"Pooh Bear" wrote
in message
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 ?

An electronic circuitry that backs off the amplifier's gain when the input
signal would tend to push it into clipping.

http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/mcprod/....%5CMC602br.pdf

"Power Guard® clipping protection. Power Guard ensures that the amplifier
will always deliver full power without causing clipping distortion. If an
amplifier channel is overdriven, Power Guard automatically reduces the input
volume just enough to keep distortion below 2% and prevent any clipping
distortion. Thanks to an optical resistor, Power Guard acts literally at the
speed of light, producing absolutely no audible side effects. An amplifier
with Power Guard will actually deliver clipping-free output well above its
rated power."

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 !

Vinyl bigots would die if they knew about all the work-arounds that were
routinely used in its production.


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.


Bret is also implicitly claiming that a 20 watt tubed amp can sound as good
as a 500 watt amp when 500 watts would be required to avoid clipping. This
is complete and total nonsense.


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 ?

It's what the voices in his head tell him. I think he should unwrap the
aluminum foil from around his cranium.