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Re: More answers

> Is it fair then to say that in the absence of special load driving requirements, your experience is there are no audible improvements to be found in more expensive amps than some that are quite modestly priced?

Not when phrased like that. Firstly the amplifiers have to be designed to be linear and implemented well enough to achieve it over some of their operating range when presented with the load of the desired speaker and the current required to achieve the desired listening levels. More expensive amplifiers (designed to be linear) generally maintain linearity over a wider operating range and can drive more demanding loads than their cheaper equivalents. If the demands on the cheaper amplifier are not sufficient to provoke audible nonlinearity then it will sound the same as the more expensive amplifier (designed to be linear). This is by definition if both amplifiers achieve linearity to within audible perception.

At the expensive end this rules out almost all valve amplifiers and probably some of the expensive but odd solid state designs (I have no experience with the latter and the reviews of them I have seen are not informative so it is a guess) because they are not sufficiently linear nor, to be fair, are they intended to be if they are to have that valve sound.

At the cheap end, it tends to rule out amplifiers that cannot maintain linearity when driving real loudspeakers at realistic SPLs. This is a significant function of the loudspeaker the amplifier is required to drive and so "audibly nonlinear" is not an independent property of the amplifier. The price point where a significant proportion of amplifiers are good enough has been falling over the years. Exactly where the limits are today for a given type of loudspeaker load is something you would expect the home audio press to report if it acted in the interests of the consumers.

>> Would you not consider fidelity to be a single well defined criteria?
> Definitely not.

That is a surprising. Is this because the word fidelity does not mean to you simply a linear amplifier?

Is the sole task of an amplifier to linearly increase the input signal? Or should it aim to do more such as sound musical?

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