Benchmark ahb2 vs mcintosh1/4/2024 ![]() ![]() Dan D’Agostino, whose high-end bona fides are surely beyond any doubt, struck a welcome blow both for sanity and for the primacy of musical values by putting bass and treble tone controls (in addition to balance) on his state-of-the-art Momentum preamplifier and integrated amplifier. Not all designers have gone along with this trend. (Isolating power supplies in their own box can result in lower noise, except that, to cite only one example I’m personally familiar with, Benchmark Media’s AHB2 power amplifier boasts, I believe, the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any component currently on the market and it’s not only a single box but an unusually compact one!) And is there any real evidence to indicate that eliminating common, in my view essential, functions of preamplifiers, including some convenience features, and putting every last electronic circuit into its own box actually results in superior sound? I haven’t found this to be the case-not consistently anyhow, and certainly not among those manufacturers who apply the same care, know-how, and expertise to their integrateds as to their separates. The line-level stage was hardly an afterthought, but any manufacturer who couldn’t make a low-noise, low-distortion line-level circuit would have had his competence seriously questioned (not without justification). Back in the day-the day I’m referring to being more or less from the introduction of the long-playing record through the early Eighties, the period when vinyl was the undisputed king of serious music playback in the home-the quality of a preamplifier rested overwhelmingly on the quality of its phonostage, this owing to all the problems associated with very low-level signals, notably hum and hiss, not to mention conformity to the RIAA curve and the vagaries of impedance and capacitance of phono pickups. Fortunately, these small imbalances often have a way of cancelling themselves out, but not always, and the problem is more prevalent in analog, specifically vinyl.Ĭoncomitant with this bare-bones functionalism have been increases in pricing that are risible when not ludicrous in view of what is actually being offered. Except on pure tones, nobody can hear an imbalance of, say, 0.5dB, but if this imbalance comes up against one in another component that is off by the same amount, then you have an imbalance of 1dB, which in turn will be added to any others along the recording, mixing, and mastering chain all the way down into your own system and room, which will contribute their own. As for source material, remember that level differences are additive. ![]() And surely it isn’t necessary to point out that correct stereo imaging and soundstaging are crucially dependent upon accurate reproduction of the relative levels of one channel vis-à-vis the other. Go to some of the publications and Internet sites that reliably measure these things and you might be shocked by the number of models, including even extremely expensive, highly reviewed ones, that differ as much as 3dB from unit to unit, a difference audible during critical listening and easily audible when the music isn’t complex (e.g., solo instruments or voices). It might come as a surprise to many audiophiles to discover their speakers are not sonically identical. How many audiophiles, I wonder, have rooms in which the loudspeaker of one channel “sees” the same frontal space or is reinforced by the identical side and rear boundaries as its mate (L-shaped rooms, anyone)? This is just one instance of speaker/room interface that undermines channel balance, even when the signal arrives at the speakers in perfect balance, which is by no means always the case. ![]() Routine system checks and troubleshooting become effectively impossible or at best very cumbersome, while the absence of balance and tone controls eliminates any means of addressing the tonal and channel-to-channel imbalances that exist in many recordings and listening environments, even some very good ones. At its most extreme this minimalism eliminates everything except a volume pot and a thimbleful of inputs, not to mention any active circuitry except preamplification in its most basic sense, a development that has had two unwelcome consequences. Minimalism, along with its synonym, “purity,” has conditioned the thinking behind so many control units with pretentions to state-of-the-art status that the use of the word “control” must surely be ironic, if not downright cynical. I shall begin by asking you to indulge me some venting: I hate the direction that many high-end preamplifiers and integrated amplifiers have taken the last quarter-century and longer- detest is a more precise word. ![]()
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