amp pricing

[moves]

So anything in the 100s is a good sign?

 

[fuzz092888]

So anything in the 100s is a good sign?

Very generally speaking speaking, 100's is excellent 90's is very good, 80's is ok and anything in the low 80's and below you should probably be looking elsewhere.

There are a lot of factors that go into creating hum and noise in your system. In home trials are your best bet to know what will run quietest in your setup because your home power, outlets, receiver, cables, and also whatever amp you get can affect hum and noise. Getting a good amplifier with a high SNR that also does everything else you want it to do is one of your best bets to ensuring that the amp isn't going to be a source of noise.

Take for instance my outlaw 755. 119 SNR A weighted. Should be dead silent. In my old room, it was not. Added an APC power conditioner and voila, there it was. Dead silent.

I'll also add one last thing, noise through the tweeter can end up being a subjective type of thing. Some guys claim to be able to hear it no matter what (dubious IMO), while in my own experience, if it's not audible from 6 inches to a foot away then it's probably not going to affect me at the listening position. SNR is important, but by itself isn't what I use to disqualify an amplifier from consideration YMMV

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Also factor in who's doing the measurements.

For Stereophile, the best ever is the Mark Levinson 532 @ -105.4dBA. The $53,000 MBL amp is 102.7dBA. Most high-end amps from Bryston, Classe ($13K), Music Fidelity ($20K), Parasound JC, Krell will be around 95-97dBA.

In case you didn't see my other 100 posts on this, ATI makes some 125wpc, 200wpc, 300wpc amps for Mark Levinson, Lexicon, JBL, Cary Audio, Theta, B&K, Outlaw, Earthquake.

But practically all AVRs on Home Theater Magazine are better than -100dBA.