What is the difference between a Profile amp and a McIntosh amp???

[thch 10+ year member]

so what is supposed to happen with the single crystal? how different is it from a standard RCA?

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

This thread makes me giggle.

nG

 

[thch 10+ year member]

personally, i think its numerically a stalemate. if 24b of resolution is the goal, that would require noise/distortion to have on order of -150dBc effect. for 4V signals, this means noise on the order of 125nV begins to degrade performance "measurably". (not saying human hearing has a 150dB dynamic range over short periods of time) so in the numerical games, its harder to show that there is no difference in cables, as -150dBc isn't much. could any of these higher order effects (dielectric absorbtion, skin effect, piezoelectrics, ect...) provide a 120nV spike in noise?

disclaimer: the above makes a lot of assumptions that the source equipment, and other equipment, as well as the the source material and destination human are capable of noticing anomolies this small. it is very unlikely to be the case as many (all?) 24b ADCs do not have -150dB SNR, SFDR, IMD, or THD specs. likewise, affects of temperature may be significant on this scale.

it is especially unlikely that the speakers will have specs better then the cable, nor that the speaker's specs will not change over time significantly more then the cable. eg, it would need to be shown that preceived and measurable differences in sound are not due to small changes in the speaker that might occur during listening, or between listening sessions.

the listening environment also needs to be very close to ideal, as it will also color the sound.

The same would apply to the biological processes in the human ear and brain. for loud music, this is decidely unlikely.

my take:

the end goal is almost always user happiness. IMO there is no reason to say things seemingly as insignificant as cables can't cause the user to enjoy the system more.

but at the same time most people looking for advice will be looking for a max for min in terms of performance for an acceptable amount of money. and that places things like music-source (dvd vs cd vs mp3), environment concerns, speaker choice, enclosure and positioning choices, speaker blending and processing choices (the things that intentionally modify sound!) before smaller concerns like amplifier and cable quality. this is more of a modern thing as well -- if modern amplifiers were not as capable, the amplifier would again be of prime concern.

 

[FoxPro5 5,000+ posts]

This is obviously the wrong sight to have a discussion as such.

I took you 74 posts to realize this?

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

wtf is there to do in vegas at 5 am

You incorrectly assume that I'm currently, or in the recent past, at home.

 

[Symon_say 10+ year member]

Dont know about McIntosh but my 3 years old Profile have take abuse like a champ, i have change my system several times for low and mid end equipment, but my profile amp is the only that carries from one to the other.

By mistake i hook my sub @1ohm to my Profile birdge and it work for a week until i turn up the volume and the only thing it did was goes into protection and no problem.

To buy another 4 ch amp have to be a high end, or something like the new 4 ch AQ to match my amps.