Bonified, Certified High Quality Amps

[Macklessdaddy 10+ year member]

I have Tru amps. They are not the same.

nice to know,but they still sound just like the Cadence I'm using but you do have 1 thing over my amps and that is bragging rights because you must be a baller to have tru amps

 

[ciaonzo 5,000+ posts]

It is laughable to say that there is no difference to be heard among amplifiers. If you feel that way, you have a long way to progress in the field of audio.

 

[mokedaddy 5,000+ posts]

It is laughable to say that there is no difference to be heard among amplifiers. If you feel that way, you have a long way to progress in the field of audio.

This.

:waits for inevitable and very misunderstood mentioning of the RC challenge:

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/popcorn.gif.32dd9e22fd77e77bc3c907062768fcd2.gif

 

[mcsoul 10+ year member]

I like my Audisons (older Lrx), but they do get hot.

Install has a lot to do with it, in that mine kinda *****

in terms of heat dissipation. They do sound sweet though.

 

[MakeshiftAudio 10+ year member]

Fail thread is fail, simply because cleansoundz is trying to give his opinion. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/rolleyes.gif.c1fef805e9d1464d377451cd5bc18bfb.gif

 

[Fiercetimbo17 10+ year member]

Rockford sundown and other brands that have been mentioned a good amps, however I would never compare them to a Mcintosh audison zapco tru or any of the kind.

 

[Macklessdaddy 10+ year member]

the people in here saying there is a difference are ones who owns those brands of amplifiers and has to justify the stupid amount of money they spent or they just want to think they are special because they hear a difference.

 

[twistedchild420 5,000+ posts]

the people in here saying there is a difference are ones who owns those brands of amplifiers and has to justify the stupid amount of money they spent or they just want to think they are special because they hear a difference.

This is true,that's why Hifonics is the best!

 

[ninjawhiteboy12 10+ year member]

ROFL!
Yeah, add sony too then //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crazy.gif.c13912c32de98515d3142759a824dae7.gif

Most of what was mentioned (minus retard up above).

Tru is great stuff, Mcintosh, Audison (not the newer commercial stuff). Linear...old school PPI XTANT

Really though, you need to be doing everything right in order to make these amps worth the money. If you are not going with good quality speakers, tuning it correctly etc, just get a very good amp (RF and MTX do fall into that) and you will have your power that you require.

This usually turns into an argument because "amps do not add any SQ" which is very VERY true. A good amp adds as little as possible to the source, high quality amps just add less and may be closer to the reference as well as usually have better service if things go wrong (even the best have problems, just comes down to how quickly the problems are resolved)

So you are saying that NO amplifier will give you any better SQ? Can you explain more please I have heard many different things on this subject, and am very interested, Thanks

 

[mcsoul 10+ year member]

Not everyone pays retail or buys new.

 

[Pl8er 5,000+ posts]

nice to know,but they still sound just like the Cadence I'm using but you do have 1 thing over my amps and that is bragging rights because you must be a baller to have tru amps

I think you need to read my initial post. I concur that you can get to the same sound using any amplifier. It all really comes down to preprocessing and tuning. The great thing about high end amplification is that they allow for a bit more slack on that end as most of us do not have the qualifications to achieve this.

What I'm basically saying is that if you were to swap out the Cadence with my Tru would you hear differences? Yes, I believe you would. Efficiency, the upgrades to my amp and the design of the amp will add or not add things to the sound. This is of course me assuming your setup is properly tuned, your soundstage is correctly setup, etc.

Bragging rights has nothing to do with it. I buy Tru amps for the exact same reason that I ride Ducati's. Are they the best? Not by any means, but they offer the highest level of cost-to-performance that I can personally afford. I want something that will perform to the best of it's abilities over a very long duration of time. I do not like to worry about reliability.

To the OP's original question though, a high-end amp will usually have WAY more TLC involved. The quality process is higher, the amount of time spent checking each thing is also longer. This is (normally) why high end products cost more. Sure the components are more than likely better (like how I'm keeping this generic LOL) and they are closer to the original with tighter specifications, but the real cost is the manpower involved and the equipment, etc. Look at Mcintosh's sound labs and you can easily see why the price the charge is justifiable.

 

[ciaonzo 5,000+ posts]

the people in here saying there is a difference are ones who owns those brands of amplifiers and has to justify the stupid amount of money they spent or they just want to think they are special because they hear a difference.

I have an amplifier that costs about half the price of another and it sounds leaps and bounds better so that theory is ******** as well.

What you fail to realize is that it's not just the amplifier. It's the partnership of the amplifier, the driver, and even the cable between them. And that's just on the outgoing end of the amplifier. Some amplifiers use different topologies and will sound different based on that alone. Some amplifiers sound better than others because of the distortion they create or don't create. Some amplifiers are voltage sources and some are current sources. A driver is reactive and different ones will make an amplifier behave differently based on their unique profiles. Cables have different capacitive, inductive, and resistive properties that will also cause the amplifier to behave differently, yielding a unique presentation no matter how subtle. Some cables have such low inductance that the capacitance becomes too high for some amplifiers and thus unusable for some. With all of these variables, how could they not sound different?

And I didn't use a single number to try to convince you. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[Macklessdaddy 10+ year member]

Before anybody says it.I'm far from Diddy but I can afford ANY amp out there.

 

[ciaonzo 5,000+ posts]

Before anybody says it.I'm far from Diddy but I can afford ANY amp out there.

Nobody gives a **** what you can afford, sounds like you wouldn't be able to extract the best it had to offer anyway.

 

[Pl8er 5,000+ posts]

So you are saying that NO amplifier will give you any better SQ? Can you explain more please I have heard many different things on this subject, and am very interested, Thanks

You are taking us to a very dangerous topic //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

Easiest way for me to explain it cut and dry is this.

Your goal is to produce, as closely as possible, to the source you are playing. So a well recorded CD goes to the player and *CAN* lose quality right there, then goes through your cables (which can be getting feedback from the car or a ton of other things) to the amplifier. The amplifier's primary job is to increase the source's output/power/what have you. You want this to happen as quietly (only word I can think of, I'm sleepy) as possible. By this I mean you want to go from XX amount of power to XXXX amount of power but still sound as close to the signal it is getting.

Some amps do this very very well. There really is the whole spectrum of great quality reproduction to just plain crap.

An amp adds nothing if it is made by Jesus himself (I'm saying there is no perfect amp). Most high quality audiophile amplifiers add as little as possible but still something.

Now, the reason this argument has stood through the ages is because audio (ALL AUDIO) is subjective to the listener. What I consider to sound great may not be close to what you like. People like tubes because of the warm sound they bring...some people think that warm sound is distorting the actual source.

Good example: My wife's brother was visiting and we were sitting in my living room listening to some music. This isn't a blow you away loud stereo. It's very will positioned and running just enough power to properly fill the room with sound. He said "my bose's system sounds better than this". To him, I'm sure it did. He is only worried about playing music and hearing bass. I spent countless hours positioning the speakers to pinpoint my listening chair and picked amplification that would play a wide range of music. So he wants something to play in the background and I want to hear the singer inhale between words. I don't need to be on 11 to achieve this.

Hrm, am I rambling? Does this make any sense?

People are far more likely to screw up their speaker placement before having to really worry about a high end amp. This is if SQ was your main concern. Now if you are wanting reliability (bragging rights as mentioned) quick response times if something does go wrong (Tru takes about half a day if you need something tops) this is where high end amplifiers really help you out.