Transparency vs. Synergy?

[Phelonious Ponk]

I'd say it looks like you are trying to stir things up again by your inflammatory post. I'm not taking the bait. You must be bored this morning.

As far as this thread, and the treatment Ethan is receiving in it are concerned, stirring up his attackers is absolutely unnecessary. I would, however, love to see the moderators wake up.

Tim

 

[amirm]

Thread cleaned up and posts removed.

Gentlemen, I just bought a CNC machine and I am in the process of putting it together to test it this weekend hopefully. Instead, I am here deleting posts by senior members who should know better than to lose their temper and become personal. If your next response is not purely technical, don't hit the post button. You don't want a grumpy version of me coming to this thread! Please take the high road.

 

[RogerD]

Glad to see all the regulars are here. transparency is a interesting term. I can play four different preamps within a tenth of a second of each other. One could say they are all transparent,and they are tube,SS,and nuvistor. They all differ in their design and voicing. When you do some critical listening they all differ in soundstage,clarity, and presentation. But these in reality at this level are nitpicking and only a audiophile would maybe notice,depending how they have trained themselves and their overall experience in discerning these attributes. Bottom line is it makes good conversation and another reason to change equipment.

 

[Atmasphere]

Please, someone to define transparency.
the neutral component makes differences between records/components downstream easy audible, but what does the transparent?
Can be a component neutral but not transparent?

In audiophile terms 'neutral' usually refers to tonality. For example if a system is tilted to emphasize high frequencies it is referred to as 'bright'.

'Tranparency' is the see-through aspect of the system or component. In technical terms transparency is also a lack of noise and distortion, both of which will block the presence of low level detail via the human ear/brain mechanism known as Masking. Audiophiles will often refer to a 'black background' which is an aspect of transparency; this refers to low noise and low IM distortion in particular.

I think you are confusing transparency with having a pleasing character. You may like the colored sound imparted by tubes and vinyl, and many people do. But they are not transparent, which was the question posed. Now, some tube gear can approach transparency, but very high fidelity (transparency) is difficult and expensive. It requires enough power to not clip even a little on loud peaks, and the output transformers must be very large to pass the lowest frequencies and with low distortion.

--Ethan

This statement is highly charged (borderline trolling) and not in fact accurate. Transparency has nothing at all to do with power. For example, a preamp can be transparent or not; regardless makes no power whatsoever.

Tube amplifiers can be quite transparent as they can be quite low in distortion if used correctly. Interestingly, SETs, which probably make the most distortion of any amplifier, are often also the lowest in distortion as well. This is because most SETs have a distortion characteristic that linearly decreases to unmeasurable as power is decreased (the 'First Watt' amplifiers are the only transistor amps I know of that share this particular characteristic). To take advantage of this character though, one must use loudspeakers that are efficient enough that the amp does not make more than about 20% of its full power. This is why so many SETs are renowned for their 'inner detail' which is another way to describe transparency.

I find that low level detail is the best means of comparison- if electronics are going to mess things up, the first things to go will be recording artifacts like room ambience (especially at lower frequencies- the bass room ambience is the first to go).

 

[RogerD]

In audiophile terms 'neutral' usually refers to tonality. For example if a system is tilted to emphasize high frequencies it is referred to as 'bright'.

'Tranparency' is the see-through aspect of the system or component. In technical terms transparency is also a lack of noise and distortion, both of which will block the presence of low level detail via the human ear/brain mechanism known as Masking. Audiophiles will often refer to a 'black background' which is an aspect of transparency; this refers to low noise and low IM distortion in particular.



This statement is highly charged (borderline trolling) and not in fact accurate. Transparency has nothing at all to do with power. For example, a preamp can be transparent or not; regardless makes no power whatsoever.

Tube amplifiers can be quite transparent as they can be quite low in distortion if used correctly. Interestingly, SETs, which probably make the most distortion of any amplifier, are often also the lowest in distortion as well. This is because most SETs have a distortion characteristic that linearly decreases to unmeasurable as power is decreased (the 'First Watt' amplifiers are the only transistor amps I know of that share this particular characteristic). To take advantage of this character though, one must use loudspeakers that are efficient enough that the amp does not make more than about 20% of its full power. This is why so many SETs are renowned for their 'inner detail' which is another way to describe transparency.

I find that low level detail is the best means of comparison- if electronics are going to mess things up, the first things to go will be recording artifacts like room ambience (especially at lower frequencies- the bass room ambience is the first to go).

You are right about transparency having low distortion,but tubes,SS,and nuvistors can all be transparent. The noise is more important to transparency,because it masks the low level detail from top to bottom. I tend to disagree about the power output, 2500 watts of clean,noiseless power will always trump,say a SET amp. The problem is most have never heard 2500 watts of noiseless power. You get all the inner detail you could ever want,plus transients that are not hindered in any way. Even though I like tube amplifiers I prefer my SS amps for those reasons. I might add my speakers are 96db efficient and they can soak up the power too and the lower the noise level it seems the more the amplifier is taxed. Is that because the signal carries more information? That sounds reasonable to me,no pun intended.

 

[mep]

I haven't seen the meters on my ARC REF 75 go over 10 watts of power no matter how loud I have the speakers playing. Most of the time the meters are between 2-5 watts. Obviously these meters don't read peak power.

 

[RogerD]

I haven't seen the meters on my ARC REF 75 go over 10 watts of power no matter how loud I have the speakers playing. Most of the time the meters are between 2-5 watts. Obviously these meters don't read peak power.

Mark I thought we listened to similar music...silly me.

Btw if you can reproduce the last cut on this CD with 10 watts,yor are a better man then me. One CD worth having!

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-When-You...d_sim_m_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0Q1XAFY86YNAWGK2SC20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Irpryljo6g

 

[Atmasphere]

I haven't seen the meters on my ARC REF 75 go over 10 watts of power no matter how loud I have the speakers playing. Most of the time the meters are between 2-5 watts. Obviously these meters don't read peak power.

Mechanical meters have a delay and really are considered averaging rather than actual peak.

Roger, something you might want to consider is what is happening to your distortion when your amp is loafing like it apparently always is. As I mentioned in my post, the Pass First Watt amps are the only ones I know of where the distortion becomes unmeasurable when power is decreased to zero. With most push-pull amps (unless they have a specific means to prevent this issue) the distortion usually reaches a low point at some significant amount of power before then increasing at power levels below that. Its easy enough to see it in the specs.

IOW if you wanted to make your system more transparent (while using your current speakers) there is an argument for an amplifier of lesser power, as it is quite likely that you never get out of that distortion region of the amplifier. This could result in smoother sound with greater detail.

BTW- I find that a lot of audiophiles associate detail with brightness. Just a FWIW: you are on the right track if you get more detail and smoother presentation at the same time. IOW brightness often masquerades as detail.

 

[microstrip]

I haven't seen the meters on my ARC REF 75 go over 10 watts of power no matter how loud I have the speakers playing. Most of the time the meters are between 2-5 watts. Obviously these meters don't read peak power.

Mark,

These meters are very useful for setting bias, but AFAIK during playback they are mainly decorative.

 

[RogerD]

Mechanical meters have a delay and really are considered averaging rather than actual peak.

Roger, something you might want to consider is what is happening to your distortion when your amp is loafing like it apparently always is. As I mentioned in my post, the Pass First Watt amps are the only ones I know of where the distortion becomes unmeasurable when power is decreased to zero. With most push-pull amps (unless they have a specific means to prevent this issue) the distortion usually reaches a low point at some significant amount of power before then increasing at power levels below that. Its easy enough to see it in the specs.

IOW if you wanted to make your system more transparent (while using your current speakers) there is an argument for an amplifier of lesser power, as it is quite likely that you never get out of that distortion region of the amplifier. This could result in smoother sound with greater detail.

BTW- I find that a lot of audiophiles associate detail with brightness. Just a FWIW: you are on the right track if you get more detail and smoother presentation at the same time. IOW brightness often masquerades as detail.

Hi, I might be the tiniest exception but distortion is not a problem in my system and I use all kinds of gear from 1953 to the 1990's.....I keep saying this,I know but the noise or lack of it has a greater effect on absolute transparency. Given that the speaker are very coherent also. I don't have a gauss meter but if one could measure noise and obtain a readiing of .001 that would probably validate the excellent transparency I listen to. It is my experience that most transformer electonics produce noise,depending on the shielding and grounding scheme. But the noise is sill inside the equipment and must have a pathway back to ground to reduce it. The trick is find out how large that pathway needs to be and it can require a large amount.

People spend 10's of thousands on IC's but that only is a half ass solution to the problem as it removes or reduces noise from one component to the other but does nothing about the noise produced by the component itself. When the pathway is created,there is little need for cables designed to reduce the noise to a low level,a good shielded microphone cable is suffient for high end performance. The absence of noise improves the efficiency of the total system and over all clarity, speed,dynamics and presentation. The absence of noise, levels the playing field,as audio preamps and amplifiers become more about function and preference. OK I'll get off my soap box,but this is just my experience.

 

[mep]

Mark,

These meters are very useful for setting bias, but AFAIK during playback they are mainly decorative.

I think they can give people a false sense of comfort.

 

[Atmasphere]

Hi, I might be the tiniest exception but distortion is not a problem in my system and I use all kinds of gear from 1953 to the 1990's.....I keep saying this,I know but the noise or lack of it has a greater effect on absolute transparency. Given that the speaker are very coherent also. I don't have a gauss meter but if one could measure noise and obtain a readiing of .001 that would probably validate the excellent transparency I listen to. It is my experience that most transformer electonics produce noise,depending on the shielding and grounding scheme. But the noise is sill inside the equipment and must have a pathway back to ground to reduce it. The trick is find out how large that pathway needs to be and it can require a large amount.

When you have distortion, it can well become the noise floor of the amplifier, particularly if loop negative feedback is employed in the design. Essentially the feedback causes bifurcation of the signal, resulting in multiple harmonics and also inharmonic distortion (intermodulations) which occur at the feedback node. If this is the noise floor of the amp then you will indeed benefit from a lower powered amp as the human ear/brain system cannot hear any detail below such a noise floor. This is one reason why transistor gear can have less transparency (less low level detail) at lower power levels.
Ref: Norman Crowhurst