Best Amp for Timbre, Depth and Spatial Resolution?

The key point in that last post is "best picture." Who decides what is the best picture? YOU DO...and tastes differ. Julian Hirsch pretty much always said the same things so he was sort of boring compared to modern "objectivist" reviewers who aren't necessarily more accurate, but have the florid and long winded descriptions we all know and are sometimes entertained by. Also, room correction gizmos merely hand over parts of your rig to paramaters decided on by somebody else, applies those paramaters to everything you listen to regardless of what might be on the recording, thus taking you out of the driver's seat, so to speak. Do you want a robot adjusting your video screen for you? How about salting your food? Picking out your wine? Man up (or Woman up) and join the fight against evil Room Correction Devices (RCDs) or all esthetic choice will be marginalized!

Exactly. There is merit to the subjective approach. Specs only tell part of the story. You don't listen to specs, you listen to sound and music.

There was a time when amplifier measurements varied greatly, and some claimed specs were less than (let's be generous and say) accurate. Then when specs were actually measured, they started to become way more consistently accurate. Just when the specs started to become little more than academic fodder, some manufactures started a specs war with specs marketing becoming the driving force, even surpassing their reason for being; sound quality. Even though many specs (though not all) taken out of context offer the consumer little insight into how an amp might actually sound, I'd rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater and return to the bad old days. I say keep measuring, keep it in context, and maintain some semblance of quality. Perhaps in the future we'll have better diagnostic tools to help guide us in the vast sea of choices. Even the crude measurements we currently have still offer us a bit of insight into system compatibility.

Bo1972:

"What can I say?"

Maybe a tad less, perhaps?

Springbok10, I agree 100 percent with your first post here. That is why I have asked in my first post here how does one alert the moderators about this guy.