amplifier's "slam-factor"

With live, non-amplified music does anyone ever hear slamming bass? I've heard deep, forceful tones that carry a physical impact, but I've never been exposed to that sharp, highly edge defined bass sound except for when I'm listening to high end audio systems. I'm not entirely convinced, but the stereotype Krell/Bryston bass sound could be a form of coloration. Which is not to say that on rock and other strongly rhythmic music that it can't be a very pleasant colorations.

I just replaced my 300wpc Krell FPB-300 with a 150wpc Spectral DMA-150 Mk2 (speakers are Aerial 10T). At first blush it had seemed that I had taken a step backwards in terms of slam. But after further critical listening I realized that the sound had taken a step forward in terms of slam. A great example of how the slam changed could be found by listening to Reiner's Pictures (Classic reissue LP).

The sound of the bass drum on this using the Krell tended to fill the room with a dynamic, fat, "thunk" -- something you could really feel in your belly.

With the Spectral amp the overall sense of slam seemed to take a step backwards because it wasn't as large and as fat. The sound though more closely represented a bass drum being hit with a mallet. The sound of the mallet hitting the hit was sharp and seemingly more dynamic sounding than it had been with the Krell. There also was less of a sense of overhang; the notes seemed to disappear more quickly with the Spectral.

Having played the bass drum before, it seemed to me that the Spectral amp was likely portraying the sound more realistically -- and that the slower Krell was allowing the bass drum sound to hang around a bit longer than it should have been.

I think my observations seem to support the very nicely articulated comments by Stehno above.

What about the slew rate of an amplifier?

Does this play a part in the perception of "slam" factor?

Just throwing out thoughts,
benny

i suggest you look at the control that each amp has on the drivers "damping factor"

Aleph 5 50
SF Power2 100
ML 33H 830
Krell ??? ???

Like Atzen811 slewrate factor I suggest that the ability of the amp to control the drives is very important and likely to affect the sense of slam

aleph very tube like
sf very tube to kinda ss
ml very ss with an incredible sense of control and quiet
krell ?????????

not solving anything here but interested to hear comments and ideas

Onhwy61 I think you need to get out more as live music is fast without "sounding" fast.....This is a real trick to reproduce in solid state gear, some can, but most can't.....The odd order higher harmonics normally make the slam come across as hard sounding if the musical peak takes the SS amp out of it's Class A region....The solution is to allow more Class A, enough for the musical peaks.....BEAR runs the Symphony No. 1 to about 40w Class A and we run the JC-1s to almost 30w Class A....Using 89 dB efficient speakers neither amp gets out of Class A on peaks and is one reason that the line between tube and solid state has become blurred in the past decade.....