Some of you will like me for this and others will hate me but in the interest of advancing knowledge on this subject I have decided to post this.

I decided to blind test my wife's plastic, dinky Sony boombox with my Denon. Here are the specs:

Sony CFD-Z130: 2.3W + 2.3W into 3.2 Ohms at 10% harmonic distortion.

Denon AVR-2105: 90W + 90W into 8 Ohms at 0.08% THD from 20 Hz to 20 Khz; 125W + 125W into 4 Ohms at 0.7% THD at 1 KHz; dynamic power of 170W/channel into 4 Ohms.

For the Denon, I used my Sony with optical out as the CD source. The boombox has its own CD player.

I put on some Poncho Sanchez and adjusted the gains for 75 dB SPL. By the way, 75 dB in my room requires less than a watt per side. After I had everything adjusted I called in my wife, son and daughter and let them listen to the Denon for 2 minutes and the Sony for two minutes. Then I sent them back out and covered everything up. To make a long story short, we tested 12 times for a minute each time and I had them write down their answers each time. The test was painful as I had to keep changing the leads. Here is the raw data. The first field indicates the amp under test and the last three fields the selections they made:

1. S, D, D, S
2. S, S, D, S
3. S, D, S, S
4. D, D, D, S
5. D, D, S, D
6. D, D, D, S
7. D, S, S, S
8. S, S, S, D
9. S, S, S, S
10. S, D, S, S
11. D, S, D, D
12. D, S, S, D

Out of 36 possible trials, 21 turned up the correct response. That's not much different than guessing heads or tails.

I haven't revealed the results to my wife because if I do, she won't authorize an A1400-8 .

Let the beefs and bouquets begin. BTW, for those in Canada, enjoy your long week-end and make sure you try out my BBQ marinade recipe that I posted.