amplifier's "slam-factor"

That's a good question and one that i would like to know the answer to myself. While one can "tighten" and "stiffen" the bass by going gonzo on the power supply and filter cap reserve, it is not easy to make it "slam". Sean
>

Stehno: J. Peter Moncrieff of IAR showed why one cdp sounds different from the next. He did this many, many years ago to specifically demonstrate that some "golden eared reviewers" really were hearing differences and not imagining things. This is one of the reasons that i like Peter i.e. he not only gives you aural impressions of the gear but also takes the time to actually measure and explain why gear has the sonic personality that it does.

By playing the same identical note on one player and measuring / charting the response and repeating the same procedure on another player, it became quite visible on a waveform that one player had better transient response ( faster rise and fall times, which are what gives us the "attack and decay" characteristics that you mention ), greater dynamic range ( higher positive and negative peaks), lower noise floor i.e. "increased inter-transient silence" ( reduced ringing for greater silence between notes / increased separation of notes), etc...

As you can see, all of these factors could contribute to a very different presentation in terms of "slam", timing, pace, etc... even when using identical source material. I find it both amusing and appalling that a magazine with the stature of TAS could not understand / know why such things occur.

Bear: Your comments intrigue me regarding power supply sag. Does this take place in designs that are fully regulated ? Do you know of any designs that regulate the output section ?

Bob Crump: While i can agree with your comments in theory, who is to say that all music / speaker systems can get by with less than 30 - 40 watts in Class A ? While you did specifically state 89 dB speakers, who is to say how big of a room one has or how loud that they like to listen to specific types of music ? What if the speakers being used were of a low impedance design ? That in itself would change the operational area of the amp in terms of switching from A to AB. Sean
>

Stehno: As to the Primare piece, i would have liked to have grabbed it, especially at that price, but i'm not upset about it. Then again, i don't know what i missed either : )

As to listing my systems, i had done that at one time on AA and had one of them listed here. Quite honestly, i pulled them down for security reasons. I and several others discussed this privately and came to the same conclusion i.e. we didn't need to advertise what we had. Quite honestly, i do not live in what is the best part of town, hence my desire to relocate. Two houses on our block have been burglarized in the last year, so no sense in pushing the matter if you know what i mean.

Bob: Thanks for the response. The point i was trying to make was that others may have different ideas of what they think is "loud" and have lower efficiency speakers AND have bigger rooms. While that is a tough situation ( big room, low efficiency speakers, high spl requirement ) for sure, i'm sure that it does exist. Just as i would have laughed if someone would have told me that i needed 1200 wpc to power a set of speakers before owning a set of them, i no longer rule things like that out anymore. Each situation is different and we all have different goals / priorities as to what is most important to us within our own systems. Sean
>