Can "Ordinary People" Hear Amplifier Differences?

[JonMarsh]

I have virtually zero friends in California who are anthing even faintly resembling audiophiles (I spend WAY too much time working, and not enough socializing. So, most of my acquaintances in this area look at my audio predelictions more than a little askance. (There are exceptions, like the Munich Marketing manager who actaully found an Avalon speaker dealer; even his wife was "blown away" by how much better they sounded than B&W's they also listened to).
I get a lot of playful kidding from my friends when I go on one of my tirades regarding quality of sound, recommended components, etc.; the usual response is, "I'm no where near golden eared enough to hear the difference".

Anyway, I have an interesting recent experience to relate. You may think, after reading it, been there, done that. You may also think about re-thinking your own expectations, and approaching more situations with an open mind.

A friend (woman) came over for a movie last night. She has heard the system before, but usually only for movies. And in the previous time when she listened to some music, the system was using a Sony TAN9000ES multi-channel power amp for biamping duties for both bass and the upper range cabinet in my X1-klones. (110WX5, pretty hefty, about 60 lb.) I bought this amp at a bargain price from a Sony Outlest store to have a "spare" work horse for measurements and secondary systems; the Palladiums which normlly run the upper modules were pulled out to bench for a review on the HTGuide sight- haven't finished that yet, either.

When my friend listened to music the first time, it was a few SACD's I have of music which she likes, like Gloria Estefan, Titanic soundtrack, and Kenny Loggins. She liked the sound, but wondered why there weren't more SACD's available (don't we all!).

Last night when she came in, she noticed the Palladiums and the Sony on the floor in the dining room, and realized that the Aragon X3B and 8002 in the rack were something different. Never wanting to miss a chance to give me a "little" grief over my audio eccentricities, she asked, "What's this, new gear again? What was wrong with the boxes that were in that shelf the last time I was over?"

So, I mumbled a little bit about my friend ThomasW doing some Aragon shopping for me, and that brand being our "bottom feeding reference standard" (Krell and MLS sound at premium beer prices, you know?) and asked if she wanted to hear any music before we we started the movie.

So, we put on one cut. "Conviction of the heart", from the Kenny Loggins SACD. It starts with one of Kenny's kid singing solo part of the chorus, then intros to electric rythm guitar with Kenny singing. IMMEDIATELY after the child singing, her response was "Wow, I can't believe this, this does sound better - it's like the kid is right there!". Minutes later, after the cut is over, "I owe you an apology, I guess. It's like the music has a richer tone, while everything is clearer and more separate. It's just more vivid, and draws you in more. You really didn't change anything else? That's hard to believe."

In no case were we ever listening previously or last night at levels requiring more than about 5-10 watts (this speaker system is 93 dB efficient, guys!). I'd never represent the TAN9000ES as being state of the art, but it is better built than any reciever I've seen, and has respectable specs, including THD 10-20kHz < 0.013%. (better than Aragon distortion specs, actually).

So, moral of the story, watts isn't all that "watts important", specs are not always much of a guideline, and when a friend says you ought to go give something a listen, what the heck, give it a try!

Everyone have a good weekend doing something fun outdoors while the HT Guide server is down!

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Crimson]

Jon,
To answer your question.........maybe. It depends on the equipment and the listener. When I first received my 7B's I hadn't received my Maggie 3.6's yet at the time. I was driving a pair of 1.6's with the SAME amp, the TAN-9000ES. Having a pair of the 7B's with nothing to use them on was driving me nuts, so I hooked them up to the 1.6's unbeknownst (?) to my wife. That evening we were listening to music and she commented on how better the low end sounded and how the soundstage seemed to have increased in depth. I then told her I had swapped amps (needless to say I was ecstatic that I wasn't the only one 'hearing' the difference).




Q.

[Lexman]

No Jon, only golden ears can, lol. (short answer)

Long answer later.





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[Lex]

Well, the answer I think lies with the person. I got a few low-fi friends that probably couldn't tell a clock radio from a Levinson. But then, some people do have an ear for detail. Even ones that aren't audiophiles. I think part of it has to do with their general senses and sensitivity to their senses, and such.

Anyway, person dependent is the best answer I could give...




Cable Guy DVD Collection

[Robbie]

I think Lex said it best. It all depends if someone is listening to the detail or not. The difference between two GOOD amplifiers is going to be in the details not the overall music.

My .02

Good Listening

Robbie

[JonMarsh]

Between two "good" amplifiers, yes.

The Sony TAN9000ES is a "good" amplifier. Compares favorably with the high end megabuck receivers, obviously. So's the Adcom monoblock's ThomasW used to use in his main system.


The Aragon 8008 series and 8002 are great amplifiers. Midrange openess and detail to rival the best tube amps. Bass control that extends to the infrasonic. And a clean, airy top end that floats instruments in space, without any grunge, *if that is what is on the recording*. (try the Santana Abraxas SACD, for example).

ThomasW was sceptical about the design job and results we got on his whisper clones when he was using the Adcom's. They just didn't have that "high end sound", and didn't really gell across the spectrum. Once he dropped Aragon's into the family system, it all came together for him, inlcuding a really big grin on his face!

There are certainly other brands of "great" amps. I design and build some of my own electronics, with no holds barred techniques that do get the results I want. But being the bottom feeders that we are, we've gotten into used Aragons in a serious way the last year, due to the unusual price/performance ratio they offer. Give one a listen, some time. You won't regret it.

Best regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[JohanK]

Jon, what makes the Aragons better than, say, a Parasound amp (in your opinion)? Is it the transistors that they use? Power supply properties? Circuit board design? Any of your design thoughts would be appreciated.

I own and have compared a Parasound HCA-2003A and the Bryston 3B-ST in my system and prefer the Parasound but I cannot be sure if that is due to the higher power output of the Parasound. I think the Bryston is more detailed and has more high frequency prescence (same thing?) but the Parasound just felt (or sounded, I guess) more dynamic (that's not quite the right word but I can't come up with anything better).

[JonMarsh]

There are a lot of things that are important, but with many modern solid state amps, you'll find many companies using similar parts.

For example, the Toshiba output transistors used in the Aragon are wideband, linear gain over a wide range, and because of their Ft, have low stored charge (which can cause problems in crososer region between signal halves. Hosever, many companies use these, or the Motorola/now On Semiconductor copies of them.

Power supply is quite important. Aragon is a sort of dual mono (even in their single transformer designs), with separate output windings, rectifiers, and caps for each channel. Many companies do this. Having a low impedance transformer is important; having a large capacitor reservoir is probably even more important (beware receivers and amps that advertise "a full 20,000 uf of filter capacitance!" Look for more like 70,000 - 100,000uF. The really high end approach, in my opinion, as used by Ayre, Music Fidelity, Cello, and some of my home brews is choke input filters, with high current chokes and an appropriately tuned capcitor bank; instead of just picking off the current from the very top of the AC waveform, with a big current spike on your AC line and a lot of harmonics on the input filter caps, you have a basically sinousoidal current draw on the AC line and on the filter caps. It's MUCH kinder to the other equipment in your system, becase they don't have a big power amp screwing up the AC power to the same degree. Improves the actual power you can pull from the line, too; with cap input rectifier, power factor is typically 0.65; with a good choke input setup, about 0.95

Then there's the active topology, including the voltage gain, driver, and output stages. Plus, even for the same nominal arrangement, there's differences in how feedback and loop feedback is used. My experience is that if you have to use loop feedback, what SOUNDS best is having no more than a low to moderate amount available over the full audio spectrum; using a more complicated multi-pole and zero arrangment which allows a super low damping factor and great distortion specs even with a mediocre output stage is a recipe for sonic disaster. This is someting everyone has an opinion on, many contrary to my point of view; I have lots of test gear, but I always back up measurements my listening, since that's what I ultimately do.

Another point, design the output stage for minimum distortion open loop. If it doesn't sound good running as an open loop buffer being driven by the levels that a preamp with gain will achieve (up to about 10V RMS, it's not going to sound good inside a feedback loop. MOSFET amps RARELY utilize the capability of MOSFETs properly, because of their low transconductance. They make up for it by puttting lots of feedback around a simple complementary buffer ouptut stage. Bryston uses compound output stage structures with bipolars that include drivers and outputs in a local feedback loop (not including loop feedback); I've found a similar arrangement I really like with a CLASS A MOSFET Driver/MOSFET output compound arrangement.

Avoid capacitors anywhere in the signal path! Particularly in the input and feedback loop (often used to make loop have unity gain at DC).

Internal grounding arrangements are very important, along with suppression of external EMI. Bryston made a big leap forward with their last series, which a major change was a complete reworking of the internal grounding arrangments.

It's interesting to note sonic character in amplifiers. The Parasounds are well built, rather nice amps. My listening experiences say I'd be very happy with them in the bottom end through midrange. I find them a bit soft and less detailed than a straight wire bypass in the top end. Rotel's larger power amps have the detail and clarity in the upper octaves which is rarely found in that price range, but they roll off the bottom end in the feedback loop, and they just don't have the ultimate weight or control in the bottom two octaves.

Why I like Aragon's, even their baby 8002, is they handles the whole frequency range in an exempliary manner, with a very open and detailed presentation - forward if that's what's on the recording, depth in soundstage if that's what's there. Often the first thing you'll notice, dropping an Aragon into some of these systems, is the improvement in cohenrency and detail in the range from 200Hz to 5kHz. That's not what we usually associate with solid state's virtues!

Enough of this monolog. In all cases, trust your ears. Use good progam source, and go out and listen to some things *beyond* your price range at times, just to provide a wider range of calibration.

Best regards,

Jon

PS HOooo BOooy! On vacation for two weeks!




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[JohanK]

Jon, as usual, great reply...thanx. Have a great vacation.

P.S. If you get a chance, I would like to hear (read) your thoughts on ABX tests and why differences in 'sounds' of amplifiers (that seem obvious to me) don't 'pronounce' themselves in these tests. Thanx.

[Andrew Pratt]

I'd be very interested in those thoughts too

[ThomasW]

Johan

I'll just throw in my $.02 The reason Jon and I got on the Aragon bandwagon was by a fluke. When we were building up the prototype for the Whisper klones, I didn't want to tear down either of the 2 operating systems just to pull out the power amps. I have a friend who at the time had his entire bi-amped system in storage. This included a Adcom 5800 and a Aragon 8008ST. We arranged to borrow these for a month. We hooked these up to the Whisper and were dialing in the XO values. During that time the amps got switched from which was powering the 15"s and which was powering the midwoofer-tweeter array. Suddenly there was a major change in the overall sound quality. There was nothing subtle about this change. Everything sounded MUCH better. So this lead to experimenting with the 8008ST is either other 2 other systems. And where ever we put it it always made the system sound better.

First I replaced the Adcom 565 monoblocks powering the ESL array with 8008BBs. It wasn't a night and day change but the difference was significant. The Aragon obviously had a much easier time driving the weird load the ESLs create. Since that time I've replace every amplifier except the ones for the subs with either 8008ST or BB's. All the ones since the first 8008BB have been purchased used.

I think that ABX tests have a flaws, primarily those of expectations. First if people don't want to hear a difference they obviously won't, or the opposite they will always hear differences if they want to.

I find that most people do not have adequate systems for testing the differences between certain components. Usually the speakers aren't revealing enough to expose the differences in power amps. It's not too hard to hear the difference in CD players, but power amps are a whole different ballgame.

Also room acoustics play tricks on people. If the room characteristics are poor it's very hard to hear differences in components.

Finally if the ABx testing is being done by a magazine, they must consider their advertising income. Doesn't pay to bite the hand that feeds them

The bottom line is if you can hear a difference in your system then obviously go with the best sounding amp. If not use the less expensive one. This is why in-home auditions are so important. Had we not had my friends 8008 to play with, we probably would have remained ignorant of these wonderful amps.

And to prove how much we like the Aragon amps (meaning we put our money where our mouth is), Jon has in less than a year obtained a pair of Palladiums, an 8008-3B, an 8002 and has a 8008ST on the way. I have 3 8008BB's, and 4 8008ST's. Yes we like these amps




theAudioWorx
Klone-Audio

[Lex]

My, you guys are Ate up with Aragon!

Also, I will add that I could tell a difference in my Parasound 1500A and the Proceed HPA-2. While both amps are good, the HPA-2 had more air at the top and pinpoint imaging was increased with the HPA-2.

Lex

[JohanK]

Thomas, thanx for your thoughts.

Are you worried about the future of Aragon with the Klipsch buyout?