I still find the following quote from Nelson Pass most amusing. It comes from the owner's manual for my Pass Aleph 3, written early in the 1990s:
"When I started designing amplifiers 25 years ago, solid state amplifiers had just achieved a firm grasp on the market. Power and harmonic distortion numbers were king, and the largest audio magazine said that amplifiers with the same specs sounded the same.
"We have heard Triodes, Pentodes, Bipolar, VFET, Mosfet, TFET valves, IGBT, Hybrids, THD distortion, IM distortion, TIM distortion, phase distortion, quantization, feedback, nested feedback, no feedback, feed forward, Stasis, harmonic time alignment, high slew, Class AB, Class A, Pure Class A, Class AA, Class A/AB, Class D, Class H, Constant bias, dynamic bias, optical bias, Real Life Bias, Sustained Plateau Bias, big supplies, smart supplies, regulated supplies, separate supplies, switching supplies, dynamic headroom, high current, balanced inputs and balanced outputs.
"Apart from digitally recorded source material, things have not changed very much in twenty five years. Solid state amplifiers still dominate the market, the largest audio magazine still doesn't hear the difference, and many audiophiles are still hanging on to their tubes. Leaving
aside the examples of marketing hype, we have a large number of attempts to improve the sound of amplifiers, each attempting to address a hypothesized flaw in the performance. Audiophiles have voted on the various designs with their pocketbooks, and products go down in history as classics or are forgotten. The used market speaks eloquently: Marantz 9's command a high price, while Dyna 120's are largely unwanted."
"When I started designing amplifiers 25 years ago, solid state amplifiers had just achieved a firm grasp on the market. Power and harmonic distortion numbers were king, and the largest audio magazine said that amplifiers with the same specs sounded the same.
"We have heard Triodes, Pentodes, Bipolar, VFET, Mosfet, TFET valves, IGBT, Hybrids, THD distortion, IM distortion, TIM distortion, phase distortion, quantization, feedback, nested feedback, no feedback, feed forward, Stasis, harmonic time alignment, high slew, Class AB, Class A, Pure Class A, Class AA, Class A/AB, Class D, Class H, Constant bias, dynamic bias, optical bias, Real Life Bias, Sustained Plateau Bias, big supplies, smart supplies, regulated supplies, separate supplies, switching supplies, dynamic headroom, high current, balanced inputs and balanced outputs.
"Apart from digitally recorded source material, things have not changed very much in twenty five years. Solid state amplifiers still dominate the market, the largest audio magazine still doesn't hear the difference, and many audiophiles are still hanging on to their tubes. Leaving
aside the examples of marketing hype, we have a large number of attempts to improve the sound of amplifiers, each attempting to address a hypothesized flaw in the performance. Audiophiles have voted on the various designs with their pocketbooks, and products go down in history as classics or are forgotten. The used market speaks eloquently: Marantz 9's command a high price, while Dyna 120's are largely unwanted."