amplifier's "slam-factor"

As a general rule, I have found that MOSFET amps tend to provide "one note" bass that sounds like a wet pillow being struck by a canoe paddle. The sort of bass heard on early Telarc recordings. Bi-polar designs seem to be much better in this respect. Over the years, I have found that the biggest challenge in hi-end audio is getting good, tight, deep, natural sounding bass. Attaining air, depth, detail, extended highs and natural timbre are all easier by comparison.

The trouble with buzzwords like "slam factor" is that they invariably tend to mean somewhat different things to different people. Oh the joy of subjective audio where you have large watts and small watts and where the more murky the explanation the better. One man's slam is another man's unnatural exaggerated bass. Go figure! They all sound the same. They all sound different. Take your pick. It's a free country. Has anyone ever heard the sound of an amp without speakers? Maybe everyone should consider the two as inseparable. Maybe then one would say: "amp a when driving my speakers at exactly matched level, in the same room, playing the same source material sounds, to my ear at least, as producing more natural or more accurate bass than amp b". Good day.

I witnessed a similar effect when trying out a Classe CA100. The dealer said its damping factor is about 30 and my McIntosh MC7100 is 100. This is not the only difference but the Mc definately has more controlled slam than the Ca100 (the rest of the system was the same for both: Mc C712, Paradigm Ref 100.2, MIT). I have been trying to find a technical definition of damping factor but to no avail. Does anyone know how it is calculated? Arthur

Kennyb, thanks for the kind words.

"Slam-factor" has more to do with the amp and speaker combination than it has to do with the amp alone. I've heard speakers take the slam out of amps that supposedly have a lot of slam. And I've heard speakers make supposedly slam-less amps sound slamming.

It would be nice if we could simply look at specs to determine if an amp has slam, but this is not the case. If you do look at specs also look at the speaker's efficiency and impedence. Usually, high efficient and high impedence speakers with lower powered tube amps or low efficient with low impedence with mega wattage solid state amp produces the right amount of slam.