Do you understand your amplifier?

"it is impossible to know the sound of an amplifier or any other component in the absolute sense. this statement can be proven mathematically"...huh?...if this can be proved mathematically I'm staying home that day.

Having an understanding of the basics of the design of your gear is all you need...impedance issues, power needs, number of interesting lights, where you're gonna put it...otherwise, when in the presence of my friends who kindly tolerate my yammering about my new cables or Isonodes, I'd be boring the crap out them even more.

Quite well, but I'm an electrical engineer, so it's a bit unfair....

Hi Cathode, Normally I would completely agree with you, but last weekend, my electrical engineer neighbor asked me how to tell which breaker was bad in his box. I tried to loan him a meter and finally went to his house and showed him. You never know.

I see questions like, "I am looking for a tube like solid state amplifier"? Would it not help to understand that MOSFETS are voltage sensitive very similar to tubes and used in a class A biased configuration can be made to sound tube like with very rich second harmonic content. This was one of the goals of Nelson Pass's Aleph amps if I understand correctly. It is simply an aide in the selection process and save some time. Obviously your ears will be the final judge.

Having built a couple of valve amplifiers I would say I understand my amplifiers less now than I did before and find myself wondering how my amps really feel about this. However There is a noteable difference between pentode and triode.