rwnano
Well-Known Member
FROM REDDIT:
To start off, let's not use the word 'good'. Let's use the word 'interesting', or 'special' as you said. The opposite of an 'special' amp is a 'clinical' amp. Both are good - but different kinds of good, you see.
An 'interesting'/'special' amp sounds different depending on what speakers it is driving. The combinations can be infinite. A 'clinical' amp is 'boring' because it is plug-and-play. There is nothing to experiment.
It does not make a good hobby at all if everything just come together as a system and no tweaks and no matching are required. On the other hand if an infinite combination of speakers and amps can give you different results, each in its own excellent interesting way, it makes a great hobby - and the manufacturers' coffers keep rolling in. Your wallet suffers.
A lot of companies make clinical amps that nobody cares - easy plug and play do not make an interesting hobby, and there is no urge to upgrade. Not good for the manufacturers' coffers.
The boutique manufacturers love to demonize feedback. Simply put, negative feedback makes amps clinical - by reducing distortion and increasing damping factor. (Damping factor is the amount of 'control' that an amp can assert over a speaker's wild impedance curve - most speakers are not corrected for flat impedance.)
What you are hearing is an interesting/special amp coloring the sound - it does so according to the speaker's impedance curve. Since each speaker has a different impedance curve, the combinations are infinite. It is an infinite time sink, and an infinite money sink.
Your observation is dead on: 'measures better in every way compared to both amps and sounds worse then either of them.' You don't like clinical amps. You like interesting/special. Welcome to the club. There is only one direction to head towards if the goal is to neutrally replicate the signal. There are an infinite number of ways to color the sound for better or worse, and therefore an infinite number of ways to spend your time and money. Remember that every speaker will react differently to your 'interesting'/'special' amp. (A 'clinical' or 'boring' amp is plug-and-play, requires no matching, but gives you no surprises.)
