro audio, engineering, science, schools, universities, labs, etc... Like all groups that adopt extreme views the audiophile world had to largely isolate itself and look inwardly in order for the extreme views to be maintained. In the case of audiophiles many of the extreme beliefs require one to believe in things which science doesn't understand, cannot explain or cannot be measured. In the mainstream outside the audiophile world scientific knowledge is viewed as holding and audio circuitry to be well understood to the point of being largely a commodity handled by technicians rather than engineers.
I agree that many audiophiles chat about amplifiers that distort audibly. Not sure of the point though.
Do you consider those in the audiophile world that chat about audibly distorting amplifiers to be well informed with respect to scientific and technical knowledge on the subject or are they more poorly informed enthusiasts with some wonky beliefs keeping their distance from those with the expertise to write scientific and technical publications?
If you go back to the mid-to-late 70s and pick a decent 100W Japanese solid state amplifier. Is a modern decent 100W solid state amplifier better, worse or pretty much the same? What does that tell us? Now do the same with a pair of speakers. Conclusions?
Tony L
Administrator
I take it you have very little first-hand experience or knowledge of the music or recording world?! You will find levels of detail and obsession just as strong there, as you will in any specialist field, e.g. start talking to studio engineers about valve mics, Neve desks etc, guitarists about ‘tone caps’, hand-wired vs. PCB amps etc.
PS To my mind it is you with the ‘extreme views’ as you seek to extrapolate comparatively little knowledge over fields you likely have little real contact with!
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
Whoa!!!! Bit harsh there Tony. I may not be an electonics engineer, but neither am I an imbecile. You also seem to have taken my comment about 'mess', and conflated it with 'point to point wiring', which I did not mention..and 'circuit boards' which I also did not mention.
Maybe I should have been a little more precise in my description. What I saw was a box..minus lid.. with a number of totally unsupported wires quite literally 'draped' across the innards, from component to component at various angles and in various directions... lying on other components (though admittedly insulated) Shortest path maybe, but absolutely nothing like the very neat internals on your 'Fuzz Pedal. As I said.. a mess.
I also said that Croft has a strong following and therefore is presumably doing something right.