Bret Ludwig wrote:

"Don't clip the amplifier" is easy to say, and tough to do.

Wrong. It's easy if you know how.

Totally
avoiding amplifier clipping under any and all circumstnaces requires
either active power compression control (i.e. "Power Guard")

Not necessarilily. What's this 'power guard' anyway ? Some audiophoolery I expect.
Pro-audio amps have had signal limiters to avoid clipping for *decades*. Including
the cutting lathe amplifiers that made the vinyl !

or a
really, really, really big amplifier,

That helps for sure. :-)

the very small signal performance
of which is usually suspect unless the amplifier is made extremely
heavy and hot and has a very high quiescent power draw. A 20 watt tube
amp that pulls 50 watts at full power is more efficient in practice
than a 250 watt solid state amp

That's a pure lie. Tube amplifiers are staggeringly inefficient.


First, Hamm's article by title states "transistors _can_ sound better than tubes",
which is sometimes true, not that they "always do" which we know to be false.

How do you know ? Personal bias ?

Graham