Do solid state amplifiers sound the same ?

[XTF1]

Your combative and unkind, almost hostile attitude also doesn't help too much. We simply live in two different realities. To me amps make the second biggest difference in the audio chain after headphones. If you can't hear that difference or consider it to be a fault, you are probably in the wrong hobby.

I have never been able to confirm a difference between two—well designed—headphone amps… So, I am in the wrong hobby: thanks for your peaceful & kind, almost friendly, attitude…

 

[betula]

I have never been able to confirm a difference between two—well designed—headphone amps… So, I am in the wrong hobby: thanks for your peaceful & kind, almost friendly, attitude…

Let me put it differently then: those who can't hear a difference between amplifiers have a smaller field to discover in this hobby.

 

[medon]

Oh dear, that’s priceless! Is it really possible that an engineer (as you’ve claimed) does not understand the basics of statistics?

Gregorio, relax.
Anything wrong with my interpretation of the significance between the two amps?
Don't generalize, stick with the statistics that concern these two amps.

 

[BS5711]

Let me put it differently then: those who can't hear a difference between amplifiers have a smaller field to discover in this hobby.

I started this thread to try and learn because my experience has been that with competent modern solid state amplifiers I believe I am hearing differences until I dig deeper to actually test if I do and then with reasonable testing methods the difference disappears.

Let’s say you have solid state amplifiers A and B and are comparing them with one of your ZMF headphones. I imagine like most normal people you start out by just listening to some music you enjoy that you think make good test tracks and see how things play out. You know what amplifier you are listening with at any given time.

Do you then proceed to do a blind volume matched test to confirm your sighted listening comparison or do you accept your comparison as the truth and move on and use the better sounding amplifier ?

 

[betula]

I started this thread to try and learn because my experience has been that with competent modern solid state amplifiers I believe I am hearing differences until I dig deeper to actually test if I do and then with reasonable testing methods the difference disappears.

Let’s say you have solid state amplifiers A and B and are comparing them with one of your ZMF headphones. I imagine like most normal people you start out by just listening to some music you enjoy that you think make good test tracks and see how things play out. You know what amplifier you are listening with at any given time.

Do you then proceed to do a blind volume matched test to confirm your sighted listening comparison or do you accept your comparison as the truth and move on and use the better sounding amplifier ?

I have recently tested two relatively good solid-state amplifiers at home: Schiit Mjolnir 3 and Flux Mentor. I can easily tell the difference between them anytime, volume matched and blindfolded.

 

[medon]

...
I understand I am at head-fi, I see a lot of nice equipment people have here. The idea of audiophile is to enjoy sounds, music but I feel like many of us are too much into the equipment rather than what we set out to enjoy.

... totally valid point, and probably I am guilty of it. Still, I enjoy listening to complete albums in my collection, mostly digital, but also vinyl.

 

[BS5711]

I have recently tested two relatively good solid-state amplifiers at home: Schiit Mjolnir 3 and Flux Mentor. I can easily tell the difference between them anytime, volume matched and blindfolded.

What differentiates them.

1. In their respective design.

2. In the sound you hear from each.


What about other amplifiers in general ?

How well volume matched do you achieve. I can hear differences in sound with a volume change that I can barely even hear as a genuine change in volume and that alone can skew the test results.

On the face of it differentiating between the above may be due to one of them being genuinely designed to have a point of difference for example. It may not indicate that you can differentiate most amplifiers in a wider sense. It could even be due to a subtle volume mismatch.

I am not trying to argue with you, just include detail for context.

 

[sander99]

I have recently tested two relatively good solid-state amplifiers at home: Schiit Mjolnir 3 and Flux Mentor. I can easily tell the difference between them anytime, volume matched and blindfolded.

Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding:
To be able to tell 2 amps apart "blind" means that you can identify which amp you are listening to just by the sound alone, so without knowing beforehand, without being told, without any other clues about which amp you are listening to. It is not about literally being blindfolded.

 

[betula]

What differentiates them.

1. In their respective design.

2. In the sound you hear from each.


What about other amplifiers in general ?

How well volume matched do you achieve. I can hear differences in sound with a volume change that I can barely even hear as a genuine change in volume and that alone can skew the test results.

On the face of it differentiating between the above may be due to one of them being genuinely designed to have a point of difference for example. It may not indicate that you can differentiate most amplifiers in a wider sense. It could even be due to a subtle volume mismatch.

I am not trying to argue with you, just include detail for context.

We were talking about sonic differences. If you are interested, in this post I shared a comparison between those solid-state amps versus my tube amp.
I owned several amplifiers in the past and to me they all had easily distinguishable, unique characters. Also, that seems to be the experience of the majority of users here.

With all respect and honesty, I don't feel too invested in this conversation. You guys will never convince me that green in fact is red, and I have no intention in trying to convince you that red is green. I simply entered the wrong street on the forums, apologies if hurt anyone's feelings. Live and let live is the phrase that comes to mind.

 

[BS5711]

We were talking about sonic differences. If you are interested, in this post I shared a comparison between those solid-state amps versus my tube amp.
I owned several amplifiers in the past and to me they all had easily distinguishable, unique characters. Also, that seems to be the experience of the majority of users here.

With all respect and honesty, I don't feel too invested in this conversation. You guys will never convince me that green in fact is red, and I have no intention in trying to convince you that red is green. I simply entered the wrong street on the forums, apologies if hurt anyone's feelings. Live and let live is the phrase that comes to mind.

That is absolutely fine with me.

I will say your early comment about 60 - 80 hours "burn in" completely cleaning up the harsh treble does go some way to reinforcing my assumptions about the technical detail used in the comparison and that same mindset may have followed over into the rest of the comparison process and therefore the technical validity of the results.

Or maybe it didn't, it is ridiculously difficult to know what is the wheat and what is the chaff in this hobby with so much nonsense stated as fact from people that trust their ears but don't acknowledge or understand that our ears are actually rather poor comparative tools.

 

[bigshot]

Sorry @gregorio and @Vamp898, it is just not a discussion I can take seriously. All amps sound the same? If I hear a difference that means the amp is faulty or poorly made? If I find an amp boring, that in fact means the headphones are boring (which are probably the most exciting sounding headphones I have ever heard). To me it is just utter BS and simply ridiculous. Like arguing with a blind man about the shade of blue you see on the sky. Or saying every violin sound the same because they have 4 strings.
I thought I am just leaving a random post in a random thread, haven't realised I am in the science section. (Almost as bad as ASR.) Put my hand in the wrong beehive, I guess. Your combative and unkind, almost hostile attitude also doesn't help too much. We simply live in two different realities. To me amps make the second biggest difference in the audio chain after headphones. If you can't hear that difference or consider it to be a fault, you are probably in the wrong hobby.

You can believe whatever you’d like to believe, but if you’re going to believe something that evidence indicates just isn’t true, you shouldn’t complain that people point out that you’re wrong. You have a whole forum at head-fi where you can say whatever you’d like without providing any support for what you say, yet you come into the one forum where we can ask for proof and do that. What do you expect?

 

[bigshot]

I have recently tested two relatively good solid-state amplifiers at home: Schiit Mjolnir 3 and Flux Mentor. I can easily tell the difference between them anytime, volume matched and blindfolded.

That’s better! You’ve actually done a test. Great.

This is interesting. I’ve got a few questions about your testing procedure… I’d appreciate as many details as you can provide. What transducer did you use? Are these amps or DAC/Amps? Did you insure that the signal processing (if any) was defeated? How did you level match? What was your switching set up? Do these two amps have the same impedance characteristics? How many trials did you do? Did you keep logs? What percentage of the time were you correct, and what percentage incorrect? When a test comes up with unexpected results, it’s interesting to me. I’d like to see if your controls were air tight and if so, if your test can be replicated and verified.

 

[castleofargh]

Sorry @gregorio and @Vamp898, it is just not a discussion I can take seriously. All amps sound the same? If I hear a difference that means the amp is faulty or poorly made? If I find an amp boring, that in fact means the headphones are boring (which are probably the most exciting sounding headphones I have ever heard). To me it is just utter BS and simply ridiculous. Like arguing with a blind man about the shade of blue you see on the sky. Or saying every violin sound the same because they have 4 strings.
I thought I am just leaving a random post in a random thread, haven't realised I am in the science section. (Almost as bad as ASR.) Put my hand in the wrong beehive, I guess. Your combative and unkind, almost hostile attitude also doesn't help too much. We simply live in two different realities. To me amps make the second biggest difference in the audio chain after headphones. If you can't hear that difference or consider it to be a fault, you are probably in the wrong hobby.

Look at the thread and see who is posting that all amps sound the same. Basically, it's you, the warriors who rise up to rightfully oppose that ludicrous claim. Which would be great if that battle wasn't made up in your head. Most of the people you argued with have, early in the thread, mentioned scenarios where they expected or felt audible changes.

So let's rewind:
-Someone posts about hearing differences between amps.
- a few, including me, react by saying that a sighted test is full of uncontrolled variables like the look of the amp, or perhaps volume level differences if not checked properly, opening the door to all sorts of psychological biases and false conclusions.
- some read those critics, and instead of having to deal with something fairly complicated to solve(i.e. set up a blind test to validate their belief), plus facing the prospect of cognitive dissonance, they turned the question into something like this: "I said it sounded different, and they oppose me, so they claim the opposite, they claim all amps sound the same. Problem solved, I win!".
That is not what we claim(I already said it several times), but you know what? That too is expected of a human brain.

This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

Daniel Kahneman



You guys can keep on having fun with false debates and distraction tactics. I'm bored now. To me, it's fairly obvious that the right options are to:
1/ get evidence before making statements about audibility.
or
2/ not bother with those annoying tests, have fun, and just be a more careful about not making claims you cannot support with evidence.

But of course you guys always want to have the cake and eat it too, make all the claims you like about sound without ever bothering to make sure you're not wrong. And we're the unreasonable ones for pointing out the obvious issue of you doing that.

That’s better! You’ve actually done a test. Great.

You think he did? I thought it was rhetorical, like "the difference is so obvious my wife could hear it blindfolded while solving a Rubik's cube underwater near the airport".

 

[medon]

Or maybe it didn't, it is ridiculously difficult to know what is the wheat and what is the chaff in this hobby with so much nonsense shred as fact from people that trust their ears but don't acknowledge or understand that our ears are actually rather poor comparative tools.

Here's Paul's take on the subject...

 

[BS5711]

I am sure there are exceptions to the rule and his monobloc amp might be an exception depending on the components, frankly that is above my pay grade.

I was using the other chaps comment about burn in as an indication of the mindset that his comparison was conducted under. It was an unsubstantiated claim that relies solely on the listeners perception that can not be relied on to be the same over that 60 - 80 hours. Where else did that sort of approach possibly affect the outcome ?