The thread has become really interesting!
I also believe that specs are just a way to measure audio, but those measurements do not have a direct relation with how we humans perceive and process sounds.
"So for the last 45 years or so the spec sheet has told us nothing about how an amp sounds"
Great Line!!
The mechanism that works inside our ears is not the same mechanism that works in the machines that produce those amp specs. We are a much complicated machine with lots of nuances to take into account.
As Atmasphere said, most of the companies need something to show or rumble about and most of the time is something related to specs, although some of them play the review game very well...
We just need to listen and that is always a pleasure.
Personally, I regard that the pleasure of listening to music in a good hi end system that is able to conjure the emotions of the musicians to our living room is a kind of spiritual quest that tries to find in sound a connection with the invisible, with something that lies beyond the organized noise, that somehow make us aware of some intuitive knowledge we have lost along the years as a civilization...
How can we measure that?
