I was talking to a friend who is a hifi nut (or audiophile if you prefer) about Guitar Amps, and he brought up the point that with amps in general Overdrive and Distortion are negative qualities and so with Guitar Amps we are looking for amps which are really bad at amplifying things.
Even with Clean Tones, we are looking for the amp to impart its own tone on the signal, rather than being transparent like a hifi.
In a way we are looking for something which is the worst, but in the best way.
On the other hand, my friend recently spent £500 on a cable to connect his turntable to his amp when he only spent £300 on the turntable itself, so this could be the ramblings of someone who is insane.
Comments
A HiFi amp's job is to faithfully amplify the finished piece of music that has been produced and mastered, using a reliable source. The creative process has been completed, hopefully to the artists satisfaction. The HiFi's job is a very simple one (albeit often expensive to do right), and that is simply to not be noticed, to add no colour.
A guitar amp is very much part of the creative process, by design (now, not so much in the very early days) it has the potential for a variety of sounds that we can choose to deliver and express our music.
It is almost an instrument of itself, in that the same amp can sound good and bad depending on who is playing it.
The HiFi should sound the same, irrespective of who presses play...
Therefore, the means of measuring a good one is very different in both cases, as they have very different jobs and therefore design briefs
Essentially an electric guitar amp is a sound producer, whereas a hi-fi amp is a sound reproducer. The electric guitar amp is part of the instrument.
A very good rule of thumb - not always true, but very often and a good starting point - is that although precisely the same physics applies to both, if something is better for hi-fi you should do the exact opposite for electric guitar, and vice versa.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Surely there is no need for a hi fi that does anything other than what studio monitors do -which is what music is mastered on, therefore is designed to sound good with.
Or have I missed a piece of the puzzle?
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Well why bother paying silly money for a hi fi if studio monitors would do?
It seems hi fi is designed to sound nice - but surely that would depend on how the music was mixed.
So why not mix on a high end hi fi? No one listens to music on studio monitors.
The kind of powered monitors people use on home recording set ups are not comparable to high-end hi fI in terms of quality. At the top end, companies like Bower & Wilkens produce both monitors and hi fI speakers which sound exceptional in terms of clarity and tonal balance.
Then, there are these
http://hifilounge.co.uk/focal-grande-utopia-em-floorstanding-speakers
Analogy: we like playing guitar through valve amps, even clean, because they sound warm and have subtle natural compression which makes it easy to play. Solid-state amps tend to be 'harder'-sounding and aren't as compressed, so you need to be more careful how you play. Useful as a teaching amp, but most of us generally don't find them as nice.
Of course that means that hi-fi speakers aren't actually perfectly reproducing the input signal - monitors are probably closer - but when has anything in the hi-fi world needed to be actually true?
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
This myth comes up in audio forums from time to time, that "high fidelity" speakers are somehow "hyped" to make music sound better. It is of course a contradiction in terms. "Hi fi means accurate reproduction, ideally nothing added or taken away. "Sweeten" the speakers and they can no longer deliver fidelity!
Probably the first truly hi fi speakers were the Quad electrostatics. They were such a revelation in their lack of colouration, and low distortion that they were quickly adopted by most major cutting houses for QC (they could not really be used as studio monitors since they could not deliver the 100dB+ SPLs of the huge speakers then in use such as the 15" Tannoy concentrics. )
Anyone who followed the QUALITY audio press in the 70, and beyond will remember such names as Castle, Rogers, Harbeth, Spendor, KEF and others whose aim was always to make ACCURATE loudspeakers . Rogers especially had the LS35/A which was designed as a mobile "truck" monitor but sold as essentially the same speaker for domestic use.
Monitors tiring? Some maybe, the NS10s are supposed to be a bit strident but I can listen to my Tannoy 5As for hours of Radio 3, rock and jazz and talk programmes.
The term "hi fi" has become devalued and is almost a bad word to describe indifferent "audio" and that is a shame.
Dave.