Has anyone read the feature question from this month Axiom ‘s Newsletter email?
Pretty darn funny.
...wonder if it was an actual question.
Hope I'm not braking any rules by copy/pasting this here.
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Q. Dear Resident Expert,
My husband just asked me if he could spend $4,000 to get some special new digital amplifier for his home theater system from you guys. So if you’re the big expert, what am I going to hear from this new amplifier? Why isn’t his old, ugly, heavy amplifier he’s had for years good enough? Four grand, after all, is a lot of swag and I want new granite counters in my kitchen.
-- Catherine C.
A. Dear Catherine C.,
Loosen those purse strings! You’re no doubt referring to Axiom’s new A1400-8 digital multi-channel power amplifier. Certainly on the surface it seems like a lot of money to spend on a metal box that amplifies the audio signals, something your husband’s old analog amplifier already accomplishes.
But the truth is, honey, he's only thinking of you. Just like you have a better eye for color, you also have a better ear for distortion. The fact is that with Class A/B analog amplifiers like your husband’s old one, the harder the amplifier is working, the more likely it is that distortion is gradually increasing. So if you are listening at fairly loud levels (you know how he likes things much louder than you care for), you can bet that his old analog amp’s distortion curve is rising to levels that with big dynamic swings introduce a kind of “edgy hardness” (that’s the phrase I like to use) to the sound quality. (That’s when you want to leave the room, because, being a woman, you’re more likely to hear this unnatural sound quality before your husband does. It’s genetic.) All of that is happening before your husband’s amplifier actually “clips” and grossly distorts the audio signals.
In marked contrast, the reason the A1400-8 is getting such tributes (one owner even suggested it was Tom's Gift to Creation) is that its dynamic capability, coupled with its speed and accuracy, assigns huge amounts of power at any instant to whichever channels require it most, so that distortion simply never becomes audible. Big dynamic peaks in music that may require hundreds of watts are easily met with aplomb and grace because the audio output signals never clip. The A1400 will simply get as loud as it will go and go no louder. It won’t distort in a gradual fashion the way analog devices do, getting edgy and harder as an old amplifier nears its limits.
If all that doesn't convince you, I implore you to consider your carbon footprint! Old fashioned Class A/B amps are power pigs but the A1400-8 Digital Amplifier is as green as your neighbour's garden. At close to full output the A1400-8 is around 95% efficient, versus 50-60% efficiency for an analogue Class A/B amplifier.
I hope that explains why you need the A1400-8 even more than your husband. You’ll experience what I’m talking about when the A1400-8 arrives at your front door. After all, you can only look at granite counters, right?
