Quote:
Originally Posted by dcollins  It appears in the last three years the variable-transformer has not taken over the world.
DC |
But then again neither has Class D amplification, and various other superior technologies.
There is some interesting white papers from one of the guys at Jenson Transformers I read a while back. Somehow I can't find them at the moment. Anyways it talks about noise floors and impedance mismatches and how not using a transformer can often lead to very low signal to noise.
I have tried some very high end volume transformers with mixed results. On the plus they indeed sound really clean and clear. However the gear driving them must have enough juice to handle driving this. An analogy I was told it is sort of like a little Honda pulling a large boat and trailer (meaning a bit difficult), which sort of translates to reduced dynamics and control. Again gear dependent. The better equipment that I tried it on like Esoteric's SACD player drove the amps to amazing levels and maybe better than any preamp I had at the time, being either tube or solid state. However with a few phono stages it just did not work as well, and with some cheaper sound cards.
Short answer it all comes down to design and not all transformers are equal in quality (to say the least).