Foot tapping

Hi folks
I think many of you have made the same observation as me. Some amplifiers make your foot tapping to the rythm of the music - without a very conscious desicion to do so. On the other hand, with other amplifiers the feets tap very easy at all. Why is it so, what is it in an amplifier that has this effect? I have noticed that some amplifers can have a very nice tone, the instruments are shining and have a very realistic sound, but despite that, the foottapping factor is not there. What is it that make good sounding amplifiers less musical compared to others?  

I don't know about just amplifiers having any bearing on the situation.
It's far more comprehensive than that.
I have heard a friend's amplification go from being pipe and slippers (well he does have 300B SE monoblocs) to being lively and and having addictive drive and presence with a change of speaker.

It's an effect I've heard often enough, and it has happened with source components too with changes of PSU (SMPS to Linear), or interconnect.

Humboldt wrote: then what is the common ground for the effect?

There isn't a common ground.
In your case the improvement from your amplification change could have been due to the amplifier being better able to drive your speakers.

The effect is no doubt due to overcoming limitations in the playback chain, removing bottlenecks as it were, but it can happen in all sorts of odd areas.

I remember hearing a very expensive TT last year, and being somewhat underwhelmed with the entire experience.
OK, it made some nice enough sounding noises and nothing stood out as being wrong, but it was just lacking in involvement, incapable of playing music IMO.
On this occasion I voiced my thoughts, there was a gradual migration of components from normally mains outlets to being driven from a mains regeneration unit.
First the phono preamplifier was moved over, to a small improvement in involvement, but the big winner was when the TT PSU was moved over, when then foot tapping qualities started to emerge.

The amplifier I tested was an so called Current amplifier and not one of the more common Voltage amplifers. The diffrence compared to my own amplifer was huge. I think that my own amplifier is not bad at all, but when this killer amp come into my system I realised my system has potential for better. The comment above about bottlenecks is interresting. In my case it is obvious it is the amlifier that is the bottleneck. The thing is, I have put together my poweamp myself. It is a class D amp, dual mono with two 42/630va torids driving two capacitor banks with 30 000 uF each. Now, I think that maybe I could get a better performance if I increase the capacitor bank. If this do not improve things, I have to look for a new poweramp. Ths problem with the amp I tested is nothing but the price. :-(


Edited by Humboldt - 06 Apr 2014 at 7:21pm