Bob Lee (QSC) said:
Like what, for example? Maybe there's not a good metric for some things, but it doesn't mean that they can not be identified and addressed.
I don't know what can be identified and addressed and what can't. I do not that certain phenomena don't seem to be addressed. For example, microdynamics and low level resolution, and preservation of spacial cues (soundstaging, imaging, sense of air, space, etc.). These are some of the phenomena that seem to separate solid, workmanlike amps from their higher end brethren. And luckily, they're qualities that seem to make a much bigger difference in music playback than in instrument or live sound amplification.
I also know that psychoacoustics is a very young and incomplete science--and that the people on its vanguard seem a lot less confident of their mastery of it than a lot of audio engineers do.
Bob Lee (QSC) said:
Certainly there are some amps with designed-in anomalies--effects, really--for subjective pleasure. I don't define those as "good" amps, even if they're very exotic and pricey and have been reviewed with nice flowery language. I certainly wouldn't use one in, say, a studio monitoring system; I don't want the program material I'm working on arbitrarily altered to sound different from what it actually is, however nice it may be.
Sure, studio monitoring is a different field with different requirements than music making or music playback. Even so, perfect linearity (in the whole monitoring system) is not really the goal the way a lot of people assume it is. Monitor speakers themselves (particularly the most popular models) are not dead flat. In fact they're often less flat than some lower quality and less popular units.
Recording and mastering engineers use their systems to make recordings that sound as good as possible on a range of playback systems. What works for them is often fairly ideosyncratic.
Bob Lee (QSC) said:
As an analogy, there are some photos where I might like to shoot with a filter or effect, but I sure as hell don't want the camera arbitrarily adding that all the time.
Photography's a great analogy. And as a photographer, I can tell you that plenty of photographers do choose their lenses and films for qualities that an engineer might consider a flaw or an effect. Portrait photographers often prefer lenses with lower MTF potential than the most modern lenses, because they want to emphasize tone over edges and detail. Same with people who prefer a pictorialist, soft look in their landscapes. Both kinds of photographers tend to prefer lenses with lower contrast potential and lower resistance to flair (which are technically considered flaws).
Even photographers who generally want sharp picture often like lenses with slightly undercorrected spherical aberration, because it produces more pleasing results in the out of focus areas. But there's very little in the optical engineering literature about this--the majority of lens designers concentrate on the rendering of in-focus areas.
Consider that the early electric guitar players were technically abusing their amps (or at best, taking advantage of the flaw of too little power ) when they played with distortion. No engineer at the time was thinking about making amps that sound a certain way when overdriven. But the creative desires of the end user became clear, and now, decades later, there's a whole science of creating great sounding distortion.
Just some food for thought.
). Therefore, it's better to have at least a little more power than you need than to have not quite enough.
