Amplifiers, newbie is confused !! (Off Topic)

by GC, Tuesday, March 29, 2005, 12:59 (6967 days ago)

Dear people,

I'm a bit confused and overwhelmed as a newcomer to the world of Hifi. Listing to music is one of the most importent things in my life so a couple of months ago I decided to improve my hifi set. limited by a fairly tight budget I started to surfing around and started to look for the options I have. It is clear which speakers I'm going to build, but it is totally unclear which Amplifier I want to buy/build...because here the confusion starts !!

Ok, here is my problem. Every speaker has his own characteristics and colours the music in its own way. (if I'm correct??). So two type of speakers will not sound alike, and a perfect speaker does not exist. It is all about compromising. Keeping that in mind I would expect that a amplifier should keep the music natural and clean without colouring. (because otherwise you have to deal with the unavoidable colouring of the speakers and the colouring of the amplifier?). Anyway, there are a couple of characteristics that determine the sound quality. (maybe there are more, I do not know)

Freq. response: between 20 and 20.000 with a flatness of +/- 1 dB
Distortion; less then 0,05% in the above freq. range
signal to noise (1watt) less then -90 dB
Damping 10 or more

If you take Amplifier 'X' and Amplifier 'Y' which both have the specification as mentioned above (or better) they sound the same. At least, that is what I would expect.

So, here is my question; Is it indeed true that from a HiFi point of view an Amplifier should produced sound according to the above specification, to keep everything as natural and clean as possible?? I mean, how is it possible that I read often in reviews that e.g. amp 'Z' has a warm sound, a solid bass etc etc, and that why it is better than amp 'W' I mean, an amp should not alter the music and make it more warm with more bass than is actually recorded? or am I wrong?

Thanks,

Jacob

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