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All Amps Sound the Same....

A guy posted this on another forum:

"This is my other expensive hobby and while I agree with you about low end receivers, once you get to mid-priced (~$600-1000 street price) multichannel receivers you're into pretty good gear...Keep in mind that an amplifier sounds like an amplifier and changing brands should add or subtract nothing to/from the sound and that going up the food chain just adds power output or snob appeal to a separate amplifier...These days most audiophiles either use a good quality multichannel receiver alone or use a mid-priced multichannel receiver to drive their amps even for 2-channel."

Wow, where do they come up with this? Lack of experience?
russ69
rok2id's avatar
rok2id
4,494 posts
 
maybe 'all audiophiles sound the same' would be a more accurate ststement.
tpreaves's avatar
tpreaves
2,515 posts
 
09-05-11: Rok2id
maybe 'all audiophiles sound the same' would be a more accurate ststement.

Not in a million years !!!!!
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
3,575 posts
 
Most of my friends believe that all amps and CDPs sound the same (it is only about power while digital sounds always the same). Interestingly, they believe that speakers make big difference. 33% success rate ain't bad.
jeff_jones
418 posts
 
If all amps don't sound the same now, when will they?

I.E., board level components are cheap, excellent designs have been in existence for more than 50 years, even the more showy items such as heavy metal structure & etc. become a minute contribution to price once the price point hits a fairly modest mid-fi price level. What is there in the production of a world class amp that would justify more than say a retail price of $1500.00 for absolute state of the art performance?

There is the thing about some preference for NOS tubes come to think about it, so perhaps the rhetorical question would need to exclude high dollar NOS tubes or other bits of unobtainium that I'm overlooking.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
3,575 posts
 
Jeff_jones - it is not that simple. SS designs 50 years ago were horrible with huge negative feedback and a lot of TIM distortions. Sanity is slowly coming back but amplifier design is not a trivial thing especially with budget constraints. The fact is that even for $1500 today you can find very decent and very horrible sounding amps. We tend to prefer the first kind.
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