Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Reflections on the A1400-8 and other amps

Pics of the new jacket please!

And all this was of course determined under controlled conditions with A/B blind testing.
Or it is just another ad of audio propaganda.
Reads like Bose.

Just my perspective on the world based on direct listening and comparing against the amps I own . Actually Axiom must have blown a dozen 7BSSTs taking them apart while designing the a1400-a.

I'm still waiting for you to post at least one post other than your usual negative regressive diatribe dismissing anyone's audio views that doesn't conform with yours. Your posts are not very useful to anyone as far as I can tell. Have you ever actually made an insightful contribution to this forum?

jakewash, please reassure me that the "wind storm" is not affecting Purolator! The website is still not showing "in transit" which it usually does at this hour.

You are correct. Unless the OP can listen to the Axiom, Outlaw, and Bryston amps in the same room, using the same speakers, with the levels matched to within 0.1 db at the listening position, and can make a repeated direct blind A/B/C comparison, his impressions are not really valid. And, we all know that. He is nevertheless, welcomed to post his personal and possibly biased thoughts in this informal setting and is a well respected and knowledgeable member of our forum. You can choose to ignore his opinion or tactfully question his testing, but I think you discredit yourself by insulting him this way. Your comment, "reads like a Bose", reads like a slap in the face.

I am a relative newbie in this hobby and learned a great deal from John by reading his posts and inquiring his thoughts about various issues and pieces of gear. I hope that he does not get discouraged by your post from freely sharing his thoughts.

John

Haven't been following this thread closely, but a look at the last few replies indicates that it should be reiterated that there's something that all well-designed amplifiers do, i.e., amplify transparently without adding any sonic signature of their own, and other things that they don't do, e.g., add "tightness", "speed", "warmth", "fullness", etc. or other fanciful descriptions. Again, the bottom line is audibly flat frequency response with inaudibly low noise and distortion; that's all there is and all engineering considerations lead to that. Basic principles of audio engineering indicate this and claims to the contrary collapse when put to the(blind listening)test and shouldn't be taken seriously. The editor of The Audio Critic summarizes this basic principle well in "Electronic SignalPaths Do Not Have a Personality!" .

That's a reasonably insightful post John. I'm well aware of the basic elements of amp engineering and I consider myself lucky that I have been able to turn to such an esteemed amp engineer as Tom Cumberland to patiently answer my sceptical questions over the last few months. I absolutely agree that flat frequency response and inaudibly low distortion are indeed the hallmarks of any good solid state amplifier. Let's set aside tube amplifiers for a moment since their relatively plentiful 2nd order harmonic distortion can make for an audibly pleasant difference in sound compared to a solid state amp.

Another distinguishing audible factor does indeed have to do with what many people including myself generically call "speed" and encompasses several time domain factors influencing sound. A few worth noting are damping factor, slew rate, size and number of the array of capacitors and how they are aligned, bridged or unbridged amp modules, size of voltage rails. Designers have many, many variables to ponder and integrate, all of which can be utilized to be completely neutral or impart other sutle sonic qualities.

The ability of the amp to respond to an input sigal does vary depending on the its own design attribute and the load presented to the amp by the speakers/cables. To me those attributes are most audible in the bass region, hence you hear people describe the certain amps as sounding "fast" compared to other amps. Other people may be more sensitive to higher frequency sounds which some people refer as "brighter" sounding or sometimes having a solid state "edginess". To be more accurate that phenomenon should really describe the amp/speaker interaction. But by not changing anything else in the system except the amp one should be able to detect an audible difference if any between amps having somewhat different designs and specs.

In the case of the a-1400-a, I know from long discussions with Tom and Ian how highly they regard the Bryston amps, a long time favourite of mine. One reason this product took so long was they're determination to come out with an amp being the sonic equivalent of a stack of the longtime Bryston flagship 7B monoblocks. Knowing the stereo version of this amp well, the 14BSST, from owning it for a whileI was very sceptical as I mentioned at the start of this thread. Bryston amps are one of the most highly regarded amps and legendary for their bass control and...I have to use the description...speed.

You make an arm waving point about the importance of adhereing to basic principles of engineering. Its been 3 decades since I studied engineering science so forgive me if I'm rusty but I must tell you that those lofty principles, whatever that means, often don't hold up under real world conditions which is why its a science that continues to grow and evolve. The latest apparent contradiction which I am still trying to reconcile is why I hear an improvement in sound quality in a typical HT from using dual centres such as the VP150 when all the "principles" suggest the sound should be compromised due to lobing. Too many other variables must be coming into play.

With respect to the article you cited he contradicts himself in the middle of the second paragraph but I understand his general position which I have moved away from over the last 20 years. Here is a more technical article on high voltage amplifiers which goes into more detail on some amp design parameters. The main point to glean from that article is not the technical detail but to show that the skilled amp engineer has many ways to influence how the amp processes the signal and therefore can affect the sonic quality of amplified output. I am not saying that every SS amp will have a different sound. But I can say strongly that the Axiom amp bears a very close sonic signature to the Bryston amps which inspired its design.

http://www.falco-systems.com/high_voltage_amplifiers.html

John (ihifi) ( Too many Johns around here ) is right of course and I have never suggested that any of my observations were done in a DBT or BT condition. That's one reason I called this thread "Reflections on the A1400-8 and other amps". I lived with the A-1400-A for a good two months and asked many questions about it before starting this thread. So my impressions while not gleaned from the BT variety have come about from weightlifting sessions involving different amps comparing different program material many times over a suitably long period.

Thanks for your comments John.

Soon! It's "on vehicule for delivery"!
Gotta love that Axiom/Purolator teamwork!

Unfortunatelty, they arrived only at 16h08 and I had a party at 17h00. I at least made sure all the components were working fine (i.e. I re-connected everything and used test tones to verify settings). I had a huge 2 minutes test. I listened to Bach's second violon solo partita's first movement with Julia Fisher. Viplin sounded very, very natural. End of all tests for today!

Tomorrow, I shall have 2-3 hours to do more testing.

The jacket is GREAT, btw! Nice colors, confortable at -6C. Very nice.