Van Alstine?

No need; it has been proven time and again that folks can't even tell differences between vastly different amplifiers, exactly like the Stereo Review test. Not even the self-proclaimed golden ears. Have you read the test yet? It's not going to bite you.

If you're newish to hi-fi, say within the last ten years, you wouldn't know about the exhaustive research done into this by all sorts of degreed folks and audiophiles throughout the 70s and 80s. We have forgotten about it in the never ending barrage of subjective reviewing by reviewers who can't hear all sorts of measured problems as proven in Stereophile, and hokey advertising by profit-driven vendors about the VAST differences their silly trinkets will make.

For your own test, take any recent mass-market receiver and compare it blind with with your amp; difficult to do without a switcher, but it can be done with a friend. The results are NEVER pleasing to folks who proclaim to be able to hear all sorts of differences.

When was the last time you compared an amp from the 70's to a high end amp made recently? It's no surprise they couldn't distinguish a cheap receiver from a high end amp back them.

Face, you have a point. I would love to see the same testing done today. Today the solid state is better, the tube amps are better, and now there are T-amps and class D. It would be very time consuming but entertaining. I had to swap out my Bel Canto M300s and place Outlaw Audio M200s in their stead for 3 weeks. The difference was very clear and persisted until I replaced the BC M300s. I could have picked out those two from each other, but I'm not sure about any others. I was so used to the BCs that any change would have been noticeable. I think it would be more fair to say that if one stays in the same topography, be it solid state or tube or IC, the differences are slight. For me it is much easier to tell the difference between SS vs tube, or tube vs tripath or IcePower.

85,

So, you actually bring nothing to the table. In addition you have proven my analogy with your insistence that mass market amps sound exactly like high end audio amps. Thank you.

There are issues with blind A/B tests. I'm not an expert, but Robert Harley has written extensively on this over the years. In any case, without claiming that the AVA, Rotel and Odyssey amps I compared are anywhere near identical in specs, I know what I heard, in my room, with my gear, with my music. In the end, for each individual, that's what counts. To paraphrase Einstein: "Not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts."