When someone tells you it's a $40,000 amp, does it sound better?

A great amp will shine even with modest speakers.  A friend told me about the day he was working at an audio shop where they used a really good amp with a range of lower priced speakers, including a pair of old and battered Polk speakers, and every speaker sounded amazingly good.  That was when he became convinced about how extremely important amps are to the sound.

Possibly my ears can't discern the difference between 20 and 40 thousand. I will be better off with 20 thousand. My only question is how do you listen to all these different sound systems in your room. Tested with the same songs and the same volume, at the same time of day with no invading sounds, at the same temperature and the same amount of drugs in your system. 

I rant!

@jumia 

A good DSP arrangement solves a lot of room problems and equipment problems and is underrated and not fully appreciated.  Probably because the interfaces and the product are so difficult to work with. It's a real pain in the ass to deal with DSP the way it's set up and really shouldn't be.  Mcintosh has a room treatment box that provides no graph before after and no way to make changes and requires microphone for sampling just like everybody else.

My safety net for audio room issues is AccurateSound.ca. The guy running that service has a remote DSP creation service that works well (and easy for the client). I used them for a big speaker in a small room and the results were excellent. I no longer use that DSP (Convolution filter) because I have a small speaker in this room, and it is a seamless fit.

It may sound very nice and very good but I wanna see something and I wanna be able to change something.

I have not tried this new software that AccurateSound has created but they have something to allow you to try different Convolution filters quickly to see how it sounds.

If you are a ROON or JRiver user and are mainly focused on digital streaming audio, then AccurateSound is gold. This is a computer software-based approach to room correction so it will work with all gear. The software they use is very expensive audio software and is very complicated.  I also consider this solution miles more powerful than any DSP stuffed into audio gear (no matter the price of the gear).

I am considering a $35K amp for my Livingroom system. The cost of that amp is way higher than I normally spend but I have reasons that made me chose that over a $6750 used amp in the same lineup. I also considered the phenomenal CODA #16 at $13K, but I want more power.

My to the grave amp in my office cost $3K each (monos)

Only your ears will be able answer that question. Stop listening to others and start listening to yourself. Should a 40k amp sound better than a 20k one: it should, but it’s you that must make that determination not the supposedly know it alls that troll these forums daily with their opinions based on their beliefs!