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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?
128x128russ69

Showing 2 responses by jeff_jones

jeff_jones
418 posts
 
If the history I've read is correct, the big magazines refused blind testing after one of them tried it on a range of amps and found that they couldn't reliably tell the expensive ones from the cheap ones.

That's not the same thing as saying they sounded the same, but it might hold true today that your ears alone won't drive you to prefer a costlier amp or a new amp over a vintage amp.
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.
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