What amps do Electrical Engineers own...why?

Almarg,
Thanks for your well written lucid explication. You have sent me back to the books. :) I am beginning to understand the downside of negative feedback. I always knew it was required to control distortion, but there seems to be a better (more expensive) way. I have found some good internet sites that go into detail as to why lesser amounts of feedback is desirable.
Your post is one of the few that has explained WHY high-end amps cost more and should sound better. Now all I need to do is find an 'affordable' amp that meets that criteria.
Thanks for the reply.
As pertains to all my previous posts: never mind.
Cheers

Almarg,
You and Atmasphere do a very good job of expalining the potenial detrimental effects of NFB and superfluous damping factor.I don`t have the engineering back ground to discuss this as you two, but I sure can hear it often enough.I realize there`re those with equal knowledge and training as you two who will disagree.In reality I don`t find their stance(advocating NFB and very high damping factor as positives) as compelling if you acually rely on listening.
Regards,

If we restrict the question to solid state amps, offhand I can't think of any having really poor specs that nevertheless provide top-notch sonics, but there are many renowned high quality amps whose THD and damping factor specs are not **as good** as those of many inexpensive mass market-oriented receivers and amplifiers.

Al, I think I know of an example, but its not a high-end amp, although it is highly regarded. The example is the old Sunn Concert Lead guitar amp. As a transistor amp its specs were terrible compared to the competition. But it was highly regarded because as a transistor amp it had a lot of the smoothness of tone that you otherwise only got from tubes.

The way the amp did it was to run an all-FET front end (preamp) that was zero feedback. Then the power amp was 2 single-ended gain stages that drove a transformer that did the phase splitter function for the output transistors.

As you can imagine, the primary distortion component was the 2nd harmonic. It made a lot of it! But that gave it a lusher sound that was lacking in its transistor competition (and still is), and so allowed Sunn to make a transistor amp the guitarists actually liked (most rock guitarists play tube amps because they have better sound).

IOM this is a good example of how topology influences distortion characteristics and also how that topology can thus interact with the human ear. IOW how an amp can sound better, and have terrible specs :)