When someone tells you it's a $40,000 amp, does it sound better?

Irrespective of a "house sound" and what may float one over the other's boat between different brands of amplifiers, there are ways to more effectively harness the potential of a given amp with how it's loaded. Looking into a passive cross-over of a speaker, not least a complex one and delivering the power over a full range spectrum under such circumstances is way more challenging and therefore more compromising wrt. performance envelope vs. seeing a pure load directly into a driver from a dedicated amp channel and over a limited frequency span. The amps functioning in the latter scenario will see their power and quality much better and easier utilized, whereas with the former the amp would ideally need to be close to impervious to load (which is saying a lot in the face of a difficult, full-range ditto) for any hopes of it to be a comparable scenario with the latter - and that is disregarding the sonic influence of the passive cross-over itself, one might add.

I'd wager a vital aspect of why a, say, $35k amp sounds better over a pair of speakers than its cheaper $20k sibling might very well come down to the fact that the more expensive amp is less affected by load and therefore has more power headroom/is more at ease operating, with all that entails. Indeed, passively configured and inefficient speakers with complex XO's call for the need of amplifiers with massive power supplies and overall sturdy build to come to life, whereas conversely in an active scenario much less is needed of the amps to still be fully up to the task, not least power-wise - again, with all that entails. 

Configuring speakers actively myself I see no reason to strive for 10's of thousands $$ amplifiers when I can get by with much less. Moreover, this scenario (i.e.: active) lends the opportunity of a differentiated amp approach, where fewer quality wattages can be used in the mids to upper frequencies (even less watts the higher the speaker efficiency), and more brute force can be used in the lower regions where it's more readily required, in addition to the typical need for more damping factor here and proper driver control (this could be done passively as well with a bi-amping approach, but without the same opportunities of active to blend different amps more smoothly). Surely, when developing amplifiers it would seem that the marriage of the more ultimate in sound quality with gobs of power doesn't always go hand-in-hand, and thus differentiation of amp usage via an active setup can make even more sense. 

Whether a $40k amplifier is worth the investment is up to each to decide. If it makes sense to someone to throw that amount of dough after it in the system context it's supposed to be used, go for it. It's not that I can't see the reasons why expensive amps are expensive, but coming down to it it's only saying so much: that's they're very expensive, and it figures why. I certainly wouldn't automatically assume they're the better for it compared to offerings much cheaper, depending on the context they're to be implemented. 

@atmasphere wrote:

One example I've seen given to showcase this is college tuition. Colleges found that if they decrease tuition enrollment goes down and goes up when they increase it.

Another example is Campagnolo, a well-known bicycle parts brand. Rather than price according to a formula, they price according to what the market will bear. 

Exactly. For some reason though there's the sense of this permeating blanket of suppressing any notion of such expensive gear being also, and maybe not least a way of accommodating/is a symptom of what you describe above.

However, very expensive and overbuilt monstrosities of amps can also be a symptom of what they're feeding, and the severe bottleneck inefficient and passive filter-heavy speakers represent. When you have to muscle up such power capacity/PSU stability to come near relative load indifference while maintaining headroom, which is really to be strived for with any serious "hifi" setup, it should be obvious the load looked into is (too) significantly draining. It's amusing actually seeing pictures of setups with amp towers (McIntosh comes to mind), per channel, lining up to such heights to even diminish the appearance of the typically small-ish speakers flanking them; here the bottleneck effect of the speakers wrt. to their power requirement is visually striking.

...

At least as inefficient, passively configured and multi-way speakers are concerned I'd be inclined to side with those feeling the bigger/more expensive amps actually do make a difference for the better, because the speaker context calls for their sturdy PSU's and prodigious power capacity, all the while trying to diminish any negative sonic side effects building amps of such massive power volume can lead to. Perhaps a crude/simplistic measure as a generalizing stance at least, my approach (with exceptions) would be to limit linear PSU-supplied amps to no more than ~100W per channel (i.e.: class A/B, lower for class A), and use the more efficient class D topology above that power requirement. The former to the central midrange on up (or if sensitivity and SPL need allows, below that range as well), and the latter below that. If power requirement is an issue in the central to upper octaves, address speaker sensitivity accordingly. 

@jumia wrote:

It can get terribly confusing and I just wish your phraseology could've done a better job communicating what you're probably thinking.

Apologies for not being able to bring about my views more clearly. I'll try and expand on them in a hopefully more concise (but not necessarily more compressed) manner below.  

I think I have A real interest in what you're trying to say. I believe you're trying to distinguish between efficient and less efficient speakers.

Speaker efficiency is only part of and indeed my secondary issue here, but it certainly is an important parameter in making more effective use of the amplifier power at hand. More on that later. 

Whereas higher power amps are used to drive…… and this is where I run into a problem with what I'm trying to read here.  I guess with the higher powered amps maybe they should be less powerful because if speakers were designed better you won't need all these additional watts which are now being used to push the delicate analog signal through all the filters.

My primary concern is how passive filters, complex ones in particular, become a "bottleneck" between the amplifier and speakers. Negatively affecting the control over the combined set of drivers it has a given amp putting some effort into handling the full-range frequency spectrum via the passive filter/driver combo it looks into, and depending on the amp this can severely limit its power envelope and overall performance; you could have a, say, 200W class D amp struggling with a heavy filter load, or a 30W class A ditto handling the same with relative ease. Wattages only tell you so much, but in any case both amps can't "see" and control the drivers directly, and thus only so much of their potential is utilized - as well as each individual driver's ability to "mimic" more closely the output signal coming from amp. One amp scenario would definitely be preferable over the other, though.  

It follows that with passive speakers, the multi-way ones with complex/heavy load filters in particular, overall amp sturdiness and load resilience is paramount to harness the potential of the speakers, and to achieve this with power headroom to spare - in addition to unimpeded, great sound quality - one could wind up shelling out serious dough for such amplifiers. Conversely, actively configured speakers with dedicated amp channels seeing directly into their respective driver (or driver segments), sans any intervening passive cross-over parts, will make much more effective use of their amplifiers both with regard to power capacity (i.e.: actively you'd need less power to equate a passive scenario) and sound quality. Not only would a cheaper amp actively be potentially comparable to a much more expensive ditto passively, it might very well surpass it as such being given superior load conditions, and this is where the context of this discussion matters. 

Designing more powerful amplifiers with the complexities involved here, pragmatics would dictate it's not as much about gaining sound quality than it is trying to merely maintain the fundamentals of it in the midst of the challenges posed. This being so I'd claim the overall advantage found with the sound of large, very powerful and more expensive amplifiers coupled to floor-standing, multi-way, lower efficiency and passively configured high-end speakers is mostly due to the power reserve and resilience to load presented here, than any "added" excellence of the core design. On the other hand, with an easier speaker load sans passive cross-overs, not least with speakers more efficient, you have a much better outset with less power needed to accommodate topologically more simple and cheaper amps, while maintaining the same (or more) headroom/SPL envelope. To me at least, that's the better hand to be dealt, while saving you a lot of money. 

Speaker efficiency - that is, the higher it is - is definitely a boon here, but with it typically also comes changes in design principle and size that makes the "all things being equal"-stance a more difficult one to go by. I myself adhere to the more efficient (and larger) segment of speakers, and driven fully actively provide a range of benefits that are immensely worthwhile to me, but it also means "buying into" another range of speakers that - and I believe this mostly comes down to aesthetics, size issues and conjecture - many may not be willing to accept. 

Crickey, that went on for long :/ Did it make you any wiser?

@atmasphere wrote:

The other advantage of easier to drive speakers is the amplifier, regardless of technology, will make less distortion. That will result in a smoother and more transparent presentation, since a lot of that added distortion will be higher ordered harmonics to which the ear is keenly sensitive, and otherwise distortion tends to obscure detail.

Absolutely, that's a very important aspect I failed to mention - thank you. And sadly very few speakers made today are 16-ohm load, which it seems is another means to lower amp distortion. Not least also having an amplifier only cover a limited frequency span actively, like freeing it from the lower midrange on down, is a liberating measure to lower distortion. 

@larrykell wrote:

True Class A amplifiers require large power supplies, huge heat sinks, have many output devices, consume lots of electricity, and generate a lot of heat. They’re expensive to build. My Colosseum has 48 Sanken bipolar transistors and can generate 160w at 8ohms and 1250w at 1 ohm. It’s all Class A. There can be no crossover distortion because the transistors never turn off. I think the sound is glorious and that there is no substitute for Class A amplification.

That’s one massive beast of a Class A amplifier - not to mention the power bill it produces..! I know, because I too am very fond of true Class A amplifiers. There’s this effortless smoothness/liquidity and natural warmth to a good such amplifier that’s addictive. The Class A amplifier I’m using is only 30W/8ohms, but it also only handles frequencies from ~600Hz on up, actively, while looking directly into a 111dB sensitive compression driver and its associated horn. Suddenly 30W gets you a long way - if it even outputs more than a single watt or two, indeed typically only a fraction of it and with all that entails with regard to miniscule distortion levels. With a closer to "normal" 91dB sensitive pair of speakers, passive at that, one would need 3kW to - on paper - equate the SPL-scenario of the 111dB/30W combo mentioned, driving a passive full-range load at that. One shivers by the thought of a 3kW true Class A amplifier...