It is in no way an excuse for bad specs- and in fact our amps have some pretty good specs (if proper measurement technique is used, which means **don’t ground a speaker terminal during testing**, which is the mistake that almost everyone except Charles Hanson made/makes). I suspect you didn’t read the paper at the link very carefully, since you claimed that you read it, yet still with the remonstrations!Sorry. Now back to my sorely missed idol, the great Charles Hansen. He gave an interview to S'Phile back in October 2016 (or at least, published in that issue) and said this;
My point being that here we have this great engineer who thought he had engineered a product that tested well and sounded great and then he had an epiphany of sorts that something better was indeed out there and attainable. I continue to believe that old maxim that we're all tired of reciting let alone hearing; not all things that matter are amenable to testing.I didn't really understand it for a long time. When I first made the Ayre MX-R amps and KX-R preamp, I thought, Okay we've done it. We've made stuff that is so good it's as good as tubes—why would you bother with tubes? But I would still get customers and manufacturers who would say, "Yeah, that's nice, but I'm still sticking with my tube piece, because you haven't got there yet." And one of my weaknesses, for better or worse, is that I have such a big ego, I don't have to listen to other kit. I just listen to my own designs. If I had, I would have known what they were talking about.
When we made the KX-R Twenty, we took all our ideas we had been working on for 20 years, and getting feedback from people who were able to teach me how to listen better, and what to listen for—20 years of hard work. And then I hooked up the KX-R Twenty and I went, "Holy cow! This is what they were talking about. No wonder they didn't want to listen to solid-state—this is what they wanted to hear." It just hit me: This is what all those tube nuts were talking about. I would send stuff off to these dyed-in-the-wool tube guys, and they would say, "Nope, it's gotta have a tube in it or it's never going to work right. No, it's just sand. How can it sound right?"
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/charley-hansen-wizard-boulder#1xppIjoxr0TfgdJG.99
In a separate post your "intake guy" Clio-something really gave me the business about being a troll and not having anything technical to add. He's kind of right and kind of wrong IMHO. I may not have technical expertise but I will never believe that JA's measurements trump listening impressions. Roger-the Roger that I have metaphysically shaken hands with-enthusiastically too-you have endorsed JA's measurement techniques again and again and yet the fact of the matter is that JA has never given any tubed amp an enthusiastic endorsement from the standpoint of measurements. If your amp is an exception, than fine, that would be one instance of my "never" being incorrect. He may have given that monster hybrid integrated by Musical Fidelity-a known S'Phile darling-a thumbs up from a measurement perspective as well. So that would be two exceptions.
Btw, go back to the full link of Charley Hansen's interview and see what he said about finding a power cord laying against the carpet at a show and finding that one wood block cured his perceived dissonance. What do you have to say about that? That it was in his mind?