SS Amp Performance Characteristics
- Thread starter Kingrex
- Start date
I installed the new/use A3cr. Its a nice amp for less than $1000. It presents a lot like the various SS amps I have had in the past. Its pretty darn clean. No hum at all. There is information that comes forward more. Not that its not heard with my tube amp. Its just more present.
This amp I can not turn up too much. It never really get there, if you know what I mean. And it will actually start to compress and sound shouty. It says ,turn me down.
My tube amp on the other hand. Way more juice and fire. It has a sense of power and thrust. Listening to Aerosmith Sweet Emotion, the tube amp sounds like a Mesa Boogie amp. It growls at you like a guitar amp. The Who makes you want to turn it up. There is a bite and energy that brings the music to life. The A3cr has non of that. Its just clean, linear, more bass I will give it that. But its nothing special bass. Its just more. The sub I have makes up for what the tube amp is not doing as far as bass. But the lack of everything else with the SS amp is unforgivable. Thank goodness it was a low cost lesson.
This amp I can not turn up too much. It never really get there, if you know what I mean. And it will actually start to compress and sound shouty. It says ,turn me down.
My tube amp on the other hand. Way more juice and fire. It has a sense of power and thrust. Listening to Aerosmith Sweet Emotion, the tube amp sounds like a Mesa Boogie amp. It growls at you like a guitar amp. The Who makes you want to turn it up. There is a bite and energy that brings the music to life. The A3cr has non of that. Its just clean, linear, more bass I will give it that. But its nothing special bass. Its just more. The sub I have makes up for what the tube amp is not doing as far as bass. But the lack of everything else with the SS amp is unforgivable. Thank goodness it was a low cost lesson.
A lot of solid state amps sound pretty decent until you start to push them. Low level higher ordered harmonics (used by the ear to sense sound pressure so the ear is keenly sensitive to them) which are not masked by lower orders cause the amp to be a bit harsher ('shouty').
That is why I say the harmonic spectrum at 1 Watt, -6dB from full output and also at full output will tell a lot about how an amp will 'sound'. But that information is generally not published. Tube amps are pretty good about masking higher ordered harmonics which is why they sound 'smooth'. That is literally why they are still around after being declared 'obsolete' in the 1960s. But if a designer is aware of how the ear uses higher orders, it does make it possible to design a solid state amp that does not behave in the manner I described above.
FWIW, I spent $700. But I would rather have tried a new VTV $1200 class D amp that hopefully had a good power supply for that money. I wish I could afford an Atmasphere. But I just dumped a few thousand into batteries and inverters to start testing in my system.
EDIT:
I'm sort of p***** at myself now. My gut said don't do it. I should just get the VTV class D. If I don't like it, I can return it. Maybe it's true class AB has had its time. It needs to step aside for class.D. At a minimum at an affordable level. I don't think anybody with one of the many $2400 and under clasd D amps would be disappointed. Not like I am.
EDIT:
I'm sort of p***** at myself now. My gut said don't do it. I should just get the VTV class D. If I don't like it, I can return it. Maybe it's true class AB has had its time. It needs to step aside for class.D. At a minimum at an affordable level. I don't think anybody with one of the many $2400 and under clasd D amps would be disappointed. Not like I am.
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SS amps sound as described when pushed to clipping, Class D amps I have tried had poor timbre , drove me nuts how they made every piano sound like a keyboard …..
A lot of class D amps got really poor supplies; my surmise is the person putting the module in the box must have assumed that class D amps don't need such a robust supply as other amps because they are so much more efficient. I've had similar listening experiences as yours, such that for years I never took them seriously.
Giving them a good power supply is really important!
What have you heard, or tried. I have extensively heard Odyssey Audio 250 watt monoblocks. I would say they are very good. I have heard a Orchard Audio Starkrimson. I heard it side by side to my Dartzeel NHB 108 M1. In my system and in Thomas's. It was also very good. Not quite the Dartzeel. But very good.
Give these a look over Rex ..
www.stereophile.com
Buckeye Purifi Eigentakt 1ET9040BA monoblock power amplifier New Measurements | Stereophile.com
Follow-Up: New Measurements, from June 2025 When Kalman Rubinson reviewed this affordably priced amplifier in the January 2025 issue, he was impressed by what he heard. "Sonically, the Buckeye 1ET9040BA monoblocks are superb," he concluded, adding that "to their credit, they are transparent...
And non floated your boat. All had poor timber. What does that mean to you.
I like tubes. I'm biased. Maybe, like the response to my comment in the Lukas thread about tubes, I like the harmonics.
I don't know if its harmonics or what, but I hear tubes sound more natural and real to instruments. I hear SS as more quiet background and maybe greater detail. Sort of. Detail, as in, little things stand out. But that detail and little things you may not hear that are buried with tubes are not necessarily complete. They lack the harmonic over and under that give a better sense of hearing an actual instrument rather than a sound.
I do appreciate the weight SS brings to the bottom end. And talking aith the maker of my BB10 sub, even he says a plate amp is better than a tube amp to drive subs. But thats a sub. Far different than mid and high frequency. And I can add a SS powered sub to fill the bottom out.
My backup unit is a Devialet D200 which is a class A/D hybrid. Nice sounding unit. It needs some effort to setup as you need to create a configuration file and flash it. Easy thing to do. More information at Devialetchat.com.
You are welcome to take it and play with it to see if you like it. Let me know. I am in Kirkland.
You are welcome to take it and play with it to see if you like it. Let me know. I am in Kirkland.
With a lot of solid state amps, above a certain frequency (often about 1KHz) the feedback decreases (this is true of tube amps with feedback too) which can be part of why they don't sound right in the mids and highs. But at bass frequencies most solid state amps have enough feedback to do things properly.
Yes all had bad timbre , Crown best drive bad timbre vs others. The hi freq hash is also obvious with few exceptions..
SS amps of high Quality does dverythign it toob counterparts do but better, the problem with SS people buy them and throw them in and think tjey are done , yet by a bad sounding tooby amp and spend months tweaking everything known to man to get them sounding good and when they do proclaim better to SS .
Take the same effort on selecting a pre and matching amp to speaker load when using an SS amp like you do on a toob and it will deliver..!
Poorly designed ones do , with enuff open loop gain and bandwidth this is not an issue…
Yet just like how analog betters Digital in the top end , tube does high frequency better than most SS with some exceptions ..
On this purify the measurements tell me this one should be very good on the top end, at 2K it's a no brainer …!Give these a look over Rex ..
Buckeye Purifi Eigentakt 1ET9040BA monoblock power amplifier New Measurements | Stereophile.com
Follow-Up: New Measurements, from June 2025 When Kalman Rubinson reviewed this affordably priced amplifier in the January 2025 issue, he was impressed by what he heard. "Sonically, the Buckeye 1ET9040BA monoblocks are superb," he concluded, adding that "to their credit, they are transparent...
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