How do I compare transient speeds of two receivers?

[OrangeStar257]

I have seen reviewers saying words like "fast" or "very fast" when describing a sound of an audio gear, yet I feel like I haven't heard the word "slow" in a review.

But...

But, everything is relative. right?
It really doesn't makes sense, if everything sounds fast and tight.


How do I know which one is faster when I compare two different receivers?
I can easily notice a difference in sound signature,
but when it comes to transient speed, I just cant...

 

[gregorio]

I have seen reviewers saying words like "fast" or "very fast" when describing a sound of an audio gear, yet I feel like I haven't heard the word "slow" in a review.

Audiophile reviews are often full of flowery language, some of it is quite common audio descriptions, some of it you can work out but some of it doesn't seem to make any sense at all. By this I mean that although it appears to make sense to other audiophiles, it doesn't appear to relate to any audio property but only to some marketing induced placebo effect.

Maybe someone else has a rational explanation for this term but the likely candidates as far as I'm aware (such as transient rise time and/or driver overshoot for example) don't really apply to most of the audio chain, just the transducers.

G

 

[kumar402]

I haven’t seen a review where a reviewer hasn’t used the term” Fast and snappy” or Transients are fast and it always makes me wonder if everything has fast transient

 

[whitedragem]

I have seen reviewers saying words like "fast" or "very fast" when describing a sound of an audio gear, yet I feel like I haven't heard the word "slow" in a review.

But...

But, everything is relative. right?
It really doesn't makes sense, if everything sounds fast and tight.


How do I know which one is faster when I compare two different receivers?
I can easily notice a difference in sound signature,
but when it comes to transient speed, I just cant...

Back when the hifi market was ‘two channel only’, there were a lot of measurements regarding amplifiers that actually told ‘the whole truth’ regarding what we needed to read/see when looking at spec sheets.
As the world suffered financial crises (plural of crisis?), generally companies ‘tighten their belts’ and things are built to a lower price point so as ‘not to jack up retail prices in an affected sales market’.
Each time this has happened, audio kit has generally done two things:
A) gone up in cost for equal performance
B) price remains the same, but the performance is ‘lowered’.

So a lot of those honest spec sheets lost crucial specs like ’slew rate’ and ‘damping factor’ as they could often reveal that compromises had been made ‘along the way’.
As an example of the ‘recent global economic shift’; a bunch of manufacturers approached the ‘standards governing’ body.. (I don’t recall the name for this department overseas…but it is the ‘regulators’ if you will, that ensure that the specifications mean something.
What the manufacturers wanted was to ‘not to have to hold the peak power for any extended amount of time’ when doing benchmark testing for ‘spec sheet’ making.
This would mean that they could spend a lot less on heat sinks (a large part of an amplifiers cost’) etc.. and the spec sheet would look identical to ‘previous years parts’ ( they just might draw more power from the wall under peak extended load, or worse, ‘crap out’ and/or likely hurt speakers ……..

My point being is that parts just don’t show a lot of the measurements that we used to have access to.

Class A amps push on the up and down of the cycle, vs Class AB amps that are only driving ‘half the time’ (my terms here are poorly describing, apols), and so it stands to reason that some amplifiers will have MUCH BETTER DRIVER CONTROL.
Damping factor was a measurement of ‘driver control’; which typical to biamping, the amp with the better damping factor might do better for the large bass drivers…
Slew Rate was another measurement of amplifier responsiveness or ‘speed’…

These things matter…
regarding ‘transient speed’, some DAC circuits butcher this aspect of sound, and an amp in the modern world that is ClassD and ‘built for Spec sheet warring’ might not actually be so amazing when stacked up against amps that are highly capable regarding many specifications (even the ‘esoteric‘ ones long forgotten)

I have heard great amps, and, sadly, cannot stand >75% of ’modern world amps’.
Many shops that sell hifi, simply are not worth entering, for me (for amplifiers), as I can not ‘turn off’ decades of owning nice kit… I basically have to go to boutique hifi stores, and to be honest, I am not paying ‘modern world prices’ for what I can find second hand for peanuts if I have the patience.

attack me for my arrogance if you want- (bearer of bad news; I get it…) but for those who realise my intention here, you may have just gained an incredible truth, freely given, that MAY save you a lot of investment to achieve ‘big ticket sound’. (most people who reach this ‘golden nugget‘ of understanding keep it ‘well guarded’ (so the second hand market doesn’t diminish ‘even quicker’).

I suppose if we looked at speakers ‘through the ages’; 16ohm becoming 8ohm becoming 6 ohm becoming 4ohm etc.. the electronics hobbyists are probably realising there is a lot of ways to make the spec sheet look good/better than ‘last years part’ without actually making a better product.
Since consumers buy ‘based on spec sheets’ (and the spec sheets are EASILY MANIPULATED and seldom hold ‘the whole truth’, where we used to have all sorts of measurements that correlated to each other… and could substantiate much solidarity of the parts in question..)

‘Speed of a system‘ as a concept, does mean something, whether this is flowery to some people I cannot help.
I understand that some ’new to the hobby’ question statements like ’one note bass’, which, when home theatre subwoofers came to market (previously subwoofers were ‘built for music’) they magically were capable of ‘one note bass’ delivery. Musical capability was considered ‘low’ but it didn’t matter; when the big explosion goes off at ‘the end of the movie’ the subwoofer could render ‘a big bass note’.
Most of the language garners meaning when you live and breathe this stuff (ie reading from the pro journalists that have been doing this ‘since the seventies/eighties’ as a great example.
A significant amount of ‘the internet viewerbase’ has not really learned from their forebears.. (and often are keen to convince themselves/others that their new $200 ‘toy’ (be it a phone or a computer etc) is the best ever, and that ‘the spec sheet shows that’.

Manufacturers figured out ‘a long time ago’ that most consumers are yellow belt or ‘white belt’ level shoppers. (we know just enough to really get ourselves ‘into trouble’)
We head off to the shop knowing that oled is the best.. but then we see pled and qled, and ‘o’ is soo much earlier in the alphabet, surely those ‘newer TV types are’ way better.
They aren’t LCD (I was told to avoid LCD and get plasma or oled) so they buy the pled or qled display cause the spec sheet doesn’t mention Liquid Crystal Display, it is a Light Emitting Diode display (for the backlight).
How many people do you know who bought a ‘LED’ TV believing it wasn’t an LCD TV?
The point is,.. back when spec sheets actually told us useful stuff and weren’t just ‘highly manipulated pieces of prose’.. (like todays 100Watt 7.1 channel surround amp (100Watts, from 4 ohm speakers, driving ‘only two channels’ for only five seconds, measured ONLY at 1khz etc etc.)(not the same as 100watts with 160 watts dynamic power(peak) driving 8 ohms speakers ‘full range 20-20khz,’all channels driven’ etc..) (either example can shuffle numbers around and hit whatever ‘distortion figure’ they want to offer on the spec sheet)

A great reviewer might save writing a full history of hifi evolution and explanation that goes on to explain why an amp is ‘quick’ (Class A perhaps?), and simply use ‘flowery language’. (those in ‘the know’ know what is being said and need know no more..)

I guess we just need find reviewers that suit our personal hifi paradigm. (we generally see what we want to see; observation bias works ‘both ways’, and the so called ‘unaffected’ are ‘just as deeply affected by bias, they just think their bias is ‘fact’)
like me, when writing this. ( I am actually a penguin and don’t have full grasp of what is happening to me.. “ why is my arm floating off into space “)


Arthur: Its times like these I wish I‘d listened to what my mother said when I was a child..
Ford: Why, what did she say?
Arthur: I don’t know - I DIDN’T LISTEN!

all opinions given are mine and mine only. any relation to real people or real world events are purely coincidental and should be dismissed (and discouraged).

 

[whitedragem]

As an quick and easy example.. This is the spec sheet from one of the most budget amps that many people champion.
When they came to market, their best feature was ‘low price’.
These are a ‘budget’ amplifier part.
About a year before this my old faithful (reference) Sansui Au919 was born. (it was at the opposite end of the market) I won’t place its’ spec sheet up,.. but needless to say it has measurements for ‘slew rate’ etc.

You might notice that the ‘super budget’ amp above, gives double the rated performance as headroom (twenty years later half as much ‘headroom’ was ‘top of the line’).
Little things like ‘driving 2 ohm loads’ (notice what happens to the listed wattage as we use ‘lower ohm’ measurements?)
Quite a few interesting things on this spec sheet, many of which I had no idea meant anything until I bought a Musical Fidelity XA1 (their most budget amp…)

Quite often the ‘devil is in the details’; I have never heard an amp ‘faster’ than the aforementioned Sansui Au919.
I have always associated that with the slew rate measurement, mostly cause my ‘service tech’ explained what it meant….
An open mind has done me wonders in this hobby.
Little by little the ‘scientist’ in me grows profoundly… usually by ‘letting go of the rope’.


-=edit=- oh yeah.. those NAD3020 amps lit up a ‘watt meter’ to show how many watts you were using…
In many years of using it, I lit up the 3watt light a handful of times…
Mostly I peaked at ‘near 1 watt’. (the light would flick ‘super briefly’ during rock crescendos when jamming out)
Most of the modern flagship receivers I pick up wouldn’t put out ‘significantly more power’; ie the flagship Onkyo/Integra TxDS989 has been measured around 26watts per channel (all channels driver). It is a THX Ultra surround amp that weights a ‘good bit’ and has been hand tuned by the engineers to sound great (it was a flagship). It is one of the few receivers I have ever heard that can render rock music right.
Its why after a certain amount of play with a ‘given tier of kit’, going backwards isn’t desirable.
For the last fifteen years I have generally run processors and a pile of power amps if needed. (Rotel amps generally have great damping factor, as budget amps go…)

 

[gregorio]

These things matter…
regarding ‘transient speed’, some DAC circuits butcher this aspect of sound

Really, which DACs “butcher this aspect of sound”? Just one or two examples will do, along with reliable evidence of course!

Similar thing with amps, even relatively cheap ones provide decent enough slew rates to have no audible impact.

Your post appears to corroborate my impression of the term in my previous post, essentially it’s an audiophile nonsense/placebo term.

G

 

[whitedragem]

Really, which DACs “butcher this aspect of sound”? Just one or two examples will do, along with reliable evidence of course!

Similar thing with amps, even relatively cheap ones provide decent enough slew rates to have no audible impact.

Your post appears to corroborate my impression of the term in my previous post, essentially it’s an audiophile nonsense/placebo term.

G

Yes,yes your phenomenological reality is more qualitative that mine. Well done.
’decent enough slew rates to have no audible impact’ (I agree with this statement more than you could know.. it actually makes me chuckle. No audible impact on me (emotional impact / substitute a range of ‘non logic’ ‘non science’ ‘nonsense’ here…. )

I am sorry I must have posted in the science threads; Damn gotta remember to avoid those dingy dark back alleys filled with bullies and societally challenged types who ‘know more than the world combined’ (and need to hang in groups of other ‘dismissives’ who reject observable phenomena because humans are not scientific in their observation (humans have a billion different interpretations of the world, and science requires 100% repeatability, so ‘science’ we are not… .

C’mon.. why would I argue with the sorts of people who dismiss that a conductor can hear better than the ‘average person’.
Why would I not enjoy lossless redbook audio because Mr Jones at 37 Whitehall road thought that the ‘louder’ Mp3 version of a track was ’better’ in a random investigation to audio myths…

bias cuts both ways.. humans observe what we want- our brains can literally hold on to much data that supports any random theory.
’world is flat’ (it was to ‘us’ for thousands of years!)

In the last three days I have found two paragraphs from high level engineers (from some of the big/best audio companies) explaining a lot to do with DAC circuits. Given I have ‘hundreds of pages’ to sort through in my history, many of them requiring twenty minutes of reading in an attempt to refind a fact, that I don’t need, and you won’t listen to… (why should I bother)..

Oh thats right, ‘sound science’ demands I revolutionised scientific thinking in order to establish what many hold as truth, to be ‘accepted fact’. Hmm (not really interested to do that, cause, um,.. I have ‘video games’(want to wash hair/want to peel vegetables/insert random ‘anything‘ here))

In an attempt at a legitimate answer (that I know you/‘others’ will dismiss outright) the notion was that the DAC circuit (not DAC chips as clearly people are emotional about this stuff…) could do a lot that would lead to smearing of the digital information, to such an extent that transient peaks could easily be destroyed (held too long, as an example).

Regarding DAC families, sure, the ESS design, built to do sample rate matching at the input stage, may have had some factors associated with it, that depending on the clock timing, could easily lead to phase errors or some such.
To be honest I don’t scour the internet looking for information A, only to have to provide proof of information B (that was gleamed along the way) to random others.
If I had hindsight to this I would have taken the three screen grabs AND recorded which web domains served them….
clearly my scientific research isn’t as good as ‘yours’, and I am happy to report ‘good for you’ that modern slew rates and ‘whatever spec sheet’ number we care to throw around, are all ‘good enough’ (given that is what spec sheets are built to show.. hence why all the data that isn’t ‘good enough’ not making it onto the spec sheet.
To go back to the original post (a polite person whom I am happy to write for…), nobody says ‘this amp is slow’. (we generally praise the ‘good aspects’, ay?!)


WB : SE (written by : someone else) (my science stems from the same place, uses the same principles and researches from the same wellspring of information. maybe my blinkers were accidentally ‘left off’)

this screen grab is of no reference to ‘anyone else’; I get it… but it was one of three pages, by the three big ‘clock chip’ manufacturers, that had many ‘examples’ of correct implementation etc.
I enjoy such reading as it often lists the difficulties to overcome, and the various ways to circumvent a challenge.

I don’t need the sample rate conversion that ESS DAC chips are built, from the ground up, to do the moment the data enters ‘their domain’. The disadvantages that this causes for them in other aspects is ‘significant’ but fortunately doesn’t get measured in ‘science’ benchmarking. (so it doesn’t exist, then, obviously)

 

[gregorio]

bias cuts both ways.. humans observe what we want- our brains can literally hold on to much data that supports any random theory.
’world is flat’ (it was to ‘us’ for thousands of years!)

What has human observations and the problems of biases got to do with any of this? We can easily, objectively and extremely accurately measure transient response.

Oh thats right, ‘sound science’ demands I revolutionised scientific thinking in order to establish what many hold as truth, to be ‘accepted fact’.

What “many”? The “many” audiophiles deluded by marketing BS?

Using your own analogy, many hold as truth that the earth is flat. For their ‘accepted fact’ to actually be true would require “revolutionised scientific thinking” are you really putting yourself and other audiophiles in the same boat as flat earthers?

In an attempt at a legitimate answer (that I know you/‘others’ will dismiss outright) the notion was that the DAC circuit (not DAC chips as clearly people are emotional about this stuff…) could do a lot that would lead to smearing of the digital information, to such an extent that transient peaks could easily be destroyed (held too long, as an example).

That’s an extremely poor “attempt at a legitimate answer” as it’s pretty easy to take some digital recordings of transients, pass them through a DAC and then compare with the original input (using a null test for example). Destroyed or “held too long” transient peaks would stick out like a sore thumb.

A good attempt at a legitimate answer would be to provide an example or two with reliable/objective evidence, as already requested.

Your failure to provide any reliable evidence, just more audiophile nonsense/rhetoric, serves ONLY to corroborate my take on this nonsense audiophile term even further!!

G

 

[bigshot]

This flat out isn't anything anyone would need to worry about, but that doesn't mean that there aren't nutjobs writing long rambling posts worrying about it as we speak.

 

[The Jester]

Maybe one of the review team could chime in with commonly used terms or phrases used to try and describe sound via the written word ?
Trying to review an audio component by writing about it is a little like a wine taster trying to describe taste, they too have their own “flowery prose” to try and convey an opinion that appears totally foreign to those who may only occasionally enjoy a wine with a meal,
“A dry white wine with fish” … surely wine being a liquid it would be wet ?
“This Red is really full bodied in comparison” …. Both bottles weigh the same ?

 

[bigshot]

Home audio is about fidelity to the source, not personal taste. There's no objective standard for wine, so it isn't a good comparison. The best way to describe sound is how it deviates from clean and balanced.

 

[The Jester]

Surely “clean and balanced” is an opinion that can deviate from listener to listener if there’s no reference point to the original source, as in comparing the sound of one system or component to another, or several others ?

 

[bigshot]

Again, we are talking about fidelity to the source, not the personal taste of the listener. A CD contains an audio signal in PCM format. A DAC converts that file to an analog signal. The difference between the signal before conversion and after conversion would determine how accurate the fidelity is. An amplifier takes that signal and increases the gain, hopefully without altering it. Again, if the signal is the same only louder, that is accurate fidelity. That all falls within measurable benchmarks for fidelity-- you have frequency response, signal to noise, distortion and timing error. If all of those aspects of sound reproduction are within the thresholds of human hearing, then you have perfect sound to human ears. Unless you are a bat or a dog, that should be acceptable fidelity for anyone.

 

[The Jester]

Going back to the OP,
He states “I can easily hear the difference in sound signature” talking about two different receivers,
Which one is closer to the source ?
Easy, the one that measures closest to a “straight wire with gain”,
So the easy answer to the original question is measure it ?

 

[bigshot]

Probably neither of them because he hasn't calibrated the tone controls to balanced flat output. The zero detent on receivers isn't necessarily accurate. He also might not have done a controlled comparison with level matching, direct A/B switching and blind testing, so bias may be responsible for it too.

Both receivers are most likely capable of putting out clean and balanced sound, as long as they are implemented properly with compatible speakers and wires.