Is dynamic headroom a good thing?

[Head_Unit]

I was reading this
https://www.audioholics.com/amplifier-reviews/arcam-a25-integrated-amp
and 2 dB of headroom was noted as very nice. But IS it?
- It's nice to have more voltage output and music is dynamic, so YAY!
- OTOH doesn't it imply the power supply is "soft" and hence less than ideal? And thus *maybe* not really delivering that headroom into tough non-resistive phase angles?
Can this lead to what a lot of people feel are differences in sound characteristics?

Recalling days of yore when NAD and Proton could provide +6 dB headroom, and the perhaps in some way similar operation of Class G/H amps, I think those are somewhat different cases??

 

[restorer-john]

There was a thread that blew up a bit in relation to headroom recently shut down. What do you want to achieve with this one?

There's clipping headroom and dynamic headroom. There's also peak output power and continuous power.

There's amplifiers designed to deliver high dynamic power outputs with dedicated circuitry to achieve that and also amplifiers that get their dynamic power as a 'bonus' over and above their rated power outputs.

And you have the massive, gigantic cess-pool that is deliberately inflated, cherry picked and blatantly deceptive power output claims.

 

[Head_Unit]

I didn't see the other headroom thread I guess. Where's that? Maybe it would answer my questions. Yeah I don't mean amps designed deliberately for some short-term increased headroom. Nor do I mean amps that are delivering more than rated power, that's just specsmanship or conservatism.

What I'm thinking is that shouldn't an ideal power supply be super "stiff" and hence you would get very little headroom at all?

 

[voodooless]

Where's that?

It’s literally the third search result if you look for “headroom”:

'Headroom' is a measure of the badness of an amplifier. The bigger the number, the worse the amplifier.

Edit: New thread from posts excised from the Fosi amp thread. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/fosi-audio-za3-amplifier-review.52139/ To cite you: "Nice bit of headroom." You make that sound like a good thing. A large headroom figure is merely measure of how bad...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Head_Unit]

Ah, I just stumbled on that! I didn't have any concept to search for that before starting this thread. I guess that one went all sideways, with some misunderstanding and mis-focus. I think the OP there had my same kind of idea but posted it in a more controversial/clickbait way.

Some examples I'm thinking, with the disclosure that although I worked a lot with amplifier designers and have an electrical engineering degree, I am not an amp circuit designer.
(1) If you had a 100W/8Ω amp with maybe 120W peak power, maybe that will actually clip at less than 100W into the actual low impedances and difficult phase angles of many of today's speakers. Whereas *maybe* a 100W amp with zero headroom due to a super stiff power supply would just shrug that off and deliver actually more power into those conditions.
(2) Let's say you have a 100W amplifier block, and feed it from:
- A somewhat loose/droopy supply with headroom
- A super tight supply
Even with an identical output circuit, which will deliver more clipping power into real speakers?

Now, I wouldn't expect more than a couple of decibels difference. But perhaps this is one factor in sonic differences between amps? If there even is such a thing which I both believe and disbelieve...