olderroust
AK Member
Just a quick note on the 'there is no difference' argument being made: what Arnie's argument comes down to is that there are few reviews that do real measurements of amps. Reviewers do tend to spend more time than I like talking about amps as if they were wines. Still, the lack of current bench measurements to capture something does not mean it doesn't exist.
Arnie makes essentially the same argument about DACs: once DACs are good, they are indistinguishable in the parts of the signal that amplifiers work with and speakers make audible. Yet there are measurable differences even between what are (by reputation) very good DACs. There are measured and quite large differences between the Peachtree DAC-IT and the Auralic DAC. In Stereophile's measurement of the spectrum of 50Hz sinewave signal, DC–1kHz, at 0dBFS the differences between the two DACs are clearly above the noise floor of most amps. In other tests on the two which Stereophile performed, they had to use completely different parameters to test the DacIT because their standard parameters gave meaningless results.
I would be very interested to hear whether there's an objective measurement that can distinguish between the ability of different speakers to create a coherent image. I tend to think there isn't one at this time - but that certainly doesn't mean there couldn't be one. I get the impression there isn't one, because I haven't seen one used.
That certainly doesn't mean there aren't differences in that ability, but that measuring it in a useful way is hard. I think we've all listened to speakers that sound very good but don't image well. And others that sound ok at best, overemphasizing chunks of sound - and yet image surprisingly well.
Right now, I have an NAD 2600 amp and a BK 1400 amp and I would say that side by side, given the rest of my equipment, they are about neck-and-neck. But I agree with Arnie that it's very challenging to listen to the amps objectively - even a db or so of difference in sound output, while not making a speaker sound louder makes that speaker sound better. A test of different speakers fired by different amps drawing from the same source? It's a harder test to do than I understood.
I'm reading up on the Rotel 1570 because it looks like a nice step up from the NAD (at considerable price!) while retaining a lot of what I find convenient about it, including
- the option to drive four speakers
- the ability to drive a sub with volume controlled from the main amplification
The onboard DAC is a very nice option to add, and there's a preference for a high quality integrated over separates being expressed by She Who Also Gets a Vote.
For those who are familiar with the Rotel line, though, a question: Rotel has a set of very nice integrated amps. At the price of the 1570, there are some other excellent pieces of equipment - how well does the amp hold up in comparison
- to its competition
- to its smaller Rotel siblings, assuming I can do with 60 watts into 8 ohms?
- what else would you recommend I listen to?
Most of the input will be coming via fiber from an Oppo 103, a mix of CD, streaming from the (very nice) digitalconcerthall and flac and mp3 streaming from a NAS.
Arnie makes essentially the same argument about DACs: once DACs are good, they are indistinguishable in the parts of the signal that amplifiers work with and speakers make audible. Yet there are measurable differences even between what are (by reputation) very good DACs. There are measured and quite large differences between the Peachtree DAC-IT and the Auralic DAC. In Stereophile's measurement of the spectrum of 50Hz sinewave signal, DC–1kHz, at 0dBFS the differences between the two DACs are clearly above the noise floor of most amps. In other tests on the two which Stereophile performed, they had to use completely different parameters to test the DacIT because their standard parameters gave meaningless results.
I would be very interested to hear whether there's an objective measurement that can distinguish between the ability of different speakers to create a coherent image. I tend to think there isn't one at this time - but that certainly doesn't mean there couldn't be one. I get the impression there isn't one, because I haven't seen one used.
That certainly doesn't mean there aren't differences in that ability, but that measuring it in a useful way is hard. I think we've all listened to speakers that sound very good but don't image well. And others that sound ok at best, overemphasizing chunks of sound - and yet image surprisingly well.
Right now, I have an NAD 2600 amp and a BK 1400 amp and I would say that side by side, given the rest of my equipment, they are about neck-and-neck. But I agree with Arnie that it's very challenging to listen to the amps objectively - even a db or so of difference in sound output, while not making a speaker sound louder makes that speaker sound better. A test of different speakers fired by different amps drawing from the same source? It's a harder test to do than I understood.
I'm reading up on the Rotel 1570 because it looks like a nice step up from the NAD (at considerable price!) while retaining a lot of what I find convenient about it, including
- the option to drive four speakers
- the ability to drive a sub with volume controlled from the main amplification
The onboard DAC is a very nice option to add, and there's a preference for a high quality integrated over separates being expressed by She Who Also Gets a Vote.
For those who are familiar with the Rotel line, though, a question: Rotel has a set of very nice integrated amps. At the price of the 1570, there are some other excellent pieces of equipment - how well does the amp hold up in comparison
- to its competition
- to its smaller Rotel siblings, assuming I can do with 60 watts into 8 ohms?
- what else would you recommend I listen to?
Most of the input will be coming via fiber from an Oppo 103, a mix of CD, streaming from the (very nice) digitalconcerthall and flac and mp3 streaming from a NAS.
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