transistor amps are crap!

I have just picked up a lovely mint pioneer a300 precision from ebay for £130, and guess what??

Its ....



...quite good really, it can certainly hold its own on pop music, my cred is going to go out the window, but I have been trying it with Avril Lavigne and Tatu ( I was listening to some early genesis, rush and lindisfarne, on vinyl before, so street cred back up !!), and it sounds great, certainly not many percent points on the colloms scale different, enough almost to make high end futile.
Its most apparent on acoustic and orchestral, the valves seem more real, esp. strings, more vibrant and expressive, but the tranny is fine for most purposes, I quite like it. maybe new novelty.

 

I went from a Cyrus 3 amp which I liked a lot too a Cayin A-88T valve amp, and I do agree that on acoustic, vocal and simple orchestral stuff it does somehow sound more 'real'. The thing I noticed most was the treble, it was very smooth and yet crisp as the same time.

But I can't say it was that great, when it came to rock music, pop and complicated dynamic orchestral stuff it could not hold it like the Cyrus (even though it was more than twice the price). I found the valve amp just had too much distortion when it came to loud music. It just came across as sounding louder than it really was.. if you know what I mean - Making it hard to listen too.

So.. In the end I have found the perfect medium to be a valve pre-amp with transistor power-amps (active PMC speakers). This seems to work perfectly and if matched well you end up with the 'real' factor of valves and their lovely treble but with the bass, dynamics and the low distortion of transistor amps.

If you like valve amps, you should really try a valve pre with transistor powers.

Anyhoo, that was my experience, and now I am completely content with my setup! Yay!

 

yes certainly to me music is about enjoyability, and on fast music, transistors do seem to time better.
I think this is one of the reasons for the popularity of flat earth and naim...timing, it makes the music enjoyable and foot tapping...infections, the valves can be a little slow in comparison with rhythms and bass is a bit bloated, esp without feedback

 

Perhaps that depends on what valve amp you are using. I dont notice any slow or bloaty bass with mine. In fact it handles rhythms superbly and is more fleet of foot than my previous dpa amps and they were hardly slow.

Cheers, Robbo

 

I am sure, too as with everything it isn't so straightforward, it will also depend on other electronics, speakers, supports, and room interaction, hifi is truly not an island, its a community.

I have found to attempt to generalise, that valve amps seem to give more musical energy lower down, and transistor ones higher up, which makes them a little more fatiguing, and poss thinner sounding that the valves.

By energy, I mean listening to the music and hearing where the intensity of it lies, you can zero in on this, its not obvious, and its not the same as the most prominent character of the sound, ie what is brought to the fore. You have to listen inside, into the balance.

I have been thinking about something for a while, its a well known phenomenon that you get a real kick out of your first proper hifi, and try to get the same effect by upgrading, truly it becomes like a druggie getting a fix.

But what I have been finding, is that along with diminishing returns, some of the cheaper stuff is giving me real pleasure, and the expensive not always worth its salt, or gives grief.

So I am going to be a scientist and formulate an hypothesis, and a law, called datas first law of hifi

it goes ' the amount of pleasure you get from hifi is inversely proportional to its purchase price'

or in other words, I am considering downgrading and have gone cheap

 

IMO, you certainly have a point there. Thats not to say that there is not some very enjoyable, and pricey kit out there, but I think to my ears, some expensive kit really fails to turn my ears on with the sounds, there are some fairly cheap components out there which really boogy for the money, like my mates Pioneer A400, his Rega Ela's, my Rotel RA-01 and cheap headphones like the Beyer DT531's.

 

The same law can be applied to cars

It's fairly obvious really. The more you pay for something, the higher your expectations and the greater your disappoinment if the thing in question fails to meet those expectations.

This is why I always take car customer satisfaction surveys with a huge pinch of salt. When you see the likes or Proton and Hyundai (or even Skoda - sorry Paul ) coming in well above BMW, Mercedes, Audi, etc. then you have to ask 'Are those 'lesser' marques really delivering better quality and reliability and service or is it just that the expectations of the customers who buy those marques is lower than those of BMW or Mercedes buyers and so they are more easily satisfied?'

I very much enjoy the system I have now, but I sometimes sit and think what it cost and wonder whether I wouldn't have just as much use and pleasure out of a system costing a quarter or even a fifth of what I have now.

Afterall, my previous system did only cost a quarter of what the current one cost, but 95% of the time it was hugely enjoyable. Whilst the current system is much better, it's highly debatable whether it was really worth the cost.

 

I think your spot on about car survey's Chris. Owners of luxury marques like BMW, Merc etc are simply harder to please. I think even the "faults per car per year" statistics are skewed for the same reason. Where a Mercedes owner might call a small rattle in the glovebox or slightly lose bit of trim in the boot a "fault" a Toyota owner is likely to take that as par for the course.

Michael.

 

But dont knock em till you've tried em Remember, Skodas are VW's with a different badge!!

 

This is why Vauxhall's (Vecta's and the like) always do so much worse than BMW, AUDI, SKODA etc. Simply more people have these as company cars and are much more likely to critisise every conceivable small problem.

You just need to compare it to a £130 valve amp now to make it a fair match!

 

Perhaps Vauxhalls do worse because they are crap

 

There is no perhaps

 

How did a thread titled ''transistor amps are crap'? become a discussion of the problems of valve amps?!?!! lolol! that makes me laugh.

For what its worth, IMHO there is no such thing as a typical valve amp, or transistor, or digital amp. There is good / bad / indifferent everything. Strengths and weaknesses vary so much from amp to amp aswell.

Tightness at frequency extremes is for example a strength of the Graaf Gm20/100, Border Patrol 300BSE and others.. yet is supposed to be the weakness of valve amps (?).




NB My company car is a Vauxhall, and its incredibly reliable, if a little dull........ Nothing dull about a VX220 TURBO though..... vroooom 0-60 in 4.2!

 

My next car is a Skoda Octavia VRS estate...
Bike magazine called them "a car to watch if you're racing it round the twisties"!
Not only that, you can get a sofa in the boot, and carry your ladders, as well as drive up our hill in the snow..

Had no troubles with any of my previous Skodas either - a Felicia, 4 Favorits and an Estelle (which wasn't a VW by any stretch of the imagination..) - though I've seen quite a few broken down Mercs recently - mainly A and C class..

BTW, my valve amps have no trouble with bass speed and depth - they just have that little bit more than my stand-by MF B200.

 

It doesn't take much to realise that cars are not much different from hifi.

both are predominantly male dominated, both are incredibly snobbish pursuits, apparently the uk is the most car snobbish country in the world, that is also true of houses, and probably hifi, people change cars all the time, they have really polarised views on them, brand alliegences, bmws arouse similar passions to naim, you can tweak and upgrade, there is an initial honeymoon, followed by familiarity and then dissatisfaction when things go wrong, you can spend shit loads, then realise that the cheaper ones are quite adequate, you don't need a £40, 000 car, when a £5k one will suffice, again its about needs rather that desires, we all want that krell amp or top of the range ferrari, but its not essential, a rotel, or ford would simply do the job, that is really all a car is for, transport, as hifi is for music.

My explanation for diminishing returns is quite simple, having studied amp design a little, they are all bascially the same topolgy, with a few variations, they all have 3 stages, input, volt gain and current gain, and with 'real' hifi , say £200+, they all use quality transistors, and the differences are with the power supply and the power output by and large, so you still get the same kind of audio path, which has a big bearing. So you can get great hifi for £a few hundred each.
In hifi it is failry true to say you don't always get what you pay for. Which goes against some of my deepest held notions. I like quality. Not designer quality, just good stuff, and I abhor cheapness, cos it gives grief and you have to pay again to get the job done properly, in everything

 

Funny you say that, I took my vRS up the A686 last week, where there is a lot of twisties, and also a lot of bikes. The bikes could gain on me a bit on the straights, but when it came to the twisties, they were positively holding me up In fact, one bike who tried his best to shake me for about 10 minutes gave up and just let me past in the end

 

Afternoon All

Ltd Cdr Data said:

Excellent points IMHO, that I tend to agree with.

Snobbishness and notions of 'class' and 'quality' go hand in hand with cars and HiFi, all fueled by the marketing machine, spinning their dreams and notions of desirability to punters with deep wallets

MOSTLY, one gets what one pays for, however, over the years that I've been involved with HiFi, and now broadening that interest out to encompass HT, the game seems to be even worse in that arena. Whilst I would think the underlying engineering quality and attention to detail of cars and amplifiers is generally better for the higher priced products, you pay heavily for that difference, indeed if it is really real, as against just perceived.

IMV the differences with cars are more to do with perceptions of quality based upon the interior presentation, look of the car, and reputation combined with image, rather than any easily explainable engineering advantage. Especially as vehicles of similar size and weight often have very similar performance, albeit a big difference re the image and associated price tag. Slightly off topic, but here in OZ, Wheels mag recently did an comparo between a Ford Falcon, BMW 5 series, and E Class Merc. On things like room, ride, handling, acceleration etc there was little in it. The Falcon as tested was around the $50k mark, and the Germans $100k plus. Ford of AUS shipped a Falcon for testing over to Europe, and Autocar described it as a E39 5 series for UK 20k pounds. Here, it's seen as a basic family saloon, and not within coo-ee of a BMW.

Similar arguments, points of comment can be made about amplifier brands IMHO as well.

I own a Naim 2 channel system, it is nice, and I wouldn't change it, whilst appreciating that at that level of quality, things are usually different, rather than better between competing brands, and that tastes as to presentation are pretty much subjective.

In terms of my interest in music, I don't regret having paid the price necessary to get that level of performance, as after many years of being involved in music and hifi, one's tastes need a certain level of quality to gain satisfaction. One becomes more particular, and used to a level of performance. I could listen to cheaper kit, but I doubt that I'd get the same satisfaction or use out of it, especially if it had 'flaws' that intruded upon my sense of disbelief and involvment with the listening/musical experience.

Having said that, IMHO the difference between the upper end mainstream of Pioneer, Denon, Sony, Rotel etc, and the so-called high end specialist, is becoming ever smaller. Again, one may gain a little more from the specialist product perhaps, be it sound, apparent build quality (who amongst us are electronic 'experts' able to tell the quality of internal components - some, sure, but not most of us) service etc, but often it's just as much that indefinable 'aura' of 'class' or being 'special' which is where again the marketing and snobbish thing comes into play with HiFi IMHO.

I read the other day a quick review by Alvin Gold in a Malaysian mag of the latest Digital Sony receiver, the DA-9000ES, and it's companion SACD player, and he opinioned it was the BEST digital amplifier he'd ever heard. As usual, one takes reviews with several grains of salt, however I also note US enthusiasts selling their much more expensive Audio Research amps to buy the Sony, because it arguably sounds as good, offers DD, DTS decoding etc, and costs heaps less.

I guess it interests me, as I see digital amplification as possibly being the next big thing in HiFi, and because after extensive and exhaustive auditioning I went with some Sony ES series AV components a while back for AV/HT duties.

Of friends who have heard it, most are astonished at how good it sounds. The reason, is mostly given as something along the lines of "I didnt know Sony made gear like this" or "How come it sounds so good when it's only a Sony?", and even when discussing it amongst others, sight and sound unseen, remarks like "it couldn't possibly be as good as a TAG, Meridian, or Naim processor, because it's SONY!

I mean sight & sound unseen, dismissed out of hand, basically because of brand and image. This has been a very powerful lesson for me as to the power of brand image and marketing v's reality.

One wonders if the Lexus, made by Toyota would have been as succesful today as it is, if it had been marketed purely as a Toyota.

Somehow I don't think so.

So I'm sticking with my Naim, but the days of my youth where I lusted after the very 'best' or rather perceived best, and lived with the extreme price tags are mostly over, as one can get so close, for so much less money. Which in turn improves the quality of life in other areas.

Years ago, I shared a flat with some friends, one of whom owned a Sony amp. I never thought much of it, not because it sounded bad, but again, because it's image was only that of 'a Sony'

Times change, and I've learned my lesson, particularly with regards to AV, and the snake oil of marketing.

Sorry about the rant

Cheers

John...

 

It is also common that people that cannot afford it, or have other priorities, say that expensive stuff is not worth it... :latte:

 

Lowrider, it blatantly is NOT worth it (in terms of VFM). However, I am not denying that I would buy expensive toys if I could afford.

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... By the way, I much preferred your previous avatar... :boughtMF:

If I could afford a Porsche, it would be great VFM for me, not the Valhalla cables though... :tempted: