"High Current"

Sean...How could I have missed your point? All those beautiful audiophile words..Clean power, refined musical and natural, lack of smearing strain and ringing, harmonic structure, yada yada,yada. I just don't agree with all your conclusions.

Until one has heard / experienced a system that is capable of such things, their standard of reference will be lower than someone that has had such an experience. Based on common sense, my previous education and a lack of exposure / experience, i used to think that a power cord couldn't produce either measurable or audible differences in audio components. As such, i clung to that belief quite adamantly. After opening myself up to such ideas and conducting some simple tests, i experiencing quite the opposite first hand. This not only changed my point of view, but helped me come to understand how / why this was possible.

What i'm getting at is that man doesn't know nearly as much as we think we do. Life is a learning experience and audio is no different. One can learn / unlearn as much as they want to, based on how much effort they are willing to put forth in doing so. There are things that i now know to be true that i would have worked hard to refute just a few years ago. Those things that i believed to be accurate up until a few years ago were based on many years of first hand experience and education. The bottom line is that i was lacking both education and experience in certain areas and until i opened myself to learn more in those areas, i was stifling my own personal growth and that of my audio systems.

If this sounds like i'm on a pulpit preaching, it's not meant to. It's simply meant to explain why some folks may have different points of view than others do, even if they may have similar qualifications and / or backgrounds. The same can be said for audio components. They might measure similarly in certain areas, but be quite different in others. Thinking that they all sound the same would be equivalent to thinking that all people are the same. This is obviously not true and both cases are quantifiable. Sean
>

With all due respect to all, what Sean is saying is hardly revolutionary -- and thereby, hardly controversial. All he's describing is an amp where the manufacturer is (truthfully) saying: "this amp is stable down to 2ohms and I guarantee that at that (resistive) load this amp will produce 1200W of energy; similarly, it will produce 600W if the load is 4ohm and 300W if the load is 8ohm".
What said manufacturer did NOT openly claim is that these are peak power/ energy ratings before clipping.
All SEAN is saying is that one shouldn't construe these specs as such. Some manufacturers may be refering to peak W at clipping while others NOT: I.e., what the manufacturer COULD be saying is "this amp will put out a MAX of 1200W at 2ohms, well over 600W at 4ohms, and substantially over 300W at 8ohms".

In the old times some manufacturers were even proud of quoting stability at 1ohm to show how well their product had been implemented.

Not just the old times. I love my 1 ohm speakers. It is comforting to know there are amps specifically designed to mate well with my speakers.

Power measured at clipping and peak power are different things. Peak power will typically be higher than power at clipping due to the pulsed signal that is very short in duration. The high intensity, short duration signal does not stress the amplifier nearly as much, reducing sag in the power supply and resulting in greater momentary power output.

The test for peak power output is typically referred to as "Dynamic Headroom" and isn't all that uncommon of a spec. The dynamic headroom spec simply tells you how much power above the rated output that the amp can deliver for a very short period of time. Most manufacturers are glad to provide such a spec and as Greg pointed out, it is NOT what i'm talking about. The specs as posted for the Sunfire were taken at clipping ( max sustainable output ), not using momentary short-term tone bursts. Sean
>