What is High End Audio?
Ever wondered what is actually high end? what differentiates it from most of the commercial stuff available in the market?
Well, Most of the high end stuff are expensive - many times than their commercial counterparts. It makes many believe that its just waste of money to buy stuff that expensive.
It depends on what your passions are.
I asked my friend once, which one would you go for: a 20 Mega-Pixel point and shoot or a 12 Megapixel DSLR. The answer was instantaneous - Point and shoot.
Well, the truth is he is not passionate about photography and needs a regular clicker. Does not want to invest a huge sum on cameras, and the marketing tags like megapixels mean a lot to him.
Audio is something very similar, Only if you are very passionate, then it would make sense in investing a lot otherwise you are either showing off or just believe expensive is better.
Is expensive always better?
It's a debatable question. Since Audio and quality is such a subjective field, it always leads to a great flame wars on which is better.
There is this American designer "Bob Carver" who created a stir in the audio industry in the 1980 and proved that Expensive is not always better.
Bob had challenged some very well known High End audio magazines that he can duplicate the sound of any amplifier at any price.
Two magazines had accepted his challenge.
First was the Audio Critic, asked him to copy the sound of Mark Levinson ML-2, then highly regarded amp and Bob was able to acoustically duplicate it's sound and sold the amp he made as M1.5t
Second was the Stereophile magazine and gave him an amp whose name was kept secret (Conrad-Johnson Premier Five) from Bob.
The challenge was to copy the sound in 48hrs without opening the amp.
The original amp was around $12,000+
Bob accepted the challenge and promptly copied the sound as agreed, only that his amp just costed $400.
In fact their sounds were so similar that the employees of the Stereophile magazine themselves were not able to make out which was the original amplifier.
What he did was simply copy the transfer function of the amp. He used two different amps with the same identical source and out of phase and tuned the second amp using distortion pots.
This brings the question, how should an amplifier sound?
Technically, it's easy, an amplifier should not have any sound of its own. The ouput should be exact same wave as the input only amplified.
This is rarely the case in practice. all amplifiers will introduce noise or distortion as we call it. and this has to be in acceptable limits.
But there are other things too... How should it handle the lows and highs?
all of these stuff are very subjective and depends on personal taste.
A very good example is the Valve or a Tube amplifier. These old and ancient amplifiers have a huge distortion introduced in the amplification stage. Supposedly these are pleasing on the ears and many prefer the sound of the tube amp. I am not denying that these amps are not faithful but are highly regarded by some. Others disagree.
These debates go on forever. Transistor vs Tubes vs Class-D amplifiers.
It's all subjective so I intend to make no personal choice.
However, I would like share a personal experience. I found an el-cheapo Chinese amplifier on Amazon - The Lepai LP-2020A+ Amplifier, which costs only $20 and has a chip that shook the audiophile industry - The Tripath TA2020 Chip. This chip supposedly uses Class D amplification and delta sigma modulation. Result is crisp and clear sound. I am comparing the sound with my more expensive receiver from Marantz which costs 10 times more and found the Chinese amplifier sound better.
This amplifier is no bigger than a soap box, but the sound it produces is just awesome.
Try it if you get your hands on this.
Ever wondered what is actually high end? what differentiates it from most of the commercial stuff available in the market?
Well, Most of the high end stuff are expensive - many times than their commercial counterparts. It makes many believe that its just waste of money to buy stuff that expensive.
It depends on what your passions are.
I asked my friend once, which one would you go for: a 20 Mega-Pixel point and shoot or a 12 Megapixel DSLR. The answer was instantaneous - Point and shoot.
Well, the truth is he is not passionate about photography and needs a regular clicker. Does not want to invest a huge sum on cameras, and the marketing tags like megapixels mean a lot to him.
Audio is something very similar, Only if you are very passionate, then it would make sense in investing a lot otherwise you are either showing off or just believe expensive is better.
Is expensive always better?
It's a debatable question. Since Audio and quality is such a subjective field, it always leads to a great flame wars on which is better.
There is this American designer "Bob Carver" who created a stir in the audio industry in the 1980 and proved that Expensive is not always better.
Bob had challenged some very well known High End audio magazines that he can duplicate the sound of any amplifier at any price.
Two magazines had accepted his challenge.
First was the Audio Critic, asked him to copy the sound of Mark Levinson ML-2, then highly regarded amp and Bob was able to acoustically duplicate it's sound and sold the amp he made as M1.5t
Second was the Stereophile magazine and gave him an amp whose name was kept secret (Conrad-Johnson Premier Five) from Bob.
The challenge was to copy the sound in 48hrs without opening the amp.
The original amp was around $12,000+
Bob accepted the challenge and promptly copied the sound as agreed, only that his amp just costed $400.
In fact their sounds were so similar that the employees of the Stereophile magazine themselves were not able to make out which was the original amplifier.
What he did was simply copy the transfer function of the amp. He used two different amps with the same identical source and out of phase and tuned the second amp using distortion pots.
This brings the question, how should an amplifier sound?
Technically, it's easy, an amplifier should not have any sound of its own. The ouput should be exact same wave as the input only amplified.
This is rarely the case in practice. all amplifiers will introduce noise or distortion as we call it. and this has to be in acceptable limits.
But there are other things too... How should it handle the lows and highs?
all of these stuff are very subjective and depends on personal taste.
A very good example is the Valve or a Tube amplifier. These old and ancient amplifiers have a huge distortion introduced in the amplification stage. Supposedly these are pleasing on the ears and many prefer the sound of the tube amp. I am not denying that these amps are not faithful but are highly regarded by some. Others disagree.
These debates go on forever. Transistor vs Tubes vs Class-D amplifiers.
It's all subjective so I intend to make no personal choice.
However, I would like share a personal experience. I found an el-cheapo Chinese amplifier on Amazon - The Lepai LP-2020A+ Amplifier, which costs only $20 and has a chip that shook the audiophile industry - The Tripath TA2020 Chip. This chip supposedly uses Class D amplification and delta sigma modulation. Result is crisp and clear sound. I am comparing the sound with my more expensive receiver from Marantz which costs 10 times more and found the Chinese amplifier sound better.
This amplifier is no bigger than a soap box, but the sound it produces is just awesome.
Try it if you get your hands on this.
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