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pFrancisco t1_jatjk01 wrote

As someone who has spent over 15 years contributing to various tube audio forums; building and designing all sorts of tube amplifiers, these reviews make me lol irl. Maybe I’m just over the tube magic already. There is no way the Topping A90D sounds worse than the Cayin. You like the sound of distortion, period.

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oballzo t1_jau28l3 wrote

Idk man, I thought this was a subjective hobby 🤔

The cayin sounds way better... To him. The Topping sounds better to you. There is room for both opinions lmao

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GooseEntire1705 OP t1_jatmox6 wrote

A90D is less detailed, thinner, less bass and worse texture of bass, less soundstage. I did an A/B comparison, its literally what I hear. The one objective plus for the A90D is the speed.

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pFrancisco t1_jatuabb wrote

It sounds thinner and with less bass because you don't have 2nd and 3rd order harmonics trailing the sound.

Like I said, you like the sound of distortion and that's fine. But the A90D is technically better than any tube amp.

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MyUserNameIsTooLong1 t1_jav93sl wrote

There are a load of measurements that go into how an amp performs that arnt covered by ASR. Golden sounds has a great write up about this. You are simply wrong about how psychoacoustics work.

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LeEasy t1_jayaylj wrote

Very brave of u for speaking the truth lol, I buy tube amps just for the look, as a person with an EE background and talked multiple amp engineers, I full agree with u, and according to some OEM engineers those tube amp profit margin often times over 100 to its production costs. Any people can read circuitry diagram and have soldering techniques can easily produce those class A tube amps, slap a fancy casing, charging few thousands, brag about tUbe mAgIc, you’re sold, you’re in, and u will be in part of the cult

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pFrancisco t1_jayh5f1 wrote

I also started college as an EE major and switched to Business Administration 🤦🏻‍♂️. Yes, tubes are fun and beautiful to look at, and I still use them every so often, but technically they are inferior to todays technology. I’m especially impressed with the newest class-D amplification from Purifi and Hypex.

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LeEasy t1_jayphu9 wrote

Class D is the future, NAD will be the leading company when people realize they have been brainwashed by all the class A marketing. people resenting them cuz they don’t charge much and don’t have snake oil marketing. Time will tell. It is amassing how those ancient technologies that has been proven inefficient and highly noisy and discarded by almost all other fields are treated like a crown jewel in audio market.

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MyUserNameIsTooLong1 t1_jazyb2q wrote

Are you a amir fan? Someone openly admitted they could not tell the difference between a single genelec 8361 and a pair revel salon 2? Is that who you are trusting to make subjective arguments about things sounding worse and better? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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MyUserNameIsTooLong1 t1_jazyjlo wrote

You have no evidence whatsoever that the measurements you speak of have any effect on listening preferences. Not a single study.

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