This is like going back to 1973 being a teenager and trying to learn about audio. Yeah. Seriously. Almost 50 years ago. Yet reading this it feels like half a century and nothing has been learned.
Pestering the guys at Radio Shack, killing time in the store reading all the books and magazines I couldn't afford to buy, I learned that back then people were free to make just about any claims they wanted. If they could get an amp to spike 20 watts on a peak at a certain frequency then presto, 20 watt amp! If the amp would produce any power whatsoever at 20 Hz or 20kHz then presto! 20-20kHz response! There were no standards.
(Useful point of reference for those not around back then, an amp that made a legit 4 or 5 watts was doing pretty good. Nobody knew how efficient the speakers were, they were just barely getting around to that, but you could get good volume from those amps so they were probably around 90 dB, well some of them anyway.)
RMS was little more than a mathematical concept. Years later things that were known even then would become industry standards. THD, IMD, RMS, stringent conditions of temperature and frequency response and more all became standardized and regulated.
To what end? Marketing. Not music. Anyone around long enough will know that. All these technical standards accomplished, at least in the beginning, was wars for ever lower THD, ever more watts and ever flatter response curves.
For all the good it did. The phrase measures great sounds bad came about for a reason.
The whole time this was going on, and even before, and even to this day, there was a tension or competition between the measurers and the listeners. The hardest part to get across to audiophiles is that the listeners have always had the upper hand. The only real thing the measurers have going for them is marketing.
Which turns out to be a pretty good advantage. Oh, it don't do s--t in terms of making anything sound good. But it takes time and effort and energy learning how to listen. Takes like 3 seconds to say "200 watts flat 20 to 20K at 8 0hms with .0026% THD" and to top if off you sound all impressive. Ohms! Oooh! Don't know my ohms from my mhos but it sounds impressively technological!
Yes, I know, hard to believe, but word salad was a thing even before we knew to call it word salad.
That fricken moron Hirsch was the epitome of the egghead dope that ruined the game while pretending to be a player. He was a player all right. Just not the way we thought.
Be a phile not a phool. Learn to listen. All the rest is noise.
Pestering the guys at Radio Shack, killing time in the store reading all the books and magazines I couldn't afford to buy, I learned that back then people were free to make just about any claims they wanted. If they could get an amp to spike 20 watts on a peak at a certain frequency then presto, 20 watt amp! If the amp would produce any power whatsoever at 20 Hz or 20kHz then presto! 20-20kHz response! There were no standards.
(Useful point of reference for those not around back then, an amp that made a legit 4 or 5 watts was doing pretty good. Nobody knew how efficient the speakers were, they were just barely getting around to that, but you could get good volume from those amps so they were probably around 90 dB, well some of them anyway.)
RMS was little more than a mathematical concept. Years later things that were known even then would become industry standards. THD, IMD, RMS, stringent conditions of temperature and frequency response and more all became standardized and regulated.
To what end? Marketing. Not music. Anyone around long enough will know that. All these technical standards accomplished, at least in the beginning, was wars for ever lower THD, ever more watts and ever flatter response curves.
For all the good it did. The phrase measures great sounds bad came about for a reason.
The whole time this was going on, and even before, and even to this day, there was a tension or competition between the measurers and the listeners. The hardest part to get across to audiophiles is that the listeners have always had the upper hand. The only real thing the measurers have going for them is marketing.
Which turns out to be a pretty good advantage. Oh, it don't do s--t in terms of making anything sound good. But it takes time and effort and energy learning how to listen. Takes like 3 seconds to say "200 watts flat 20 to 20K at 8 0hms with .0026% THD" and to top if off you sound all impressive. Ohms! Oooh! Don't know my ohms from my mhos but it sounds impressively technological!
Yes, I know, hard to believe, but word salad was a thing even before we knew to call it word salad.
That fricken moron Hirsch was the epitome of the egghead dope that ruined the game while pretending to be a player. He was a player all right. Just not the way we thought.
Be a phile not a phool. Learn to listen. All the rest is noise.