Natural Sound

[morricab]

Fwiw, the M1 was shown at CES in 1993 where it received the best sound at CES award. It was built while he worked for Madison Fielding but they would not put it into production, so he waited until he started his own company to go public with it. The ML2 came out in the late '90s - first reviewed in 1999.

I agree the solid-state MOSFET amps (110 Watts +) sound different from the 633C SET amps (18 W). I own both the M1.2 and the ML2.2. But to my ears on the JBLs they sound more similar than different; I prefer the ML2 overall but the additional power of the M1.2 has that advantage.

Only have heard the older 1.1 and 2, respectively.

 

[Rensselaer]

Vlad Lamm or Vlad the impaler?

I believe it was also Confucius who said; “he who go to bed with itchy butt, wake up with stinky finger”?

 

[hopkins]

You know this how? Lamm claimed to design to his model…you have inside knowledge to the contrary?

The reason why it is not a « design model » is very simple and obvious: with this approach you cannot actually innovate. You are stuck applying the same recipes - you can change the mix of components and slightly tweak things, but you won’t discover entirely new solutions.

 

[morricab]

The reason why it is not a « design model » is very simple and obvious: with this approach you cannot actually innovate. You are stuck applying the same recipes - you can change the mix of components and slightly tweak things, but you won’t discover entirely new solutions.

This is a really dumb way to think about this. The innovation was to come up with a model of hearing that can be applied to the design of an amplifier that more people would find to sound best. You are using psychoacoustic data from listener feedback to make a model that tells you the amounts and types of distortion that are ideal based on what the model tells you they should be. It is probably not trivial to design an amp that meets those criteria.

You will notice that the basic amp formula from Lamm hasn't changed...so in that sense you are correct, if you think you have it right based on the model then you say, "well that is the best we could do and we stick with it". The Lamm ML2.2 is still the same basic formula as the original ML2. The ML3 has been around unchanged for a long time as well.

If you are confident that your model gives you the best possible criteria for an amp design based on how humans perceive music, why would you go to entirely new solutions anyway?

All the technical innovation is just dancing around aimlessly if it isn't directed at how to get closer to reproducing perfectly based on how humans hear and not on ultimate specs.

Read the master's thesis of Daniel Cheever, he also comes up with a metric for predicting best sound quality based on the ear/brain's function...his conclusion was also that SET amps do the best job of providing an ideal distortion pattern for the distortion to "hide" in the ear/brain's own masking functions. Most designers do nothing of the sort and pursue ultimate low distortion through various clever technical means...we already know this doesn't always result in good sound.