Amplifier Quantity vs. Quality? What does clipping and distortion sound like?

[caesar]

What does clipping and distortion sound like? Where do you guys stand on this?

Is this a false choice?

 

[DonH50]

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?8484-Clipping-101&p=147098#post147098

I do not understand the question, quantity = output in Watts? Quality = price, construction, components, reliability...? Some of my costliest gear was least reliable but sounded wonderful when it worked.

Higher-wattage amplifiers have lower output impedance and so are less affected by the speaker load. They may have lower distortion but noise is often higher due to the additional gain most high-power amps need to get to max output with reasonable input levels.

Etc.

 

[fas42]

As a straight answer, Quality every time. Quantity is often done with too many shortcomings - because, it is harder to get everything as good as it needs to be in the amplifier for that extra power to be, subjectively, fully beneficial. IME a low powered amplifier, properly sorted, driving normal sensitivity speakers is perfectly adequate for creating an intense emotional experience in the listening; in fact, with recent compressed recordings the average volume at the higher end of the gain scale is just too much, you will want to turn it down.

I haven't found clipping to be a problem - if the amplifier is good quality it will not exaggerate the clipping transient, it will not be audible. Far worse is the fact that power supplies in many amplifiers collapse or degrade badly when asked to deliver higher average power, and this causes severe audible issues - a low powered amplifier with a very robust power supply will win every time, subjectively ...

 

[BlueFox]

What does clipping and distortion sound like?

Crap.

 

[NorthStar]

??????? ? ? http://productionadvice.co.uk/clipping/

 

[Folsom]

If and only if you can hear it, then it's bad. Reality is that you can't on almost all know gear. 10% distortion may not be audible at all, nor clipping. But often amps with low distortion sound good, you just have to recall that what gives the low distortion may give the good sound as well, as opposed to the low distortion itself providing the good sound. Good amps have pleasant, perhaps undetectable clipping, bad ones sound horrific while clipping. Also keep in mind that clipping may only happen a few times on an album; unless you're trying to drive speakers with your iPod or something.

Can you get better sound with low power? Maybe because it's easier to make a lot stuff perform better at lower voltage and ampere. Floor example DACs have lower distortion and noise than power amps. But it really depends on the speakers, and acceptable dynamic range. Matching is important, and accounting for room size. But must say very little can sound good on not the most efficient speakers if the amp is good enough. That's uncommon however. Most of the time people are using huge powerful amps to make up for the inadequacy of poorly designed smaller amps. It's not the wrong solution but it creates false perception that will follow other well designed amps around that have low power.

 

[JackD201]

Quality, quality, quality and enough quantity to give you headroom for your favorite speakers.

Clipping sounds bad. That's really all there is to it. SS clipping just sounds worse than tube clipping which is more of a "soft clip". Think guitar amps or squashed tape. Ultimately you don't want either so either listen wisely or choose wisely