[KyleCT]

i was curious as to how h/k rates their amps. from what ive seen all their receivers apparently have a lower watts per channel rating but its a different rating than other recievers. how does this rating compare to other receivers?

[Pablo Abularach]

Specs have been abused by a lot of manufacturers as a marketing hook. Boosting the specs or the amp capability has been a comon practice by most manufacturers, and not all can deliver what they state. Harman Kardon is one company that always have rated their Recievers/Amps correctly and sometimes underated them.

[Wayne Ernst]

Quote:

from what ive seen all their receivers apparently have a lower watts per channel rating but its a different rating than other recievers. how does this rating compare to other receivers?

It's just H/K being honest and my hat goes off to them for it.

[Mat_M]

I bought HK just for this reason (well, and a few other reasons)...honesty

[Paul S]

It would seem with all this "honesty" that Harmon Kardon is losing an awful lot of business. Quite frankly, I think their low power ratings are rather foolish. I'll bet 9 out of 10 people will go for the higher wattage rating by other manufacturers. To my knowledge all amplifiers are to be rated under very tightly defined parameters. There are no more ratings of an amps "peak" power as was done years ago. The RMS rating is a very accurate and reasonable way of rating an amplifier. I am not cutting down H/K, they make a very respectable product.

[Shiu]

Most manufacturers are reasonably honest about their single and two channel ratings. That implies they are more willing to spend money on the amplifiers section, but not necessarily on the power supply, to the point that they can offer the same (or slightly less) "all channels driven simultaneously" ratings as HK does. To me, if you are on a fix budget for an entry to mid level receiver, you can either go for a HK model, for their stronger "all channels driven" power, or for others that offer stronger amplifiers, i.e. 1& 2 channel numbers but weaker all channels number. You can get the best of both if you opt for the HKAVR7200, or the Denon AVR4802 (one may argue that the 4802 is too expensive to be considered "mid level").

[Kevin Alexander]

Just an observation, but there sure are alot of these threads about how H/K rates their amps - at least 1 per week if I'm not mistaken.

[KyleCT]

alright sorry bout that, ill snoop around

[ChrisLazarko]

Regardless I haven't seen very many companies that are honest about power ratings. HK is one of the few.