All Amps Sound the Same....

If all amps don't sound the same now, when will they?

I.E., board level components are cheap, excellent designs have been in existence for more than 50 years, even the more showy items such as heavy metal structure & etc. become a minute contribution to price once the price point hits a fairly modest mid-fi price level. What is there in the production of a world class amp that would justify more than say a retail price of $1500.00 for absolute state of the art performance?

There is the thing about some preference for NOS tubes come to think about it, so perhaps the rhetorical question would need to exclude high dollar NOS tubes or other bits of unobtainium that I'm overlooking.

Jeff_jones - it is not that simple. SS designs 50 years ago were horrible with huge negative feedback and a lot of TIM distortions. Sanity is slowly coming back but amplifier design is not a trivial thing especially with budget constraints. The fact is that even for $1500 today you can find very decent and very horrible sounding amps. We tend to prefer the first kind.

If all amps sound the same, then we should recommend that everybody buy a 500 watt a channel job as their first and only amp they will ever need. How come the guys that think all amps sound the same never own/owned a big/expensive amp?

IMO comparing an amp to a mutlichannel AVR is not anywhere in the same area.

The statements the OP posted to me come from someone not very fimilar with the hobby like we are.

For instance it would be a tough day for an AVR to drive certain speakers and I think one would be asking themselves why does my AVR blow up when I choose to run a 2 ohm load on it?

The box stores like Dumb Buy and alike push AVR's as that is what most people go in looking for. Even HTIBs because someone can't even understand the difference between an AVR and a HTIB.

That and when people are listening to crap thru bose systems what would they know? They think they got the best out there due to name. Heck I even work with a kid who was a Bose store manager and tells me I'm stupid for buying audio like I do.

In the end, to each their own. I wish more people could wake up and hear what good SQ is like but then that would mean they would have to take the time to listen in such a busy world.

I think whomever posted the stuff in the OP was just trying to start a fight or rile up folks.