Agree or disagree with the following statement.

Just to clarify, the underlying debate is that some people claim that they can look at a spec sheet, and determine how a component will sound, without listening to it. Not that specs can't be of good use in making a selection, just that they can be used as the sole purpose for judging sound quality. For me personally, I can't do that. I have to listen or I can't say how it will sound. Others claim they can, so I'm thinking maybe some people have the ability, or they can somehow learn to read a spec sheet in a way that tells the whole story.

Thanks for the clarification, ZD. I know that in most situations I for one would not be able to predict with any kind of precision or certainty how a component will sound, based on specs and measurements. And I would feel highly confident that the same holds true for the vast majority of other experienced audiophiles.

Best regards,
-- Al

Totally agree with Al on this one, and for those that rely heavily on specs,
here's some for you,

. : ... :. . :: . .. . . .
. . :.. .. :.. . ....
..:. ... ..:.. .: .... .
. :. ... :... ..:.. ..
. ... .: .. ... .: . .

IMHO, the above will tell you just as much as a spec sheet with regard to how a component will sound assuming there is no measurement that raises a red flag.

Al, absolutely agree but I would even question power specifications. Assuming that they follow any standard (like FCC power) it is only useful if one listens to sinewaves. Average music power is only few percent of maximum power. It is possible that one amp will have 200W rated FCC power but small headroom while the other listed at 100W average has huge headroom allowing to play music much louder. Load characteristic is also important. How particular amp behaves with given speaker (complex load). How much current it can deliver etc.
Is it soft clipping amplifier or the one producing tons of nasty higher order odd harmonics. If sound is related to specifications at all it would be inversely proportional.

All equipment reviews should have full test measurements, otherwise your at the mercy of reviewers bias and or poetic babble and if the reviewed piece was matched or mismatched to the rest of the system.

By reading and "understanding" all the review "measurements tests" on Stereophile, one can "usually" gauge what a component will do or sound like when it's matched or mismatched with other components.

All reviews should be this informative, and it would be nice for Stereophile to bring back "capacitive stability load testing" of amps into 1k and 10k square waves, which they drop 20 odd years ago, as this told a lot of what an amp was designed like.

I asked JA why this "stability test" was dropped, was it because it taking out too many unstable amps on the test bench, the answer was a coy yes, I thought this is a good test as then the consumer would stay away from such a poor design. I remember if the early Naim 250 was even in the same room as a pair of Quad57's it would blow up. That's how unstable it was.

Cheers George