Agree or disagree with the following statement.

Totally agree with Al on this one, and for those that rely heavily on specs,
here's some for you,

. : ... :. . :: . .. . . .
. . :.. .. :.. . ....
..:. ... ..:.. .: .... .
. :. ... :... ..:.. ..
. ... .: .. ... .: . .

IMHO, the above will tell you just as much as a spec sheet with regard to how a component will sound assuming there is no measurement that raises a red flag.

Al, absolutely agree but I would even question power specifications. Assuming that they follow any standard (like FCC power) it is only useful if one listens to sinewaves. Average music power is only few percent of maximum power. It is possible that one amp will have 200W rated FCC power but small headroom while the other listed at 100W average has huge headroom allowing to play music much louder. Load characteristic is also important. How particular amp behaves with given speaker (complex load). How much current it can deliver etc.
Is it soft clipping amplifier or the one producing tons of nasty higher order odd harmonics. If sound is related to specifications at all it would be inversely proportional.

All equipment reviews should have full test measurements, otherwise your at the mercy of reviewers bias and or poetic babble and if the reviewed piece was matched or mismatched to the rest of the system.

By reading and "understanding" all the review "measurements tests" on Stereophile, one can "usually" gauge what a component will do or sound like when it's matched or mismatched with other components.

All reviews should be this informative, and it would be nice for Stereophile to bring back "capacitive stability load testing" of amps into 1k and 10k square waves, which they drop 20 odd years ago, as this told a lot of what an amp was designed like.

I asked JA why this "stability test" was dropped, was it because it taking out too many unstable amps on the test bench, the answer was a coy yes, I thought this is a good test as then the consumer would stay away from such a poor design. I remember if the early Naim 250 was even in the same room as a pair of Quad57's it would blow up. That's how unstable it was.

Cheers George

"02-19-15: Tls49

Totally agree with Al on this one, and for those that rely heavily on specs,
here's some for you,"

Is that braille, or is there something wrong with my monitor?

Al as usual spot on. I pitty the fool who buys on specs without using his own ears as the final factor. Now one understands why so much used equipment is for sale.