Why is the 1000 ASP ICE module not more popular?

[Passinwind]

I'm not thinking Bobby has as much Ice experience as the rest. Those Mississippi boys like to roll their own.

Bobby has more fun than me, he gets to blow stuff up all the time. I'm sure Andy's done his share of that too though.

 

[RoadRanger]

So, which module is the "fastest" and sounds the most like "butter" ?

BTW some interesting text from the DC-300 manual:
"The power supply features a 1KW transformer and large computer-grade filter capacitors giving over 48 joules of energy storage."
Less than -3db down at 100KHz (take that! class "D" ) and flat to DC. Less than 2 degrees of phase shift from DC to 30KHz (AKA no steenkin' latency or waveform distortion ).
Reproduces square waves at 10 KHz (take that! class "D" ). Well over 1000 dampening factor up to 100 Hz.
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So, who here believes that's all stuff that doesn't matter? LOL

 

[agedhorse]

So, which module is the "fastest" and sounds the most like "butter" ?

BTW some interesting text from the DC-300 manual:
"The power supply features a 1KW transformer and large computer-grade filter capacitors giving over 48 joules of energy storage."
Less than -3db down at 100KHz (take that! class "D" ) and flat to DC. Less than 2 degrees of phase shift from DC to 30KHz (AKA no steenkin' latency ).
Reproduces square waves at 10 KHz (take that! class "D" ). Well over 1000 dampening factor up to 100 Hz.
Invalid Link Removed

So, who here believes that's all stuff that doesn't matter? LOL

This is a little bit deceiving... many of the specs are taken using different methods than today, things like the THD spec. excludes noise (today, it's usually THD+N), so if you add in the noise the numbers are not very good by today's standard. The bandwidth spec is at VERY low powers because the slew rate can not support that bandwidth at higher power. There is also a lot of feedback applied, and one of the failure modes is the output stage getting sticky to the supply rails under some clipping conditions. This is why very few (if any) designs these days use quasi-complimentary output topologies. The damping factor is east to achieve with feedback, and below 100Hz, most amps today are even better than this, but what happens between 100Hz and 1000Hz shows up the limitations of open loop bandwidth.

This is very limited technology, which is why Crown's products (as well as the rest of the industry) evolved away from this topology. AT THE TIME, this was a revolutionary accomplishment though, and I do not in the slightest way discount that.

 

[seamonkey]

And goes to show that even back in the DC-300 heyday that amplifiers were well beyond the capability of any human hearing.

 

[BassikLee]

What we need, and maybe Andy is the guy to pull it off, is a 3lb, 47,031 watt into 2ohms, flat from DC to light amp module. For $199

 

[RoadRanger]

And goes to show that even back in the DC-300 heyday that amplifiers were well beyond the capability of any human hearing.

Some argue that the response above 20KHz and below 20Hz and phase (all impact visible waveform distortion) are audible. It would be an interesting experiment to take a mint DC300A II and see if whoever says it is the best for bass can tell the difference if HPF and LPF are switched in and out. I'd be doing stuff like that if I was trying to "capture" what they are hearing. OTOH ain't a gonna do that on my dime LOL.

And IME a steep HPF makes the sound "tighter" (and faster and butterier ). I also use a fairly steep LPF on the signal sent to the PA (or if stuck using an "always on tweeter" bass cab).

 

[ThisBass]

Already thought the broadband driver loaded inside my basscab was worn out cause reproduction was limited to around 13kHz.
Same problem I noticed with HT of my smallish PA tops.
Same problem happened with my Sennheiser headphones.
I'm assuming strongly the problem of limited bandwith with gear is a totally different one.

Never the less I think the Klippsch horn limits bandwith to around 40Hz-15khz.
IMO one of best sounding cabinet sytems for reproduction of audio program material.

 

[agedhorse]

What we need, and maybe Andy is the guy to pull it off, is a 3lb, 47,031 watt into 2ohms, flat from DC to light amp module. For $199

I'm afraid that's firmly outside of my abilities

 

[agedhorse]

Some argue that the response above 20KHz and below 20Hz and phase (all impact visible waveform distortion) are audible. It would be an interesting experiment to take a mint DC300A II and see if whoever says it is the best for bass can tell the difference if HPF and LPF are switched in and out. I'd be doing stuff like that if I was trying to "capture" what they are hearing. OTOH ain't a gonna do that on my dime LOL.

And IME a steep HPF makes the sound "tighter" (and faster and butterier ). I also use a fairly steep LPF on the signal sent to the PA (or if stuck using an "always on tweeter" bass cab).

Bandwidth is a funny thing. It depends on what you need to do with it. Bandwidth (and its accompanying phase charactetistics) is very important when it involves feedback, and the more feedback that's needed, the more important bandwidth becomes.

So, this opens up the discussion of open loop bandwidth versus closed loop bandwidth...

 

[seamonkey]

Some argue that the response above 20KHz and below 20Hz and phase (all impact visible waveform distortion) are audible. It would be an interesting experiment to take a mint DC300A II and see if whoever says it is the best for bass can tell the difference if HPF and LPF are switched in and out. I'd be doing stuff like that if I was trying to "capture" what they are hearing. OTOH ain't a gonna do that on my dime LOL.

And IME a steep HPF makes the sound "tighter" (and faster and butterier ). I also use a fairly steep LPF on the signal sent to the PA (or if stuck using an "always on tweeter" bass cab).

Here's the audio band of what many think is the ultimate high fidelity - FM Audio

Steep cut-off at 15khz, Left-Right is "AM" modulated around 38khz
All kinds of other stuff nobody should or could hear.

Some amps might boast 10khz square wave. What's a 10khz square wave sound like? It sounds like a 10khz sine wave. The first harmonic would be 20khz which is way to high for most people to hear. It's getting through FM stereo that's for sure.

 

[silky smoove]

Some argue that the response above 20KHz and below 20Hz and phase (all impact visible waveform distortion) are audible.

Some argue that the Earth is flat (Invalid Link Removed) but it doesn't make them right. Frequency audibility is a dead simple test to perform.

 

[ThisBass]

Some amps might boast 10khz square wave. What's a 10khz square wave sound like? It sounds like a 10khz sine wave. The first harmonic would be 20khz which is way to high for most people to hear. It's getting through FM stereo that's for sure.

True.
Meant as supplement. Beyond 1kHz it's even hard to detect a square from sine respectively to detect a distorted sine.
Harmonic spectrum of an acoustic instrument note is very disonant at highish spectrum. Major terz intervall competes with minor terz intervall etc. Although disonant spectrum the ears don't detect disonance rather then coloring
More impressing with the topmost octave notes of a piano, it's hard (or impossible) to detect any interval playing although intervall is "clearly" still there.
Human ears can detect a very lot like burst of a limb. The action does not last longer than 0.1 sec to be clearly detected. But at the other side human ears can't detect transient clipping of an instrument that lasts around 0.2-0.3 second.

It's very impressing to know something about what ears can detect very sensitive, at the other hand side how drippy ears can be just the same way.
I'm pretty sure it has a very lot to do with evolution.

 

[RoadRanger]

Frequency audibility is a dead simple test to perform.

Not with complex waveforms. Unless you're one of "those guys" that listens to only sine waves? LOL

 

[RoadRanger]

BTW interesting that those who say they can "hear" these differences are never the ones that can scientifically measure what they hear. Maybe all that scientificy edjacation is bad for one's hearing ?

 

[ThisBass]

Frequency audibility is a dead simple test to perform.
But it's complex to evaluate hearing impression based on SPL cause lots of musicians suffer on partial deafness without recognition, such as (typical) -5..10dB valley at midrange band.
It does not mean the frequncy is inaudible it dos mean the audible impression of a spectrum is varied.

 

[David Jayne]

I thought folks were pushing more of a 'feel' difference. Not sure what creates that or how to measure it. Neat stuff!

 

[silky smoove]

Not with complex waveforms. Unless you're one of "those guys" that listens to only sine waves? LOL

You're making two mutually exclusive points.

If you want to maintain objectivity you either have to perform an audibility test with a sine wave, or a severely band limited signal that completely removed above or below (as required) to perform the test. You can't simply throw on some pink noise and ask whether or not they can hear the content below or above a given point. At that point the answer means nothing. It's simple physics. Either you can hear it or you can't within the bounds of how well a system can reproduce it.

 

[RoadRanger]

The usual assumption is that the attack transients of the bass aren't "heard" any differently than steady state tones. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that the guy who thinks the DC300 amp was "it" isn't nuts - so I'm just thinkin' on what was different about that amp and how one could go about testing for "it". BTW they have the same basic specs as the old Peavey CS800 - and I've personally experienced them sounding quite different.

Nobody's figured out what makes those MW cabs sound like they do either.

I suspect some psycoacoustic thing in both cases - which you can't measure directly but you can certainly take something with "it" and degrade it until the "it" goes away and figure out what "it" is . Interesting that nobody is interested enough to do that? Probably because the science says it's BS LOL.

 

[B-string]

For all we know our solar system is an atom in a popcorn kernel. Sitting in a microwave waiting to pop.

 

[Dark Barn]

I just smile quietly when the high dollar boutique amp heads are preceded by a floor full of pedals .

That's weird. Could you explain?