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Owner’s Manual
Comments by Pass
It seems like yesterday...
. No, actually it seems like eighteen years ago
that I got a patent on the “Super-Symmetric” circuit. That’s actually
a pretty long commercial run for an amplifier design - how many do
you know that are still on the market after that much time?
We (Desmond, Joe, me and Wayne in alphabetical order) believe in
progress, but also appreciate where our success has really come from
- happy customers. Every innovation that we consider has to address
how it will improve the customer’s experience with the product.
Technical excellence is a virtue by itself, but it will be the
sound
that
determines the long term success of a new design after the novelty
has worn off. The audio marketplace is littered with products that
measured spectacularly well but which did not go down as “classics”
because they lacked the subjective qualities that kept listeners happy
beyond the initial excitement created by a technical innovation.
With this uppermost in mind we set out to create a new generation
of amplifiers that measure well enough, but only in a manner that
serves the subjective perception of listeners. Oscilloscopes and
distortion analyzers are excellent and helpful tools, but they make
lousy customers.
It has been argued that the power amplifier should maintain some
sort of sacred neutrality - “
Let the artist be the source of musical coloration,
not the amplifier!
”
As if the power amplifier is the only thing altering the music. In the
old days (late 50’s, early 60’s) there was some reasonable technical
excellence in recording equipment, but it was fairly simple – a
couple of level controls. And the people involved were few and
usually had some taste. Nowadays, there are too many people in the
reproduction chain with too many knobs. It is no surprise that new
vinyl issues of Jazz from that era fetch high prices.
Meanwhile the customer is the guy with the most rights, being that
he is the one paying for it.
That Would Be You.
If you are concerned that your power amplifier (or anything else
for that matter) is as objectively and technically accurate as possible,
that is a perfectly legitimate criterion. You will certainly find many
products in the marketplace that excel at conventional objective
performance, and most of them are much cheaper.