Hi Morricab, thanks for continuing to post here...incredibly educational for me (and I suspect for others as well). Regarding amps, trying to interpret some of the things i have read about our own Gryphon amp. Apparently, it is spec'd to continue to double down on wattage to 0.5 ohms and double again for peaks. At 160 watts into an 8ohm load, that gets us to 2560 into 0.5ohms...is that 69.5 amps? With nearly 400,000mu of capacitance, could it briefly go beyond this to 100amps or more?
Toward a Theory To Increase Mutual Understanding and Predictability
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
- Start date
Hi Morricab, thanks for continuing to post here...incredibly educational for me (and I suspect for others as well). Regarding amps, trying to interpret some of the things i have read about our own Gryphon amp. Apparently, it is spec'd to continue to double down on wattage to 0.5 ohms and double again for peaks. At 160 watts into an 8ohm load, that gets us to 2560 into 0.5ohms...is that 69.5 amps? With nearly 400,000mu of capacitance, could it briefly go beyond this to 100amps or more?
Yup, I'm thinking the current rating is the total capacity of the power supply to deliver peak instantaneous current to the rails and has no direct relation to the amp's output capacity. It seems like it's more about the PS capacitance and ESR... Just a guess to explain the rating, I may very well be wrong...
I mean, my amp with the >60A rating has an 8A fuse... at 120V that's 960W and it's safe to assume it never draws more than that. Similar thing for the output, no possible way it's ever delivering 60A current through the speaker cables and it probably can't push more than double it's 150W rating, and only for very short periods of time.
I mean, my amp with the >60A rating has an 8A fuse... at 120V that's 960W and it's safe to assume it never draws more than that. Similar thing for the output, no possible way it's ever delivering 60A current through the speaker cables and it probably can't push more than double it's 150W rating, and only for very short periods of time.
Is your speaker a 0.5 ohm speaker? If not then your amp will never be called upon to deliver such power...not that the speakers could take it anyway.
Thank you...actually, my question was not about whether OUR SYSTEM was going to draw the power. (I know it wont ever need it.) I was actually asking if you believe the amp IS capable of actually delivering such power based on what i have read (which it says it can).
It depends on your wall power to some degree. I would say I would be surprised if it could do it all day but for short bursts it probably can unless the line voltage sags.
Ron, you are absolutely correct about audiophile discussions being more convoluted and argumentative than they need to be. I appreciate your acknowledging this dilemma and I respect your desire to improve our ability to communicate, if indeed that is your goal. But at the risk of sounding argumentative, I suspect you’ve neglected perhaps the most significant fundamental contributing to the current state of high-end audio and subsequently to forums such as this one.
For example, regardless of primary objectives or music preferences, IMO, the real question is whether or not one possesses well-trained ears. This to me is by far the greatest divider of all. And the most often overlooked fundamental.
Fine art may be an excellent example. Here some-to-many who can see with their eyes think they can see what everybody else sees without any training or focus. Same goes for hearing. Some even have boasted how they’ve had their hearing checked and since their hearing test results indicate they’ve got the hearing abilities of a teenager, they’re good to go. However, IMO, that’s just more evidence they know not what they speaketh.
More importantly, a long list of dogmas result from overlooking this most basic fundament i.e. one's ability / inability to hear and interpret what one hears. For example:
- Some-to-many think most of us hear and interpret what we hear is very much like most.
- Some-to-many think because they cannot hear differences between components, cables, etc, that nobody else can or should hear differences either.
- Some-to-many think because they’ve been in this hobby for 40+ years, that longevity alone makes them an expert thus implying that hacks, bush-leaguers, and also-rans only exist in other industries.
- Some-to-many think performance comes from a price tag.
- Some-to-many have abandoned their “untrustworthy” ears for their “trustworthy” eyes (in an audio-only industry) and are convinced measurements are the new holy grail.
- Some-to-many who think they are high-end because of their alleged knowledge.
- Some-to-many think it common to have a given playback system sound remarkably close to the “live performace.”
- Some-to-many who think they just need to purchase high-end gear and plug'n play and they're in like Flint.
- Some-to-many who’ve never heard any improvements when swapping cables or components are often times the first to condemn those who have.
- Some-to-many think because they play an instrument, that somehow translates automatically to having well-trained ears.
- Some-to-many think high-end audio is mature from a performance perspective.
- Some-to-many who’ve never heard any improvements after trying a new technology are often times the first to condemn those who have and shout snake oil.
I could go on. And that doesn't even begin to address the objectives and music preferences you mention above which, like most anything, has its own potential can of worms and rabbit holes. But with so much dogma floating around comes the in-fighting, bickering, divisions, etc, such that it is not unlike a group of people wandering in the desert for 40 years without direction, without benchmarks, and without targets.
Also note that the targeted some-to-many phrase is indiscriminate as it applies equally and alike to the enthusiast, recording engineer, manufacturer, reviewer, distributor, etc.
But my point being, and to be frank, not one of those items I listed above have a bloomin' thing to do with actual performance nor what one actually hears. Which is what high-end audio is supposed to be all about.
IOW, if your real objective for opening this thread is intended to make dialogue more constructive and/or edifying, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell your attempt will succeed. At least not until some-to-many acknowledge and attempt to address the real fundamentals of this supposed high-end audio industry. Short of that, I suspect you’d have better success if you just asked us to behave more gentlemanly when dialoguing.
BTW, I do not subscribe to any one of your 3 primary objectives. My primary objective is striving to retrieve 100% of the information embedded in a given recording medium (which I suspect is already being achieved with digital mediums) and keep that information signal pure enough as its processed from source to speakers to remain audible above my playback system’s noise floor. Especially since, IME, it is a system's noise floor level that that has pert near everything to do with determining its level of musicality.
For me, that is the only reasonable objective I can envision striving for and potentially within my scope. Assuming the recording engineers occasionally perform their jobs well enough and I’ve done my job well enough, the level of musicality and its presentation should easily be sufficient and pleasing enough to some-to-many. And then some.
No that is not at all a safe assumption. Fuses do not blow up instantly at their rated value. Here is a sample spec from one of the major fuse manufacturers:
As you see there the fuse does not blow at even 1.5 times its rated value for a full hour! To get it to blow at 1/100 of a second, you need to go up to 10 times its rated value! Circuit breakers in your home can be even slower than this.
The only way to know how much current your amp is pulling is to measure it. You can't rely on the fuse not blowing as the limit.
Protection devices are meant for that: protection and limiting against fire and such. This is why equipment can be damaged yet the fuse may still be good. It is not a precise current limiting device.
BTW, I do not subscribe to any one of your 3 primary objectives. My primary objective is striving to retrieve 100% of the information embedded in a given recording medium (which I suspect is already being achieved with digital mediums) and keep that information signal pure enough as its processed from source to speakers to remain audible above my playback system’s noise floor. Especially since, IME, it is a system's noise floor level that that has pert near everything to do with determining its level of musicality.
For me, that is the only reasonable objective I can envision striving for and potentially within my scope. Assuming the recording engineers occasionally perform their jobs well enough and I’ve done my job well enough, the level of musicality and its presentation should easily be sufficient and pleasing enough to some-to-many. And then some.
Nice to hear,we think a like.....
...BTW, I do not subscribe to any one of your 3 primary objectives. My primary objective is striving to retrieve 100% of the information embedded in a given recording medium (which I suspect is already being achieved with digital mediums) and keep that information signal pure enough as its processed from source to speakers to remain audible above my playback system’s noise floor. Especially since, IME, it is a system's noise floor level that that has pert near everything to do with determining its level of musicality.
For me, that is the only reasonable objective I can envision striving for and potentially within my scope. Assuming the recording engineers occasionally perform their jobs well enough and I’ve done my job well enough, the level of musicality and its presentation should easily be sufficient and pleasing enough to some-to-many. And then some.
RogerD, I also felt the part from Stenho you quoted (requoted above) was particularly good.
Ron, you are absolutely correct about audiophile discussions being more convoluted and argumentative than they need to be. I appreciate your acknowledging this dilemma and I respect your desire to improve our ability to communicate, if indeed that is your goal. But at the risk of sounding argumentative, I suspect you’ve neglected perhaps the most significant fundamental contributing to the current state of high-end audio and subsequently to forums such as this one.
For example, regardless of primary objectives or music preferences, IMO, the real question is whether or not one possesses well-trained ears. This to me is by far the greatest divider of all. And the most often overlooked fundamental.
Fine art may be an excellent example. Here some-to-many who can see with their eyes think they can see what everybody else sees without any training or focus. Same goes for hearing. Some even have boasted how they’ve had their hearing checked and since their hearing test results indicate they’ve got the hearing abilities of a teenager, they’re good to go. However, IMO, that’s just more evidence they know not what they speaketh.
More importantly, a long list of dogmas result from overlooking this most basic fundament i.e. one's ability / inability to hear and interpret what one hears. For example:
- Some-to-many think most of us hear and interpret what we hear is very much like most.
- Some-to-many think because they cannot hear differences between components, cables, etc, that nobody else can or should hear differences either.
- Some-to-many think because they’ve been in this hobby for 40+ years, that longevity alone makes them an expert thus implying that hacks, bush-leaguers, and also-rans only exist in other industries.
- Some-to-many think performance comes from a price tag.
- Some-to-many have abandoned their “untrustworthy” ears for their “trustworthy” eyes (in an audio-only industry) and are convinced measurements are the new holy grail.
- Some-to-many who think they are high-end because of their alleged knowledge.
- Some-to-many think it common to have a given playback system sound remarkably close to the “live performace.”
- Some-to-many who think they just need to purchase high-end gear and plug'n play and they're in like Flint.
- Some-to-many who’ve never heard any improvements when swapping cables or components are often times the first to condemn those who have.
- Some-to-many think because they play an instrument, that somehow translates automatically to having well-trained ears.
- Some-to-many think high-end audio is mature from a performance perspective.
- Some-to-many who’ve never heard any improvements after trying a new technology are often times the first to condemn those who have and shout snake oil.
I could go on. And that doesn't even begin to address the objectives and music preferences you mention above which, like most anything, has its own potential can of worms and rabbit holes. But with so much dogma floating around comes the in-fighting, bickering, divisions, etc, such that it is not unlike a group of people wandering in the desert for 40 years without direction, without benchmarks, and without targets.
Also note that the targeted some-to-many phrase is indiscriminate as it applies equally and alike to the enthusiast, recording engineer, manufacturer, reviewer, distributor, etc.
But my point being, and to be frank, not one of those items I listed above have a bloomin' thing to do with actual performance nor what one actually hears. Which is what high-end audio is supposed to be all about.
IOW, if your real objective for opening this thread is intended to make dialogue more constructive and/or edifying, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell your attempt will succeed. At least not until some-to-many acknowledge and attempt to address the real fundamentals of this supposed high-end audio industry. Short of that, I suspect you’d have better success if you just asked us to behave more gentlemanly when dialoguing.
BTW, I do not subscribe to any one of your 3 primary objectives. My primary objective is striving to retrieve 100% of the information embedded in a given recording medium (which I suspect is already being achieved with digital mediums) and keep that information signal pure enough as its processed from source to speakers to remain audible above my playback system’s noise floor. Especially since, IME, it is a system's noise floor level that that has pert near everything to do with determining its level of musicality.
For me, that is the only reasonable objective I can envision striving for and potentially within my scope. Assuming the recording engineers occasionally perform their jobs well enough and I’ve done my job well enough, the level of musicality and its presentation should easily be sufficient and pleasing enough to some-to-many. And then some.
I am trying to think about your well-trained ears point but I feel that will just dig us into another deep ditch of unsolvable subjectivity. How can we possibly come up with some rational assessment of people's ears? We can determine frequency response with hearing tests, so the endeavor starts objectively but then we face the issue of calibrating instruments and voices to our ears? I just think that won't work.
My effort in the opening post was to overlay some order upon our subjectivity well after the ears point on the spectrum. I was trying to achieve categories of agreement at the end stage -- how we perceive what we are hearing -- not at the beginning stage of how our ears are functioning.
I think what you are describing as your objective is very close to Objective 2.
Ron, as others have addressed the creation chain very well, and have shown that these categories are a marketing segmentation approach, and most participating in the thread have coalesced on this.
Yet let me bring a psychological perspective of subjective experiences to the discussion to help address the title of your post - a way to increase mutual understanding. The ideas below expressed are a high level summary based on actual, well-accepted research, so it's not and not just some BS...
It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. This is also true when it comes to putting words around subjective experiences of audio... Objective stimuli in the world create subjective stimuli in the mind. We hear a system and we use words to describe them. Using these "audiophile" words, we think that our fellow audiophile is having the same subjective experience inside their skull. But it's not really true, as one can tell from the arguments and virtually different systems and rooms) that everyone has...
A word like “real” "natural", "slam", "presence" are abstract words filled with ambiguity. They really are nothing more or less than words that anyone can use to indicate anything we please. The problem is that people seem pleased to use this or that word to indicate a host of different things, which has created a tremendous terminological mess…
A lot of the mess stems from one's prior experiences with a system/ product – or a lack thereof. As an example, if someone lacks the machinery for a sexual orgasm, then our experience of orgasm is one that this person will never know - no matter how much we talk about it, or dance about it.
Experiences of fine tequilas, string quartets in world class venues, caring deeds, ice cream, and high end audio are rich, complex, multidimensional, and impalpable. Because “Real” or "natural" is also an experience, it can only be approximately defined by its antecedents and by its relation to other experiences. "Spicy" means something different to a person used to eating South Indian cuisine every day than to a mom buying potato chips labeled as "spicy" in the supermarket for the super bowl party. That’s why I can’t stand reviewers like “worthless to the fan” Robert Harley who never compare, but just proclaim something as “BEST!” because some new detail he heard tickled his analytical preference. (Note: I am not attacking him as a person, but criticizing him for the value of his work to the audiophile community. I am not saying he's a worthless human being, just that his work is completely useless to the fan... I'm sure he's a great guy in real life with great family and friends and an upstanding member of his community.)
I'm also sure Harley's manufacturer friends and advertisers love to get a headline that they got the very "BEST" product on the market, but the "BEST" claim is pathetic and useless to the stressed-out audio fan traveling around to hear things on different continents in order to find a great piece of gear.
Without knowledge of the how an experience of piece of gear compares to another one he may be familiar with and narrowing things down, that an audio fan has to travel and spend precious time and hard-earned money to find some piece of gear that he hoped will put him in a state of flow where he connects with the music and all problems melt away.
Of course, the reality is that piece of gear proclaimed as "best" is only in Harley's imagination. Something like magico q7 and Berkeley Reference SAC "disappears" only in his mind and a handful of people who share his preferences. But to many fans, this gear sticks out and disrupts the musical experience as a colonoscopy done by a jittery intern who forgot to call the anesthesia
... of course, that painful experience could have been avoided if Harley did a good job comparing the experiences and let the fans decide if that experience is worth pursuing ...every time he writes about something as "BEST", his work screams "self-serving hyperbole" and "marketese" to fans. Coming back to some theory, once we have an experience - hear a component that does something very new or very different – like speed and inner detail of a horn, or an electrostatic midrange amplified by tubes, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened. Our experiences instantly become the lens through which we view (or the filter we hear through, if you would) all past, present, and future. And like and lens or filter, they color our perspective as well.
Additionally, we are only human , so distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous -that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others. Different moods, auditioning circumstances, people we like or don’t like, preconceived notions, prior good meals , great "intimate relations", or rude taxi drivers,etc… all can play part in impacting what we perceive when we listen.
Furthermore, to complicate things even further, our remembrance of things past is imperfect, thus comparing our new understanding of “real” with our memory of our old "real" is a risky way to determine whether two subjective experiences are really different...
But just because there are challenges posed to us by human nature, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Instead, we should work even harder to overcome them...
If several audiophiles share the same experiences, such as attending shows or presentations, their taste may not always agree 100 percent, but they will be more effective in communicating in what the others mean if they get together, analyze experiences, and specify the language to help extract the most important features of the experiences so we can analyze them and communicate them later... Practically, except for small groups of people, this will never happen. So arguments will go on...
But , fortunately, there is a solution to find that common ground you bring up in the post title...
It's interesting to note that studies show that in general, women aren't as good negotiators as men. Delving into the reasons, women ask less questions to understand the situation to drive the ultimate outcome. Likewise in our little audiophile world, instead of relying on categories or stereotypes, I believe that by respectfully asking questions to probe into others' experience to get a clear understanding of what others want or believe helps increase mutual understanding.
Ron, as others have addressed the creation chain very well, and have shown that these categories are a marketing segmentation approach, and most participating in the thread have coalesced on this.
Yet let me bring a psychological perspective of subjective experiences to the discussion to help address the title of your post - a way to increase mutual understanding. The ideas below expressed are a high level summary based on actual, well-accepted research, so it's not and not just some BS...
It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. This is also true when it comes to putting words around subjective experiences of audio... Objective stimuli in the world create subjective stimuli in the mind. We hear a system and we use words to describe them. Using these "audiophile" words, we think that our fellow audiophile is having the same subjective experience inside their skull. But it's not really true, as one can tell from the arguments and virtually different systems and rooms) that everyone has...
A word like “real” "natural", "slam", "presence" are abstract words filled with ambiguity. They really are nothing more or less than words that anyone can use to indicate anything we please. The problem is that people seem pleased to use this or that word to indicate a host of different things, which has created a tremendous terminological mess…
A lot of the mess stems from one's prior experiences with a system/ product – or a lack thereof. As an example, if someone lacks the machinery for a sexual orgasm, then our experience of orgasm is one that this person will never know - no matter how much we talk about it, or dance about it.
Experiences of fine tequilas, string quartets in world class venues, caring deeds, ice cream, and high end audio are rich, complex, multidimensional, and impalpable. Because “Real” or "natural" is also an experience, it can only be approximately defined by its antecedents and by its relation to other experiences. "Spicy" means something different to a person used to eating South Indian cuisine every day than to a mom buying potato chips labeled as "spicy" in the supermarket for the super bowl party. That’s why I can’t stand reviewers like “worthless to the fan” Robert Harley who never compare, but just proclaim something as “BEST!” because some new detail he heard tickled his analytical preference. (Note: I am not attacking him as a person, but criticizing him for the value of his work to the audiophile community. I am not saying he's a worthless human being, just that his work is completely useless to the fan... I'm sure he's a great guy in real life with great family and friends and an upstanding member of his community.)
I'm also sure Harley's manufacturer friends and advertisers love to get a headline that they got the very "BEST" product on the market, but the "BEST" claim is pathetic and useless to the stressed-out audio fan traveling around to hear things on different continents in order to find a great piece of gear.
Without knowledge of the how an experience of piece of gear compares to another one he may be familiar with and narrowing things down, that an audio fan has to travel and spend precious time and hard-earned money to find some piece of gear that he hoped will put him in a state of flow where he connects with the music and all problems melt away.
Of course, the reality is that piece of gear proclaimed as "best" is only in Harley's imagination. Something like magico q7 and Berkeley Reference SAC "disappears" only in his mind and a handful of people who share his preferences. But to many fans, this gear sticks out and disrupts the musical experience as a colonoscopy done by a jittery intern who forgot to call the anesthesia
Coming back to some theory, once we have an experience - hear a component that does something very new or very different – like speed and inner detail of a horn, or an electrostatic midrange amplified by tubes, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened. Our experiences instantly become the lens through which we view (or the filter we hear through, if you would) all past, present, and future. And like and lens or filter, they color our perspective as well.
Additionally, we are only human , so distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous -that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others. Different moods, auditioning circumstances, people we like or don’t like, preconceived notions, prior good meals , great "intimate relations", or rude taxi drivers,etc… all can play part in impacting what we perceive when we listen.
Furthermore, to complicate things even further, our remembrance of things past is imperfect, thus comparing our new understanding of “real” with our memory of our old "real" is a risky way to determine whether two subjective experiences are really different...
But just because there are challenges posed to us by human nature, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Instead, we should work even harder to overcome them...
If several audiophiles share the same experiences, such as attending shows or presentations, their taste may not always agree 100 percent, but they will be more effective in communicating in what the others mean if they get together, analyze experiences, and specify the language to help extract the most important features of the experiences so we can analyze them and communicate them later... Practically, except for small groups of people, this will never happen. So arguments will go on...
But , fortunately, there is a solution to find that common ground you bring up in the post title...
It's interesting to note that studies show that in general, women aren't as good negotiators as men. Delving into the reasons, women ask less questions to understand the situation to drive the ultimate outcome. Likewise in our little audiophile world, instead of relying on categories or stereotypes, I believe that by respectfully asking questions to probe into others' experience to get a clear understanding of what others want or believe helps increase mutual understanding.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems obvious to me the level of others' listening skills mean little or nothing to you.
That response is about on par for what I'd expect from the quintessential audiophile. {yawn}
That perspective on the hobby never interested me. I am using my mind to analyze and synthesize 17 hours a day, so when I sit down, I just prefer to listen to music that triggers my imagination of my personal version of realism.
That usually includes tubes, and I also enjoy vinyl and analog tape, when I have a chance to hear it. I do not read threads the "objectivist/ subjectivist" debate threads, so maybe I misunderstand the "trained ears" issues, but I have no desire to re-educate my preferences. I don't have any problems with what others pursue or enjoy in this hobby, but I just enjoy things as they are.
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