Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Emotiva or AudioSource

I'm firmly in the "your ears, your room, your money, your bliss" camp. It's supposed to be fun, dammit.

If folks think that new amps make their systems sound better and that makes them happy, why would I quibble?

OTOH, it's certainly cheaper for me to espouse the reasonable and (apparently scientific) concept that I rarely (if ever) need more than a couple watts.

I do believe that - if differences exist - it will be easier to discern them at higher volumes.

For a variety of reasons, I don't think MY hearing is good enough to fully appreciate any incremental differences that might be obtainable by throwing money at the problem.

And - lifestyle-wise - most of my music listening is on my weird little office system (vintage Kenwood integrated, Mirage Omnisats) or in the car rather than at home. So, for the amount of truly critical listening that I do, it just doesn't matter.

I know, I know - "burn him".

JB, I apologize; I knew there was someone else here that had success with those amps, but could not place you as the one. Thank you for sharing your experience with us!

tomtuttle, what we're talking about here is "realistic" reproduction, something that sounds nearly the same as when you go to a chamber orchestra concert (or a full symphony orchestra);
those have a very large dynamic range, from a weak piccolo to full blast on fortissimos, up to around 112 dBSPL.
with this kind of music, most of the time the amp will put out 1 Watt or less (and sometimes much less than that), and the next second, hundreds of watts will be needed.

those loud passages demand lots of Watts, and when there is enough, that's what makes a difference in the quality of the reproduction. less compression, less distortion.

I'm not criticizing your listening style here, just saying what i think about quality of reproduction.

no need for apologizing, tom. :-)

i think you should be ok with a QSX GX3 with that money, depends where you are. i paid around 440 for my GX5 in Canada. it will cost less in the U.S.A.

Yes, very little of MY listening is done at reference levels. Pity.

Hmmmmm. Interesting statement. I'm not saying that he is right or wrong, but I wonder if he would accept returns or give refunds based on someone's dislike of the amps sound. If you take his statement literally, he should.

Then why do we even talk to you?

i read from him something along this: if an amplifier is not neutral in the sound it produces, then it should be sent back to the maker so they can repair it.

i think that to get High Fidelity, the real thing, every component in the chain should be neutral towards the signals it processes, something like a straight wire.

when people talk about a warm sound, a clinical or cold sound or a sound that has some heart, that is mellow or sweet or liquid, etc..., that's always distortion because it changes the original source during the reproduction.

the whole debate started when transistorized amps came out on the market. they had lots of crossover distortion and the sound was not very good.
but it's easy today to make amps that have all the qualities needed to faithfully reproduce what is fed to them, no distortion of any kind heard.

JB, I'm sure you have probably answered this elsewhere, but are you content with the fan noise (if any) of the QSC amp you have? Is it audible at lower volumes?