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Wylie Williams wrote:

So long as you are looking at a conventional design a good amplifier
specification to look at is weight. Yes, weight. The components that
produce power and dissipate it have to be larger and heavier in proportion
to the power produced. I refer mainly to the transformer, but also to the
power supply, heat sinks, and chassis.

Wylie Williams
The Speaker and Stereo Store
Saint Louis Missouri


Agreed.

(With regard to my original post: I decided to stay with a good solid stereo
receiver which is also used with feeds from three computers.

Oh, to return to the days when a power supply weighed as much as a house and
was powered by half-inch copper lines fed directly from a local
sub-station )

I actually had an opportunity to look at the input power requirement on a
Panasonic 'home theatre' unit at BestBuy this morning. The product is
advertised as 600 watts amongst six speakers (at 1 kHz), including the
sub-woofer.

It's input power requirement is 130 watts on a nominal 117 vac main.

This reminds me strongly of the late 1960s and the early 1970s when I worked
at one of the major hobbyist-consumer electronics stores.
'IHF' power, 'peak power', and a couple of others I don't recall allowed
power 'ratings' of 100, 200 watts or higher with an input requirement of 50
watts.

I do recall that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and no-holds-barred
testing and reviews put a stop to that. When the practice resumed I don't
know.

To be fair I have come across a couple of manufacturers (Onkyo was one) not
afraid to list the actual ratings of units with 5.1 or 6.1 channels.

When I'm ready for a full-blown multi-channel home theatre system I'll start
looking at those products.

- --
Ron n1zhi

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