Pathos InpolRemix

Watt is a meaningless indicator of power, you might as well say oojamaflip or thingy.

I have an Hitachi with 150w which can't pull the skin off custard, and a Rotel Power amp with 50w that can detonate speakers if played in party mode.

A lot of mainstream manufacturers (i wont call them hifi) like to use Watt because it's easy to turn up the screws and get say kilowatt of power if you don't care about quality.

In fact this magazine is also guilty of confusing 'watt' with power. I have a pair of Dynaudio's which are a pig to drive, even the aforementioned Rotels strugle. However my Copland power drives them nicely, even though the Watt rating is the same.

And power is very important for good transients etc, but Watt rating will not tell you this. A good pair of demanding speakers on a lower power amp (regardless of watt rating) will sound appalling ( I know I spent a day in a hifi shop experimenting ).

This is why matching of amps and speakers is very important. A good Amp like for example the Marantz mentioned will sound excellent with a pair of normal speakers, but will sound shockingly bad with highly demanding speakers such as the Dynaudios.

In fact you could well end up damaging the amp and the speakers.

In fact this is why the Marantz can be switched to AB mode, it's so it will drive more demanding speakers.

And when it comes to Class-D amps, there are so many issues with switching noise that getting a good one costs big money.

You got it right chebby, it is a classe A amp. Somehow i missed that. The class A mode in my dad his Marantz integrated sounded sweet.
Lately i'm turning over to digital Class-D amps for the power section, combined with class A it should give best of both. Also room correction to complement a less then ideal acoustic room is crucial. More stereo amps should have that in my opinion. Like Lyngdorf amps for instance.

It's class A throughout and small (even smaller without the heatsinks).

Class A devices typically have much less power (whether valve or solid-state or hybrid).

Older Sudgen A21s only muster 15 - 20 watts per channel and yet I don't recall anyone complaining about their power output.

I don't get it!?! The low power that is. Since they use tubes for the pre amp section and transistor power for the amp section it would be easy to make use of the benefits for the power stage. But how good this amp may sound, it lacks power.