Honestly, Arthur, these two you have submitted are among THE all time posts here on Audiogon. For my money, quite possibly, in fact, the best. I'd be more than interested and appreciative if you laid out as much of what you've concluded as you desire, be it here or offline, irrespective of length, depth, or breadth.
As you can see my coming to the thread four days late, I came quite close to missing it altogether. And, the laziness of not reading a thread from beginning to end actually caused me to overlook it completely in my first pass. It was only in bubbling up through the thread to get a point of reference for some of the back and forth that was going on was I lucky enough to stumble upon it. I'm surprised it didn't elicit a waterfall of subsequent discussion. Hopefully, it still may; even if calculus, and mathematics in general, is something we fall far short on as a society at large out of our irrational fear of something that should not to be feared, but embraced.
A few simplistic and personal audio examples that I'm sure most of us can relate to:
1) I used to have two integrateds manufactured by the same company, created by the same designer (if that's of any concern). One was a 120 wpc (hybrid - tube preamp/solid state output) solid state amp, the other a measly 11 wpc push-pull 2A3 tube unit. Apart from such characteristics as tone, (which is actually a quantum leap over the so-called "simple" subject at hand - power), the 11 wpc tube amp walked away from the 120 wpc in what I remember to be every loudspeaker I paired the two of them with. In fact, the order of magnitude difference in rated power seemed exactly backwards
2) That same aforementioned 11 wpc 2A3 tube integrated was also available in a 22 wpc 300B version. Again, obviously, the tale of the tape seemed to make it plain as to who was who. Again, the 2A3 amplifier readily eclipsed the supposedly more powerful 300B model. Any reasonable and average person who didn't read the product spec sheets and relied solely on their own personal being when asked to match amps and numbers in order to assign the power ratings would have chosen the exact opposite of what the paperwork stated
3) A week ago, my buddy and I visited a local dealer to listen to a pair of loudspeakers he was interested in. One of the amplifiers we used in the demo was the Manley Stingray. Initially, we listened in tetrode mode, which provides 40 wpc. As an adamant fan of triode tube operation, I badgered him enough so that at some point, he acquiesced, and we "moved down" to the low rent 20 wpc triode provided. Yet again, in any subjective real world listening test, one would think the ratings would have been the other way around. Triode operation was simply far larger and richer, putting some real meat on the bones and yielding more real world tractable power
4) One question (OK, I lied, this one is neither simple nor clean, and admittedly, maybe I've always missed the boat on this subject...) I've always wrestled with - from the methods we calculate power today, biasing a tube amplifier into Class A operation ALWAYS yields a lower figure than Class A/B operation. Yet this contradicts what would otherwise inherently be obvious (at least, to an admittedly stupid and simple person such as myself) that more current flow through a tube would equate to more (and not less) power. Anyway, my real world example is the Jadis integrateds (again, for those who care, another situation of same company/same designer). The Orchestra Reference is 52 wpc (published specs are usually 40 wpc, but taken from the smaller Orchestra figures) Class A/B, the DA30 30 wpc Class A - both amps using 2 output tubes per side be they EL34/KT77, 6550/KT88/KT90, etc. You know where I'm going here, along the lines of my argument, in my real-world experience with the two, the DA30 is readily the stronger amplifier
Continuing again with the arithmetic/algebra - calculus theme, attempts to correlate the steady state conditions that are the very nature of the measurements of amplifiers heretofore with the dynamic and instantaneously changing phenomena that music (and, the reactive load the partnering loudspeaker presents to an amplifier - something curiously ignored in these measurements) is has, and will continue to, create(d) more problems and confusion than solutions. Along those lines, we often become slaves to such measurements and the machines we have built to implement and execute them which your statement, "To think that a human can build something that would have the capability of human hearing is an ego trip that no one should succumb to. In my opinion. The day measurements can beat the human brain, our demise, and our goal, will have been reached." captures so well.
Then again, living in a world where "watts is watts" and "watts - more is better" is so much less difficult than asking the tough questions that you have, and provides for the quick and easy compartmentalization and subsequent rankings/judgements desired by the customer, salesperson, and (most unfortunately) even, the scientist/engineer/teacher.
My overall point is this subject is far more complex (which we should embrace as a challenge/something fun, and not run away because we feel it's hard work, too dificult/esoteric to understand or just plain scary) than plugging in parameters like Watts, Volts, and Amps into a simple algebraic equation, solving for the one unknown of the three, then going home for the day because we think we're finished. In no way am I saying here that Ohm's Law is any less beautiful, valid, or even appropriate. However, the numbers that we're inserting into the formula when dealing in relationship of amplifier, music, and loudspeaker relationship clearly are.
