Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners It is OK to add Amps...

I love physics. I love math, and chess too. They all take discriminating opinion, perception and chance out of the situation/conversation and speak to facts, logic and numbers. Unfortunately, when it comes to subjects such as this one, and many others where “opinions” and “wives tails” play into the subject, physics then gets surrounded and lifted away within a whirlwind of bullshit. I generally avoid these topics anymore as there are hard liners who feel solid state amplifiers have their own sonic character and that they “add” all kinds of wonderful things to the electrons that make things sounds better. Then on the other side of the conversation are those who pull their calculators out of their shirt pockets, run numbers and then compare them to graphs and trends and tell you what sound looks like. I’m somewhere in the middle. I use outboard amps, but don’t really need them. I just prefer separate components over boxes crammed with crap that fight for realistate in the box. I’ve performed my own highly subjective and unscientific testing with and without outboard amps. I could not, (with a straight face), detect any notable difference in sound quality until the mean decibel level in the room reached 90 DB. At this level, the outboard amps in the mix definitely made a sonic improvement. But, as John has mentioned many times before, this is much too high for any sort of sustained listening unless that individual wants to suffer long term and irreversible hearing loss. But, for this last test, I started out with a receiver that had a robust power supply. I have also played with many other receivers “rated” at above 100 WPC and they sounded like crap above 70 DB. So when folks ask if receiver such-and-such will drive their speakers, I do more than look at their WPC rating. Some are simply better made than others and some brands are more honest than others. I’d recommend a 75 WPC NAD over a 125 WPC Yamaha any day of the week.