Robin Bowes;170612 Wrote: > > While I don't entirely disagree with you (I use Rotel RB-850 power > amps, > bought s/h from eBay for peanuts), I don't think an article and a > mailing list thread taken from the Internet constitutes particularly > reliable evidence. > > My own feeling is that the "sweet spot" where the law of diminishing > returns kicks in is particularly low down the price/performance curve > for amplifiers and is particularly shallow after that point (i.e. the > price increases quickly, the performance doesn't.) > > R.
Well, I'm not in the business of trying to convince anyone, nor do I care how people spend their money. Personally I've done my own experiments with amps, comparing a cheap consumer grade integrated home theater amp to several highly regarded audiophile grade amps. There *may* have been very subtle differences, but as it was difficult to do a blind test I'm not sure. At best the differences were very subtle, and I suspect there were none at all. Furthermore (as can been seen in the review above) a $200 amp measures as well or better than far more expensive units. Finally, numerous sources (yes, on the internet, but including John Atkinson among others) indicate that in blind tests no one can distinguish between amps, even when tubes are compared to $200 to $15000 amps. My conclusion? Amplification has been solved. All amps sound the same, so long as they have sufficient power for the job, a flat response, and low distortion. The point of diminishing returns in achieving that is around $200 for a two-channel amp. I think the same probably goes for digital sources - that they're all the same - although I've seen less data and my own investigations were more limited. In contrast, speakers and rooms and location within the room and DRC and equalization all make huge and clearly audible differences, so that's where I focus money and attention. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31556 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
