In article , Brian Gaff
wrote:
Well, I suppose the misleading part of all this is actually calling them
square waves in th first place, as has been noted these do not exist.

Your objection is a tad too sweeping. Triangle waves, sinewaves, etc, also
"do not exist" if you require "exist" to mean that the real-world shape is
absolutely identical to the theoretical! :-)

I think the listening tests do prove some things though. Firstly, nobody
is really sure what 'right' actually is, so an amp may sound bad, but
it might be actually more accurate than one you like.

Alas the problem here is being expected to make sense of *someone else's*
'listening test' in a magazine when their ears, system, etc aren't yours.

The point of objective data - like ye olde fashioned squarewave test - was
to give data which could be interpreted or understood. For example showing
if there was a problem like a slew rate or max current limit that would be
too low for your own music listening in your specific situation. Thus - for
those who could interpret correctly - freeing you from having to guess what
the devil the reviewer was whittering on about when they claimed the amp
gave a 'nice chocolate sound' or whatever. :-)

The snag is that - as with many other types of measurement - they can
easily be done in an inappropriate manner, or their results totally
misinterpreted. Modern reviews generally 'solve' that problem by discarding
the idea of doing the test and trying to make sense of the results. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

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