Wylie Williams wrote:

I aplologize for my inept internet skills. Somehow on the post below
I
seem to be replying to Bob Bernstein when I was replying to the Bob Marcus
post below. I also apololgize for the frivolus tone of my reply to Bob
Marcus, if not my dissatisfaction with the general idea that I got from his
post, which is that "plug it in and play it; if you don't hear distortion
it's as good as it gets". That sounds like a subjective answer, and was
asking for an objective answer.

Yeah, but it was a "subjective" answer based on my objective answer.

Mind you, I have no objection to the subjective school of
audiophilia,
as I have followed that path for years. But as RAHE has many committed and
persuasive adherents to the objective school I thought I would find out
some
objective criteria for amp selection. But not too successfully. Noussaine,
for example, tells of his dozen or so amps that all sound the same to him.
I don't doubt that he ( as well as all the other adherents of the "if it's
a
nominally competent amp it sounds like all the other nominally competent
amps" school ) has a great system and great ears, but that's no help to
me.
I would like to find out the criteria for NC status. Mr. Marcus says "flat
frequency response and enough power" and "without audible distortion". I am
under the impression that flat frequency response is as common as dirt.

Seems so.

As
far as "without audible distortion" goes I have considerable experience in
the mid-fi business and I know that the vast majority of healthy young
males
with good hearing think anything that plays loud has "no audible
distortion". Or is it "no audible distortion as judged by a golden eared
listener"? Who certifies the goldenness of the ears? Certainly
professional audiophile reviewers would be the clear choice for experienced
golden ears, but they all say that even the best amps have very different
sounds. Perplexing!

Who cares who certifies anything? Your ears are the only ones that matter.
If the amp doesn't seem to be distorting to you, then it's good enough for
you, right?

Besides, if distortion is audible variation from the original sound
then then vast majority of reproduced sound I have heard in my life has
been
audibly distorted. Sometimes more distorted, sometimes less, sometimes a
few
moments of a convincing illusion, sometimes "euphonic coloration" (which I
definea s likeable distortion), and only occasionally apparently free of
distortion.

Actually, you've never heard rerpoduced sound that wasn't distorted. The
question is, what caused the distortion? Probably the speakers, not the amp.

As for selecting the speaker first, that's an interesting thought.
And it's worth it's own thread. I thought I would try to settle the quality
issue first and deal with the quantity issue later. Besides, after
selecting
a speaker I would have to choose an amp, so knowing the elusive criteria
for
"nominally competent" would be the starting point, wouldn't it? Maybe I
have a better speaker than I know, but my amp is lacking.

Maybe (although probably not). But unless you've got a fair bit of measuring
equipment and the know-how to use them, you can't determine whether an amp
is competent to do what you're asking it to do. Now, if you know what kind
of a load your speakers present, and how powerful your amp is into a load
like that, and how big a room you're trying to fill, you can make a
reasonable assessment. But there's no measurement that's going to tell you,
"54 watts isn't enough, but 55 watts is."

That's why even objectivists have to trust their ears. (We just don't trust
them when they're telling us something we know can't be true!)

bob

__________________________________________________ _______________
MSN Toolbar provides one-click access to Hotmail from any Web page – FREE
download! http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/