"Wylie Williams" wrote in message ...
On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 16:56:43 GMT, "Wylie Williams"
wrote:

Your project was a large expenditure of time and energy, which many
of
us are not willing to undertake unless we are in the market for a
component.
But as a hobbist I would like to regularly read about the results of such
tests in hopes that something truly better turned up in the world of high
end. It makes me wonder why reveiwers for the audiophile magazines don't
do
ABX testing. If it were true that "all amps sound alike" reviewers would
not want to publicize that fact because they are in the business of
writing
about differences. But there are diffrences so that reasoning is out, and
their jobs are secure.

"Stewart Pinkerton" replied in message
...
Unfortunately, while there are still many poorly designed amps on sale
at very high prices (almost all of the single-ended triode variety),
there is also a huge raft of very competent designs which I am
reasonably sure would *not* show audible differences in a
level-matched DBT. This would rather cut the rug from under such
'golden eared' reviewers as Martin Colloms and his bizarre points
scoring system, so you're unlikely to see DBTs in the audio ragazines
any time soon.

The problem I have in deciding if I should upgrade my systems's amp is
that I only have access to amps that are reviewed by magazines as being very
fine (Parasound and HALO). As I read it on RAHE these magazine reviews may
not be at all reliable. I may not have been unfortunate enough to have ever
had a well designed amp in my system, and even if I were to borrow a few I
have no idea that they would be amps from the limited group of "competent
designs". I have listened mostly to Parasound and HALO, with side trips to
YBA, and HK Citation 1, but RAHE experts tell me that there is no way to
find out if these are good guys or bad guys. The only way is to gather a
bunch of amps and do ABX tests for myself. But I don't even know the
identity of amps can be used as reference example of good amps. RAHE tells
me they exist, but nobody can make their fingers hit those keys to name
brands and models.
This leads to a secondary but related point - Given the number of
participants who assure the group repeatedly that they are truly experts,
what is most surprising is how little specific information they post. Any
nunber of people are willing to go into endless detail about why someone
else does not really understand DBT, ABX, cables, wires, jitter, how stupid
audio designers are. etc. etc. etc., but the one post of yours describing
your personal tests of several years ago was the first one that gave
specifics. Naturally it has been questioned.
What can explain the absence of helpful specifics on RAHE? Is there a
code of "Don't ask - Don't tell"?

Wylie Williams

I feel your pain, Wylie, but do you know how many amps there are? I'd
guess most folks here bought their amps some time ago, and are not
constantly upgrading, for obvious reasons. So there's not much reason
for them to be constantly testing new amps.

Fortunately, there's a way for you to get a handle on all of this--do
some
ABX tests comparing the amps you have available to you. If you keep
getting negative results, then you can pretty much assume that you
can't hear a difference between them, at least in the system in which
you'll be using them. (And if they're all the same, they're almost
certainly all "competent." After all, what would be the odds that a
bunch of incompetent amps would all be incompetent in the same way?)

If you get any positive results, well, report back here, and perhaps
some of the experts can offer an explanation as to why, and which amp
might be the underperforming one.

bob