Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Which receiver HK,Denon,NAD?????

I have often wondered that myself. I guess part of the answer is that they don't have any trouble selling a lot of product even with the conservative specs they have.

One answer is that HK rates with all channels driven to full power at the same time; most other brands rate with only two channels at full power. HK does have "stereo" power ratings with only two channels driven -- those are typically 20% higher than the "all channels driven" rating but that still seems conservative compared to what the receivers can do.

I have seen "power vs distortion" curves in magazine reviews for HK and other receivers -- unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention to them at the time. What I do remember is that the HK receivers had a bit of a different shape from most -- the distortion line started to go up at lower power than other receivers, but went up quite a bit more slowly than most. The interesting thing was that if you cut off at, say, 0.5% distortion the HK actually put out MORE power than the comparably priced receivers even though if you cut off at 0.07% the HK produced less power.

I'm guessing this means higher power supply voltages on the HK (might explain why they idle hot) but that really is just a guess.