DEBATE: Analog vs Digital - Class D vs Old School Amps

[_S7V7N_]

K Debate away . Taken from a diff thread.

Originally Posted by sqcomp

I don't have to define SPL rig. You know it means.

Keep on the roll about analog formats. I'm sure your insistence of analog format supreme excellence will change the industry.

This isn't the thread to re-start your analog vs digital argument.

...and yes, you're right. high dynamic range analog is better than compressed crap. I also generally agree about the modern vs "classic" amplifiers. Still, this also shows that you haven't listened to a properly setup full range D class amplifier setup. I can't tell an appreciable difference in sound quality between (for instance) the 2011 IASCA Expert Solo 1 seat world championship vehicle using JL HD/750 class D amplifiers on each speaker versus my "classic" A/B surfboards and the "smaller" A/B 4 channel. We're using the same format of source and the same line of speakers. The only difference is in amplifier power and slight differences in processing.

Originally Posted by RedRide

Are you arguing that a modern class D amps sounds great?
I never said that they did not and...... I've heard plenty.
I just said that a quality vintage amp sounds just as good while being less efficient.

As far as anilog vs digital, if ones knows anothing about digital sound they would be aware that digital can not reproduce every nuance of sound as anilog can. This is one of the reasons that anilog can often sound better.
Yes, high bitrate digital can often sound great but there is a difference in a Blind A/B test with high qualty aniolog.

Yeah, I know what "SPL" means but why call something a "SPL rig" ..... a "high SPL rig" yes , but both are just another name for high volume and neither one has anything to do with sound quality. It's all just pretentious BS IMO.

Keep it clean !!

[sqcomp]

This thread is about AMPLIFIERS and not sources or source material!


I'd generally submit that one can't hear the difference between amplifiers IF we're not using any onboard processing (to include crossovers) on the amplifier and we're talking Watt to Watt output being identical...especially given the same source and signal chain.

I'd be willing to bet that one hears signal Voltage amplitude differences much more readily than THD differences.

I'm willing to be wrong on the subject though. Let's hear dissenting arguments.

[TOLMACH]

I can easily hear differences between amps. Lots of nice and relatively expensive amps have their unique @sound style@. I totally love hybrid amps (with tube pre amp and AB amp) for full range purposes (butler, eos mozart/verdi, poweramper xp, etc.).

Re D vs AB/B topology. I have liimited exposure to D amps, but the mass market models like Alpine pdx sound worse in mid and high ranges than decent AB/B amps. No experience with expensive ones.

My 0.02

[RedRide]

Since my 2 cents is already posted..... I will just sit back with my popcorn and beer.

[sqcomp]

^because that's about all your "argument" is worth. You can't even overcome road noise in your vehicle (by your own admission). How can you even start critically analyzing sound you aren't able to recreate? If you want to talk home audio, go to a section that deals with that subject. This isn't the place. We are talking about 12 Volt electronics.

You won't step up and throw a record player in your car (after all you MUST keep it ALL analog right?), run tube amps and compete in sanctioned SQ competition. So where do you have any experience to start from? You don't.

You're a keyboard commando until you step up and compete. Why? Because you don't seem to have much of a perspective.

How about this...there's 10 months before the next Spring Break Nationals and International North American Autosound Championship. Spend some coin and come down to listen to a multitude of different vehicles with many different sound setups. This way you'll have perspective enough to truly give an educated opinion.

Please come with some real practical car audio experience before you start pontificating on an unwavering stale point of view that is made solely for a home audio arena. Oh, one addition...I love your spin on vinyl sales. You make it seem like people are rejecting digital media en mass. That insinuation is false. What were worldwide sales of new vinyl albums last year? I've read something near 300,000 units. Take a look at the the top 10 digital downloads from 2010. We're talking multi millions...

Now, if you'd like, start another thread about the vinyl and digital formats. This is where your subject of analog vs digital source material belongs. I'd love to debate about it...as a fan of both formats. One more note, I'm deep in a family project to transfer my great uncle's recordings from the late 40's through to the 80's. He played with Doc Severenson in the big bands during the 40's and 50's. I'm cataloging and transferring his recordings from vinyl and reel to reel over to a digital hard drive for storage and preservation. It's a great experience to be able to dive right into analog to digital conversion and musical history.

[sqcomp]

Originally Posted by TOLMACH

I can easily hear differences between amps. Lots of nice and relatively expensive amps have their unique @sound style@. I totally love hybrid amps (with tube pre amp and AB amp) for full range purposes (butler, eos mozart/verdi, poweramper xp, etc.).

Re D vs AB/B topology. I have liimited exposure to D amps, but the mass market models like Alpine pdx sound worse in mid and high ranges than decent AB/B amps. No experience with expensive ones.

My 0.02

There's several good reasons why you can hear the differences between amplifiers. You noticed my missive on the difference between amplifiers? I took out all the easily distinguishing variables that have absolutely nothing to do with pure signal amplification. You DON'T need a crossover, equalization, or other processing for amplifying the signal. Take those variables out and run the output of any amplifier side by side in a double blind listening test...you won't be able to hear the difference 10 out of 10 times, heck, even a majority of the time. You'd simply be guessing leaning on luck to give you the right answer.

That being said...with all the mitigating factors added in...sure! You can hear the difference between amplifiers. I can as well. I still submit that the hearing difference has more to do with amplitude differences than with the other factors I mentioned.

[09sedan]

i like music

[_S7V7N_]

There was also a brief discussion on efficiency. Given the same environment for example Our Yaris with stock electrical an old school amp vs a class D. Can an older less efficient amp work with the lower voltage drop ? Vs the newer Class D amps that have less of a drop and are kinder on our electrical.

Then that raises the question can it sound just as good as say a 1000 watt class D even though it will be struggling for voltage, current, and power ?

[_S7V7N_]

Originally Posted by sqcomp

There's several good reasons why you can hear the differences between amplifiers. You noticed my missive on the difference between amplifiers? I took out all the easily distinguishing variables that have absolutely nothing to do with pure signal amplification. You DON'T need a crossover, equalization, or other processing for amplifying the signal. Take those variables out and run the output of any amplifier side by side in a double blind listening test...you won't be able to hear the difference 10 out of 10 times, heck, even a majority of the time. You'd simply be guessing leaning on luck to give you the right answer.

That being said...with all the mitigating factors added in...sure! You can hear the difference between amplifiers. I can as well. I still submit that the hearing difference has more to do with amplitude differences than with the other factors I mentioned.

So if we got a high dollar amp and a budget amp and left the crossovers on there lowest setting and only adjusted the gain they'd sound the same ?

We may be able to test this I believe some of the different brands share the same build houses from across sea's, basically cookie cutter circuit boards and diff components. It would be a slap in the face if say the budget brand Audiopipe and another highend brand shared the same motherboard =)

From there we could do the above test.

[sqcomp]

Originally Posted by _S7V7N_

There was also a brief discussion on efficiency. Given the same environment for example Our Yaris with stock electrical an old school amp vs a class D. Can an older less efficient amp work with the lower voltage drop ? Vs the newer Class D amps that have less of a drop and are kinder on our electrical.

Then that raises the question can it sound just as good as say a 1000 watt class D even though it will be struggling for voltage, current, and power ?

It's funny when you ask that. What you're looking at is the question about the difference between regulated and non regulated power supplies. Here's a page that talks specifically about this subject:

http://www.bcae1.com/regunreg.htm

You guys already know what amplifiers I'm running, some of my critics truthfully all them inefficient, which is very true. My throwback to the 90's amp section is a class A/B unregulated monster. :)

What is hard to control is the truthfulness of the amplifier manufacturer in their claims. Let's say my amplifiers are in the signal and power chain of my car...at 12 Volts I'm able to produce 450 x 2 at 4 Ohms. When the input Voltage increases, the output power does the same. How do I know it's doing that? The manufacturer has a handwritten test sheet that confirms the ability of the amplifier. I suppose I could do the tests myself. I'd rather spend my time working on the layout of the vehicle. At this point I trust the manufacturer.

[_S7V7N_]

They rated your amps at 12 volts most other manufacturers rate them at 14.4 volts.

Kinda the same way the cheaper off brands rate speakers and amps by there max vs rms.

[RedRide]

Originally Posted by sqcomp

^because that's about all your "argument" is worth. You can't even overcome road noise in your vehicle (by your own admission). How can you even start critically analyzing sound you aren't able to recreate? If you want to talk home audio, go to a section that deals with that subject. This isn't the place. We are talking about 12 Volt electronics.

You won't step up and throw a record player in your car (after all you MUST keep it ALL analog right?), run tube amps and compete in sanctioned SQ competition. So where do you have any experience to start from? You don't.

You're a keyboard commando until you step up and compete. Why? Because you don't seem to have much of a perspective.

How about this...there's 10 months before the next Spring Break Nationals and International North American Autosound Championship. Spend some coin and come down to listen to a multitude of different vehicles with many different sound setups. This way you'll have perspective enough to truly give an educated opinion.

Please come with some real practical car audio experience before you start pontificating on an unwavering stale point of view that is made solely for a home audio arena. Oh, one addition...I love your spin on vinyl sales. You make it seem like people are rejecting digital media en mass. That insinuation is false. What were worldwide sales of new vinyl albums last year? I've read something near 300,000 units. Take a look at the the top 10 digital downloads from 2010. We're talking multi millions...

Now, if you'd like, start another thread about the vinyl and digital formats. This is where your subject of analog vs digital source material belongs. I'd love to debate about it...as a fan of both formats. One more note, I'm deep in a family project to transfer my great uncle's recordings from the late 40's through to the 80's. He played with Doc Severenson in the big bands during the 40's and 50's. I'm cataloging and transferring his recordings from vinyl and reel to reel over to a digital hard drive for storage and preservation. It's a great experience to be able to dive right into analog to digital conversion and musical history.

So your only argument is to try and kill the messenger and use childish, irelavent coments while ignoing things I already said...even attributing things to me that I never said.

......You won't step up and throw a record player in your car (after all you MUST keep it ALL analog right?), run tube amps and compete in sanctioned SQ competition. So where do you have any experience to start from? You don't......

What does converting Doc Severnson have to do with anilog vs digital? We are dicussing potentials, not individual program sources.
Is this your only experience with anilog......recordings from the '40s when anilog was not even close to reaching its ultimate potential? For one thing, they were all recorded with valve amps which added their own unique distortion.

I suggest that you re read my originl post where I simply stated that good anilog is better than bad digital any day. You can arguge with that???

BTW, if you can not hear any road/engine noise in your (any) vehicle, you must be hearing impaired.

[TOLMACH]

Originally Posted by sqcomp

You DON'T need a crossover, equalization, or other processing for amplifying the signal. Take those variables out and run the output of any amplifier side by side in a double blind listening test...you won't be able to hear the difference 10 out of 10 times, heck, even a majority of the time. You'd simply be guessing leaning on luck to give you the right answer.

.

Not sure what you are talking about. At the moment I have 4 two channel amps that potentially I can use for full range amplification. All have their own @sound@. In a blind test I am pretty sure I will not only be able to tell the difference but tell you which one is working at the moment.

There is a bunch of variables that affect the sound of your amp like class, standard/dual mono, type of pre-amp - conventional vs tube, quality and type of components like capacitors/ op.amps/wiring, etc.

As an example below is one of the amps that I have -it is a pilot (test) version of EOS Verdi. Verdis that were later put into serial production (big word considering the total of 12 were produced) have different capacitors (white mundors) and differents tubes (mine are nos 1956 siemens, for a serial production nos telefunken were used).. components are very similar, but the amps still have different sound (easily recognizable)

http://photo.qip.ru/users/tolmach/95112742/124385883/

Another illustration would be comparing the top line denon HUs DCT-1 and Z1 - the same dac and internal components, different RCA output CABLES at the rear panel (DCT-1 has silver ones) -couple 6 inch cables makes huge difference in sound .. so pretty much everything affects how amp will sound like

I still agree with you that using time correction and electronic crossover changes sound. This was one of the reason why I moved to @passive@ systems.

[sqcomp]

RR... You are impotent.

You were talking about analog vs digital in broad sweeping terms. Now that I mention true analog sources, you want to change the debate.

Let's change the debate then.

Good analog. Give us an example. What is "good anilog"?

Bad digital. Give us an example. What is this "bad digital" you speak of?

You're not being specific, you're skirting around broad general terms.

If the only thing you can criticize from my efforts is the conversion of an analog recording on a reel to reel recorder to digital storage...you've got no argument to stand on because you have NO idea what is happening with the process. To second that you also apparently no appreciation for the history of musical recording in the 20th century before you were born.

I'll put it this way, without the recording efforts I'm trying to save, you wouldn't have music playback as you know it now. Thank the Germans and WW II, the acoustical engineers, Bing Crosby and Les Paul for funneling the talent and money into the beginning of the golden era of recording music.

[sqcomp]

@ Tolm -

I'm willing to bet money that you couldn't hear the difference between top of the line cables and $2 cable interconnects in the setups you're referring to.

We should talk more about this idea though.

[TOLMACH]

Originally Posted by sqcomp

@ Tolm -

I'm willing to bet money that you couldn't hear the difference between top of the line cables and $2 cable interconnects in the setups you're referring to.

We should talk more about this idea though.

Interesting point

I did couple @listening session@ for cables specifically, results being: it is easy to hear the difference between the interconnects and almost impossible to hear the difference between speaker level cables (when all cables are at least ok ones).

(pic shown - trying to compare kimber pbj to eos air (silver) to some other stuff http://photo.qip.ru/users/tolmach/95112742/108616693/)

With interconnects difference between a really nice and 2 bucks per meter cable can be in tiny details, interestingly thought some realitively cheap cables sound nice relative to overpriced ones (like entry level dls compared to some kimber stuff). difference is more pronounced when cuprum ones are compared to the ones containing silver or are of 100% silver.

again so far I sort of concluded for myself that decent cuprum ones are quite ok for average system tlike I have .. if you really want to go forward, one can use interconnects as a tuning instrument in your system but it takes lots of time and patience

[sqcomp]

We should get together in Northern Washington or on your side in Coquitlam perhaps? To should come down to one of Keith's IASCA competitions. There is a whole group of people that would like to be in on this line of questions regarding amplifier sound and signal changes. We might even be able to get a big name from the industry to talk about it...

[RedRide]

Originally Posted by sqcomp

RR... You are impotent.

You were talking about analog vs digital in broad sweeping terms. Now that I mention true analog sources, you want to change the debate.

Let's change the debate then.

Good analog. Give us an example. What is "good anilog"?

Bad digital. Give us an example. What is this "bad digital" you speak of?

You're not being specific, you're skirting around broad general terms.

If the only thing you can criticize from my efforts is the conversion of an analog recording on a reel to reel recorder to digital storage...you've got no argument to stand on because you have NO idea what is happening with the process. To second that you also apparently no appreciation for the history of musical recording in the 20th century before you were born.

I'll put it this way, without the recording efforts I'm trying to save, you wouldn't have music playback as you know it now. Thank the Germans and WW II, the acoustical engineers, Bing Crosby and Les Paul for funneling the talent and money into the beginning of the golden era of recording music.

Now your hiding behind Les Paul and the Germans?

I was specific but you are the one speaking in general, irelavant terms. You are the one refering to older, poorer quality anilog sources in trying to win your argument.
I have repeatedly stated that anilog has the potential to be better than digital, No, not ealry anilog but, anilog at its utimate perfection when digital took over. You think that Doc Severnson and older Les Paul are the untimate in anilog sorces?

My original post was in responce to the poster who was not refering to car audio, just about audio in general. I never advocaed anilog for a car sys.
I'm surprised that you did not already claim that I advocate installing a calliope in a car.


I maintain that unless a car is some sort of dedicated SLP/ show car, it's a waste of money for a DD as yes, there is road and engine noise to deal with in addition to any vehcle having bad acoustics. One is then striving for an atificial sound that they believes sounds good in spite of the bad acoustics.
Now, do not try to educate me about sound deadener... we are talking about a DD and adding sound deadener etc begins to take a vehcle beyond the roll of a DD and it wiil still have terrible acoustics.

Why don't you tell us exactly what makes digital source and playback aways sound better as you claim?
Don't preach "convience" as eveyone concedes that. You speak of converting an older aniloge source to digital as if it's some kind of magical transformation.

Good analog. Give us an example. What is "good anilog"?

Bad digital. Give us an example. What is this "bad digital" you speak of?

What is good anilog?

Name one song/etc that that sounds better (or at least equal) when encoding digitally as directly compred to its original anilog conterpart played through quality playback hardware. ( I now envision you picking a song out of your hat).

........I'll put it this way, without the recording efforts I'm trying to save, you wouldn't have music playback as you know it now......

So, are you trying to take some sort of credit for that or..... are you tring to boast some knowledge of music/ hardware histrory? We all concede that Les Paul contributed a lot.
However, he did not invent muti track sound. He was just the first one to build hardware for and it was bound to happend sooner or laster. Ampeg (and others) simply told Les that with their state of the art that they could not build him the multi track recorder he wanted. So, Les just built his own .
Wether or not they actually could have built one is still open to debate.

Simularly, the Wright brothers did not invent flight and sooner or later someone esle woud have built a sucsessful aircraft.