The purpose of this entry is to set the ground work for future receiver and amp reviews.  I’ll probably find an excuse to link to this one.  As noted in my last entry the hi-fi industry has long been a playground for pseudo-science and subjective elitism.

We walk a fine line in the realm of hi-fi, how do you describe sound quality without getting just a little “new age”?  You can only use the words clean and clear so much and there are other qualities in a sound system like bright, warm or neutral.  These qualities are also referred to as coloration and these tonal qualities are primarily created by speakers, the mechanical devices that produce the sound.  The space in which speakers play is also a major consideration in creating acoustic coloration.  Amplifier’s do not (or should not) add coloration to sound, it’s not the job of the amp to create any sound quality at all, but to power the speakers and provide the audio signal for them to play.  Whenever I read about a “bright” sounding amp my BS alarm goes off.  An amp can do many things to sound, not the least of which is distortion.  Certain kinds of harmonic distortion are actually desirable to the human ear, some can even produce a “warm” sound.  The warm sounding tube amp is the result of a form of distortion that can be reproduced by placing resistance on the end of power output.  This is no secret and it’s the endeavor of high end Pioneer Elite receivers that use the MOSFET power outputs in an effort to mimic the classic sound of the tube amplifier.  Other kinds of distortion aren’t so desirable, clipping peaks off sound waveforms that speakers try to reproduce are the result of an amp being overpowered and simply not able to provide anymore gain.  This is common in cheap receivers and amplifiers with poorly made power supplies. 

A high current transformer with high capacity filters provides the rest of and amplifier’s circuitry with the current it needs when the soundtrack peaks and will help limit clipping and allow the amplifier’s outputs (transistors) to work.  There is no way to mask a good quality power supply, it weighs a lot and should be particularly heavy when you pick it up.

I don’t buy into a lot of adjectives to describe the sound produced by an amplifier.  Amps provide speakers the ability to do their job, that’s it.  Either the amp is doing that job adequately or it is not able to sustain peaks in the soundtrack, giving a thin sound, or worse the amp might distort causing coloration to the sound quality.  The mechanical device that produces sound is a speaker, the amp provides the speaker power.  You won’t hear esoteric descriptions of sound colorations and qualities brought on by the amp from me.  If the amp isn’t up to the job it’ll cause distortion, if it’s up to the task it’ll fill the speakers with clear, sparkling sound and let you realize the true quality of the speakers you’re listening to.
A quick word on what exactly a “good” amp is and what constitutes a “bad” amp.

It’s easy to pick on the Home Theater in a Box option, especially they downright lie about their statistics to make them sound like they even compete in the component market.  The trouble with these systems is they don’t hold a candle to even a cheap component system.  If you really want passable sound quality you’re going to have wasted the $300-$500 dollars you spend on a HTIB that you could have spent on a good receiver to anchor the rest of your system. 
Consider this add in Best Buy for the JVC THC5 HTIB system for $378.  The JVC THC5 boldly claims it’s a 1000W system.   

The marketers must have been smoking THC when they named the system.  If you scroll down to the product features you’ll see:  “Total output: 1000 watts (receiver: 167W x 5 @ 3 ohms, 1kHz, <10% THD; subwoofer: 167W @ 3 ohms, 100Hz, <10%THD)”  If you click on Best Buy’s own pop up definition of “total power” they’ll tell you it means peak power.  This means each channel can handle 167 watt peaks.  This is very poor.  Peaks are several times what the “real” continuous power can be.  In a decent sized living-room, even 20ftX20ft add a couch and a carpet and this system is going to get swallowed up and offer only thin anemic sound.

For less than the price you paid for the JVCTHC5 you can move within Best Buy’s own website and found the Yamaha HTR-5840BL priced at $300.   If I were in the market for a receiver in this price range I’d probably save the $300 keep saving for Yamaha's HTR-5860.

Best Buy claims the HTR-5840BL receiver only offers 600 watts of total power and it has six channels to power instead of five.  By Best Buy’s outrageous description it sounds as if the JVC THC5 is far more powerful.  But that’s just deceptive marketing BS.  The 100 watts per channel offered by this decent Yamaha receiver is continuous power, if we measured the peaks this high current receiver is capable it would likely register into the thousands.  This Yamaha unit is sure to anchor out someone’s living-room (of just about any size) for the rest of their life, it’s not likely the kind of component you’re going to seek to replace in a few years, the longevity and solid build Yamaha components are known for makes this a sure bet.

I haven’t listened to any of these units, this is not meant to be a review but a cursory glance at what a major big box store has to offer.  We can see how misleading the details of the products can be when you don’t understand that half the time they’re basically lying to you.  A system that has to skew the truth about its power output by giving peak power instead of RMS (root means square or continuous) can’t be a good system.