Quietest amplifier you have ever owned.

Jtinn: This was a spec that was measured / verified by an outside source i.e. a full fledged review with bench specs. I think that it was Stereophile that did the testing / review. The S/N was so good that they went off on a tangent about how the s/n ratio of a piece of gear equates to how many bits of data it could pass without raising the noise floor.

Bob Gates: That was a very good and simple answer. Only problem is that the people that need this explained to them "probably" don't think that one is capable of hearing hiss / noise between notes so long as the gear is designed reasonably well. On top of this, they would probably say that if you can hear noise / hiss with the gain turned down, how noisy / insufficiently designed is the gear at high volumes with more gain cranked into it ???

Pbb: Norm is an electrical engineer that has a wife that put him on a budget. As such, all of his audio gear consists of Pioneer, Sansui, Technics, Sony, Kenwood, etc... that was bought on close-out or garage sales. He posts occasionally on AA and Rec Audio Opinion and has stated that all of his gear measures well, works good enough for him and that people can't hear the differences in gear that they claim to be able to hear. To the average audiophile, he is a budget minded "nay-sayer".

As such, you two should have a ball reading most of the posts here and on AA. Then again, Norm would probably tell you that you wasted your money on the gear that you bought since one can't hear any difference between reasonable components. Then you would know what it's like to be nagged by a budget minded nay-sayer and might begin to understand the bad taste that such comments leave in one's mouth. Sean
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Sean, I didn't understand your earlier snipes at pbb, where Norm was first mentioned. I wonder if you read something into his post that wasn't there, because your reply seemed a total non sequitur.

The key to quietness at the speakers is amplify the signal as much as possible, without distorting it of course, before the power amp. Therefore the amp increases the gain less for the same speaker output and therefore is not amplifying the noise that is being introduced to it by the upstream equipment. Obviously you need input attenuators on the amp to be able to accomplish this. Some will say that the attentuators will affect the sound, even if the attentuators are part of the amplifier design.
Most power amps are quiet enough if they are matched correctly i.e. proper impedence loading and in put sensitivity matching. The term quietest amp is irrelevant and meaningless - what you want is low system noise as perceived at the close to the listening station.
I am with Pbb, if you want quiet, go to the mountains and don't turn on your sound system!

Drubin: Pbb was basically commenting that most of us are wasting our time seeking out components that both measure and perform better sonically. He basically stated that we are worried about subjects and situations that will never come into play. That is because he is of the opinion that most gear is "plenty good enough" once it reaches a specific level, hence his typical stone throwing signature of "from the mid-fi trenches". While some of his observations do apply to various conversations, i think that the majority of his comments would blend in more with the Audio Review crowd better than what they do here. Sean
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As a little note to the -120dB posts, it all depends on how it was calculated. Generally this figure is the difference between output and noise floor. However, at what output? And at what heighth of noise floor? Many ambiguous variables involved and few state the conditions. -120dB is very realizable. Pass quotes -145dB for some of his amps at peak power - quite impressive. Personally, I let me ears to the calculating. Arthur