Ok Ive been reading

B Sanderson New member Username: Phrapp Post Number: 7 Registered: Feb-05	Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 07:18 GMT Not that I am on any side but... I am curious about this Panny debate. Someone answer this little question because I am getting a little confused. Analogue vs full digital I play music, I record my song, digitally, they press a CD (digital), you buy the CD take it home to your analogue reciever and you get... or you do the same thing but come home to your digital reciever wouldn't you get a pure sound being that everything you are running is digital??? or does analogue still win. I cant imagine even being able to hear that much of a difference, really. I bought a NAD amp it lasted only 3-4 years then it was crapped out. I will say it pounded but I have heard SONY's that can pound to, and I am picky and have a good ear. I spent more on my reciever than the SONY guy did on his entire system. Also NAD's service stunk. I am not a Panny fan, wasnt even considering it, I was looking into a Yamaha, HK, or another brand that might be around but I am being sold by the amount of positive feedback I do hear and the price is right. I thought the speaker was the main component of good sound? But correct me if I am wrong.
Frank Abela Gold Member Username: Frank_abela Berkshire UK Post Number: 1067 Registered: Sep-04	Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 12:00 GMT OK, let's explode the first myth. The Panny, along with all the other Class D, T, Z amplifiers is not purely digital! They are switching amplifiers. People have been mistakenly calling them digital amplifiers for ages. This is because switching amplifiers rapidly switch on and off their output devices at a very high rate (usually above 80khz). People associate this with the 0's and 1's of the digital world, but it's nothing like, since the signal from the output terminals of a switching amp is analogue. A loudspeaker is an analogue transducer. It receives an analogue signal from an amplifier and transduces the electrical energy into mechanical energy (moving the cones/diaphragm/ribbon). This excites the air in front of it to give us sound. So you're not staying in the digital domain until you reach the speakers. You've left the digital domain as soon as D/A conversion has happened. This is either in the CD player or in the preamp stage of the receiver well before arriving at the power amp stages of the receiver. As to the recording process, most companies are going back to analogue recording. Perhaps this is a fad. Perhaps the engineers are trying to restore a quality of sound that's been missing in the last 20 years (possible). Whichever, analogue still seems to have a lot going for it. And yet, in mastering stages, most analogue recordings are put into the digital domain briefly because it's much easier to make changes such as splices or vocal 'fixings' (for dodgy takes) in the digital domain. Therefore, what you get on CD is often a combination of analogue and digital recording techniques even if it's a purely digital signal. But then, there's digital and there's digital isn't there? CD is fairly crude digital since it has relatively low sampling and bit rates. Digital recording has improved signifiantly with far higher bit rates and sampling frequencies, and yet in my view the higher resolution digital formats (SACD and DVD-A) do not always shine (to put it mildly). Regards, Frank.
Edster922 Gold Member Username: Edster922 Abubala, Ababala The Occupation Post Number: 3159 Registered: Mar-05	Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 16:53 GMT Frank, as usual, excellent solid info. Yes, the really accurate description of the Panny is digital-SWITCHING. I personally call it "digital" simply to indicate that it's a very different beast from a traditional analog receiver that weighs 3 times as much and is 3 times bigger yet (to my ears, and of course some will disagree) is often outpowered and outperformed (immaculate detail, zero noise floor) by this unbelievably cheap little Panny.
Edster922 Gold Member Username: Edster922 Abubala, Ababala The Occupation Post Number: 3160 Registered: Mar-05	Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 16:59 GMT BSanderson, The only foolproof way to go is, order the Panny from Amazon and treat the $15 return shipping as a 30day home audition fee if you don't like it. You may want to browse some posts by a couple of people on these two threads who are very technically proficient, they'll go into more detail about the Panny's technology: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=594707&highlight=paradigm+shift http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=530504&highlight=paradigm+shift
Frank Abela Gold Member Username: Frank_abela Berkshire UK Post Number: 1069 Registered: Sep-04	Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 18:39 GMT Edster, I did not mean to belittle the technology. It's remarkable how good some of these devices can sound, and their efficiency only makes things better. However, even 'digital-switching' is incorrect. It's 'just' a switching amplifier. In fact, this is the limitation of the technology in that switching introduces noise (perhaps not to your ears but it's there). high switching rates attempt to get around the problem, but unfortunately we pick up on lower order harmonics of the switching rate, so you can't really get around it. Switching noise used to be so bad in early devices (about 20 years ago) that they were discounted out of hand for fidelity applications. nowadays with the incredibly high scale integration in modern devices, the switching is much less a problem, and this is why so many switching amps have surfaced in the last 5 years or so. Incidentally, please note the lack of weight in the Panny is not because of the switching amplifier! It's because they are using a switched mode power supply (which is a completely different thing) as opposed to a linear power supply. Switched mode power supplies are another source of much debate. The most salient point about them is they do not need massive transformers. An SMPS contains quite a few components, all of which are relatively small (depending on the SMPS's switching frequency) and light. This makes for a very compact power supply that can deliver a great deal of power very efficiently. For example, my Chord amplifier isn't particularly big and yet the SMPS in it can swing 4kilowatts (yes really) which means that my 350w/ch are real 350w/ch (into 8 ohms, 620 into 4 ohms, 750 into 2 ohms all RMS), but mine is a class A/B amp! The only reason for the weight is the rather over-the-top aluminium casework... The linear power supply required for that kind of power delivery would be a bit bigger than a car wheel (the transformer would be the size of a car wheel and rather heavier of course since it would be solid). There's an interesting discussion on Chord's design philosophy at: http://www.chordelectronics.co.uk/chord_tech.asp?view=amp Hope this is interesting. Regards, Frank.
Jan Vigne Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigne Dallas, TX Post Number: 6775 Registered: May-04	Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 19:30 GMT If I have it correct, with the latest, and still the same, group of "digital" amplifiers, they are not really "switching amplifiers". They are, if you look at how they are actually operated, old fashioned analog amplifiers with "switching" power supplies. The "digital" aspect is entirely related to how the power supply operates. It has nothing to do with how the signal is handled until you get to the current Meridian products. In the Meridian gear, the signal is maintained in the digital format throughout the amplification chain until the signal arrives at the output transistors. However, Meridian, to be successfully used as a full digital amplification chain, does require a full Meridian system. Products such as the Panasonic amplifiers merely move an analog, or digital, signal along by means of a switching power supply. I stand to be corrected if I have missed an important advance in "digital" amplification.
Edster922 Gold Member Username: Edster922 Abubala, Ababala The Occupation Post Number: 3171 Registered: Mar-05	Posted on Thursday, December 01, 2005 - 04:57 GMT Frank and Jan, you guys are probably correct about the technical terminology, I totally confess my hopelessness in understanding the nuts and bolts of how these things work. All I know is, whatever the technology, my ears prefer that itty-bitty-light-as-a-feather Panny by a HUGE margin, over my huge heavy NAD and Marantz analog gear costing several times more. Others may differ of course. : )
Frank Abela Gold Member Username: Frank_abela Berkshire UK Post Number: 1071 Registered: Sep-04	Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 16:40 GMT Jan, No, the switching amplifier is actually the output device. This means you can drive a switching amplifier with either a switched mode power supply or a linear power supply. Its output is still analogue, but its mode of operation is quite different. For an in-depth description have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_amplifier#Class_D Edster, the reason it's light in weight is probably because it uses a switched mode power supply, which is why I went off about Chord Electronics. Switched Mode Power Supplies are used in a huge number of applications but most notably in computers. Regards, Frank.

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