In article , Keith G
wrote:
[snip]

If anyone *doesn't* understand what's usually meant by simple phrases
like 'slam', air', 'soundstaging', warmth', 'colour', 'tone', texture'
etc. then they must live in an isolated little world utterly devoid of
poetry, imagery and the like.

[snip]


Thus, I would tender:

'Slam', in the context of sounds obtained from an amplifier/speaker
combination (you need both) - if you ever heard it yourself, you would
know what it was.....

Alas, I have two problems with the above... :-)

The first is that I am not sure what it means when someone says, for
example, that an *amplifier* has 'slam'. I may have an impression of what
a characteristic of a given *sound* I might call 'slam', but this is
referring to the sound, not the amplifier. Given the dependence upon the
nature of the signal being presented to the amp, and the effects of
speakers, room, etc, I am doubtful of how an amp can be said to have 'slam'
other than simply saying it has a given frequency response, or something
like that.

The second is that my own personl impression of what seems to be 'slam'
might be quite different to some-one else's.

Hence when used in a review, or similar, about an amp, I am not really sure
what it tells me beyond guessing the amp can provide the required power at
low frequencies to drive the speakers in use for the test waveforms
employed to sound as the reviewer might expect.

FWIW I've finally got around to adding a subwoofer to the living room
system (mainly for DVD) which uses LS3/5A's. This means I now get much
better low bass extension and this has a particularly noticable effect in
the 20-40 Hz range. I might then say that ensuring the 20-40Hz range is
present at the appropriate level now means I get more 'slam' than before
when listening to a soundtrack like LOTR or whatever. However I'm not sure
this is what reviewers mean, nor how it might telate to an amplifier beyond
saying it can reproduce LF satisfactorily...

Slainte,

Jim

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