Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message news:WuThc.3943$YP5.358919@attbi_s02...
Richard has a standing $10,000 challenge to anyone about amp sound. He'll put
up $10k of his own money to anyone who can validate he can "hear" his own
amplifier compared to one that Richard has. The connditions are blind/switched
and Richard gets to equalize his amplifier (this avoids the ringers that have
been intentionally changed.)

The Yamaha integrated amplifier was part of the Sunshine Trials (which I did
proctor) between Steve Zipser anf Steve Maki.

Ooohhh... thet takes me back to my days reading rec.audio.opinion

Seems like a no-brainer for Richard to do the same with his amp (see
the 'ringer' rules above), and then you're back to square one. There
will always be clowns who'll try to cheat on such a test, but so far
not one single person has been able to *prove* that e.g. a Halcro
sounds better than a Rotel.
I presume the test is to prove one sounds different from the other in
repeated blind trials. 'Better' would be hard to quantify.

Hmmm... what are rules on speakers? Something like an Apogee Scintilla
could tax the Yamaha amp into distortion. (depends on the Yamaha amp
in question of course)

I would also have thought some valve amps (low power SETs?) might
sound recognizably different to the Yamaha on repeated trials
particularly with low-impedance speakers.

Or use early Naim amps with something like Transparent cable with its
network circuit and send the Naim into oscillation.

Or how about Redgum amps which are designed with a sharply rising bass
response?

Jeremy