Help me choose from these amps I can get deals on

neomagus00

i think he oversimplified that explanation, but i think he's right, too... but then why do zapco amps have such massive damping factors? and can you post a link to that article?

MacLeod

In order to appeal to the people that believe .000000005% THD and 10,000 damping make one sound better than another, and there are a lot of them......especially in the home audio environment! :eek: Oops! Who said that?!?

linky

This is from a test he did on a Diamond amp. Even more revealing is when he did the listening test he spoke nothing about soundstage widht, tightness of bass, warm or bright sound just that it was completely neutral and had no distortion.

audiobliss

MacLeod wrote:

he spoke nothing about soundstage widht, tightness of bass, warm or bright sound just that it was completely neutral and had no distortion.

Amateur reviewer...

:D

MacLeod

Zeff is only a pioneer of audio and hi/fi!

Thats like saying Chris Columbus was only an amateur sailor!

audiobliss

Didn't ya see the little smiley?

PoweredByDodge

that makes no sense... "damping is load divided by output impedance" -- he talks about an amp with a damping factor of 50, and then proceeds to say it's actuall 1.25 ... so who wasn't thinking? it is what it is - things don't magically change.


he has severely over simplified the matter. and i can't recall one zapco amp i've ever encountered with poor specifications... some are obviously not as great as others, ie the reference series, but the reference models still outdo just about anything else on the market. if it was so unimportant that mr. foot in his mouth wouldn't be investing the time and money to build his components in that fashion... fact is - it's not just a matter of using better parts, it is a much more involved design and testing process to build am amplifier with good specifications. its disgustingly longer to build one with GREAT specs.


i'm not saying that a 1,000 damping factor is necessary, but something between 150 and 250 would be a nice thing to aim for... 300+ would be peachy but unnecessary. less than 50's a joke.

MacLeod

Yeah but with you, ya never know. Youre kinda dense.

neomagus00

i think it should be made clear that that last comment was not directed at pbd...

and i agree with both, that he oversimplified but still knows what's up, and that HA geeks overdo it with the specs...

cam5860

High damping factor plays a key role in the linear control of a subwoofer. It gives woofers tighter precision control for better sound quality. That has been proved. I had a mtx thunder amp one time and you know mtx amps have high damping factors. I can't remember what the numbers are right off, but man those subs sounded so good on that amp. It was amazing how tight and controlled the linear movement of that sub was. Im a true believer higher damping factors do make a difference. I agree tho there is a limit to everything you only can get so much out of something.

MacLeod

MacLeod wrote:

Yeah but with you, ya never know. Youre kinda dense.

Yeah, that was aimed at my boy bliss.

Vinnie is at least 3 times smarter than I so I wouldnt be casting stones.

exalted512

Yea, Richard Clark claims amps have no sound difference, but ask him how much hes spent on his amps...

btw, Christopher Columbus WAS a pretty amateur sailor compared to othe sailors at the time
-Cody

audiobliss

^ Kinda what I thought about Columbus, Cody.

I'm dense? :eek: Well, the cat's outta the bag now....:p

MacLeod

exalted512 wrote:

Yea, Richard Clark claims amps have no sound difference, but ask him how much hes spent on his amps...

He has NEVER NEVER NEVER said all amps sound the same. It kills me people still dont get this.

You pay more for an amp because it will make more cleaner and usable power, it will be built better and last longer using higher grade components, it will have higher quality crossovers and EQ circuitry, it will have better connections and power supplies. You dont pay more for an amp because it has warmer bass or a broader soundstage.

Dude, thumb thru some magazines and check out the amp reviews. Notice the frequency response graphs are always ruler flat. Thats like taking 2 identical EQ's and setting them to 0 db and then saying one has more bass than the other.

Not to mention, he wasnt the first to come up with this by a long shot and hes definitely not alone.

1996blackmax

MacLeod wrote:

Just so ya dont think Im pulling this stuff outta my arse, here is an excerpt from an article Robert Zeff wrote:



(Robert Zeff started a little company known as Zapco which makes some of the finest amps on the planet, so I would say he qualifies as an expert)

I have an amp desinged by his team right in front of me .

exalted512

Ok, well my Rockford's are very solid, dependable amplifiers that can produce a ton of power. Why doesn't he use RF. You can get Hifonics for extremely cheap now. They are solid amps that put out a butt load of power. Again, ask him how much hes spent on his amps.
-Cody

PoweredByDodge

a frequency response graph for any amplifier - even a bargain basement "Urban Audio" that K-mart used to sell - they should all be ruler flat from about 20 or 30 hertz up to say 15 to 20k hertz.

the better amps will be ruler flat from say 15 hertz up to say 30 k hertz... or even further... but most speakers won't respond below 20 or above 20k so it doesn't matter.

what makes one amp different from another is power output, total harmonic distortion (signal to noise ratio included), stereo separation, efficiency, output impedance, ability to handle varying loads (specifically the load you intend to put upon it).

"Warmer" and "broader soundstage" are misused terms... at one time i'm sure some audio guru used those words as "shorthand" or "paraphrasing" for meaning that the amp had little distortion, great stereo separation, and reliable performance that didn't change once the **** got hot during use.

amps don't have more bass... eq's don't have more bass... nothign has more of anything -- except an original signal source (cd, cassette) or an eq that has been turned on (bass boosted, or trebble boosted).

... and cast any stones you guys want - i'm not smarter than anyone here. i've just made it a point to pick **** up along the years... look at some posts i put up a few years ago - i sounded like a raving lunatic and was completely wrong... now i'm just a raving lunatic.

MacLeod

Yeah and those Hifonics or Rockfords wont be built nearly as well as an Xtant nor will it have cool features like ARC or the superb cooling technology of an Xtant. Now you can pay more and get some RF Power amps which are built like tanks and stable down to 1 ohm too.

I dont understand why you cant get this.

Nobody has ever said all amps sound the same.
Nobody has ever said $100 Profile amps are as good as $1000 Tru amp.
Nobody has ever said there are no differences in amps.
The only thing Richard Clark, David Navone, Tom Nousane, me or anybody else has ever said is that if compared equally, there will be no audible differences between amps.

MacLeod

PoweredByDodge wrote:

a frequency response graph for any amplifier - even a bargain basement "Urban Audio" that K-mart used to sell - they should all be ruler flat from about 20 or 30 hertz up to say 15 to 20k hertz.

the better amps will be ruler flat from say 15 hertz up to say 30 k hertz... or even further... but most speakers won't respond below 20 or above 20k so it doesn't matter.

what makes one amp different from another is power output, total harmonic distortion (signal to noise ratio included), stereo separation, efficiency, output impedance, ability to handle varying loads (specifically the load you intend to put upon it).

"Warmer" and "broader soundstage" are misused terms... at one time i'm sure some audio guru used those words as "shorthand" or "paraphrasing" for meaning that the amp had little distortion, great stereo separation, and reliable performance that didn't change once the **** got hot during use.

amps don't have more bass... eq's don't have more bass... nothign has more of anything -- except an original signal source (cd, cassette) or an eq that has been turned on (bass boosted, or trebble boosted).

... and cast any stones you guys want - i'm not smarter than anyone here. i've just made it a point to pick **** up along the years... look at some posts i put up a few years ago - i sounded like a raving lunatic and was completely wrong... now i'm just a raving lunatic.

Right, there all ruler flat. Hell even the JVC amp tested in CA&E this month is ruler flat from 20-20K HZ.

Youre quite wrong about the soundstage and warm terms. Cruise on over to any home audio forum and youll see claims of not only amps having different soundstages and warm/bright sound but cables and pre-amps as well!!!

CA&E had a amp test a while back and although theyve long been proponents of the warm/bright sounding amps they concluded that they all pretty much sounded the same BUT each created a different soundstage and thats where the differences lie!!!

exalted512

MacLeod wrote:

Nobody has ever said all amps sound the same.
...
if compared equally, there will be no audible differences between amps.

-Cody

MacLeod

Youre such an Aggie.

Take a 50x4 Profile amp and a Xtant 75x4. Now the Xtant is going to be much more powerful and cleaner than the Profile. Itll be cranking out good clean power long after the Profile is clipping and sending out 10% THD signals. Plus the Xtant will have that cool **** ARC feature and better crossovers and bass boost EQ's, so the Xtant will be a much better sounding amp.

Now if you take them and turn off all those cool features on the Xtant, level match them to where theyre playing at the same volume within .05 db of each other and both making comfortable power (i.e. both at around .05% THD) and give a listen and youll hear no differences.

hellohello

"now i'm just a raving lunatic"

And it seems you have a lot of company...

Im trying to follow along here, and heres what I got so far:
1. amps are only as good as the components that comprise them, if you think about it, the tolerances in components can be + or - 5% effectively making every single amp different even under the same model/manufacturer.
2. Sound amplification and reproduction relies on electricity, which can be subject to many different elements. The copper used in one set of wires may have a slight bit more resistance than another, altering the sound. Copper is copper, but the manufacture varies widely.
3. Since saying that "this particular cable/amp/thingamabob has a higher resistance in its upper registers, and also seems to blend both channels of the stereo recording" wouldnt make much sense to the average joe, terms such as "warm" "bright" and "soundstage" are used since it more describes the sound rather than the scientific.
4. As long as these electical differences remain, and people's hearing and taste varieties remain, there will never be a definite.

neomagus00

1) yes, amps are made of components, and the better amps use better components that have tighter tolerances - higher cost, but better build quality

2) electricity runs amps - true, but excepting the amp's power supply, this is external to the amp and therefore irrelevant (as far as internal wiring etc. goes, that's under #1)

3) The contention is whether or not there is a difference at all - whether one amp can be warmer or brighter or have a wider soundstage, because after a certain point the human ear simply cannot detect a change, and very nearly every amp on the market today has passed that point.

4) Naturally, psychoacoustics will always play a factor ("my amp cost me two thousand dollars and my left teste, it MUST sound great!"). Here, i think mac summed it up best... with all else equal (i.e. turning off all the neato features you paid so much money for), after volume-matching two amps (i.e. losing the extra power and/or headroom of the better amp), they'll sound the same (read this again without the parentheses and it makes more sense )...

hellohello

"electricity runs amps - true, but excepting the amp's power supply, this is external to the amp and therefore irrelevant"

Im not one to argue, but the sound is converted into electrical signals, so the power supply would have an effect, if it is indeed part of the amplifier. Now Im wondering if you were speaking of the "external" power, hm... With so many variables involved, especially if one is comparing two amps/wires/whatever.... makes thine head spineth as if it orbited the sun.

audiobliss

hellohello wrote:

Im not one to argue, but the sound is converted into electrical signals

The sounds is already nothing but an electrical signal when it leaves the HU.

hellohello

"Here, i think mac summed it up best... with all else equal (i.e. turning off all the neato features you paid so much money for), after volume-matching two amps (i.e. losing the extra power and/or headroom of the better amp), they'll sound the same (read this again without the parentheses and it makes more sense"

Indeed, but when, if ever, are all things equal? lol

audiobliss

That's a good point. If you have a nice amp with all the extra features, you're definitely going to use them. So, this debate is not over whether or not they should cost more or whether or not you should buy the nicer amp, just whether they sound different with everything being equal.

(Notice I've yet to state my opinion.)

hellohello

"The sounds is already nothing but an electrical signal when it leaves the HU."

Precisely, Mr. Bliss, and therefore in its electrical state it can be affected long before it even reaches the amplifier, certainly if the signal wire is too close to the Power line, the power line "leeches" into the signal. Since it has been stated that " (roughly) all amps produce razor flat response" Im suggesting that its more the actual sigal being sent to the amplifier.

audiobliss

Well, naturally everything in the signal path has the potential to affect the electrical signal in a manner that would be audible. Both the CDP, the HU's processing, the interconnects, their placement in relation to the power cables, the amp, and the speaker cables. I mean, think about the CD and the speakers - they have a BIG effect on the way that electrical signal sounds!

However, I fail to see your point by bringing this up. The discussion was about amplifiers and how they affect the sound of the electrical signal. While that in no way implies nothing else affects the sound, it also has nothing to do with the other equipment. That'd be a whole 'nother discussion.

hellohello

I dunno, i just felt like arguing something

audiobliss

Hehe...I know what you mean. I wasn't meaning to say the debate you were bringing up would be worthless to pursue or that it is irrelevant. It's just not what we were discussing. We could just change the subject so as to include everything in the signal path, but I can't imagine how long that discussion would be! :eek: