Vertex user tip May 2012 - "power corrupts...."

The prase "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely" is attributed to the historian and moralist Lord Acton who coined the prase in 1887 in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton. The phrase has become well known since, as pretty much a universal truith when it comes to people and power - at least with people in power where there is little or no control around them.

The same is true of hi-fi systems.

So often we hear people discussing upgrades, saying the next step is surely a more powerful amplifier - as if this is universally a good thing. It may or may not be a good thing. We also hear of people who upgrade their speakers to something bigger, or maybe move their sytem to a bigger room.

But in all of these sorts of cases, we need to take great care when increasing power - both its avaiilability and its demand. Remember, move a system to a larger room and you may need to set the voloume up one or maybe two notches to get the same perceived level. Assume one notch is an increase of 3dB - thats twice the power, and two notches is 6dB - thats four times the power!

So just a basic, but fundamental tip here. The more power you need to use, the more care you need to take to tackle systematic 'power' related faults.