Should ASR bother testing stuff with mediocre manufacturer specs?

[Koeitje]

There are a few companies who deliberately publish conservative specs and guarantee those specifications will be equaled or bettered.

Accuphase is one such brand. They don't cherry pick inputs or conditions for THD, they give a number which is well above the highest THD across the 20-20Khz bandwidth. When you peruse their actual test graphs (and the ones supplied with the gear in the box), you see they are terribly conservative in the numbers.

Yes, Accuphase it pretty conservative. I've got a Marantz PM-16 (entry premium line amp from the mid 1990's) that was measured in direct comparison versus an Accuphase E-210 by a German audio magazine. And even though the Marantz beat it in the overal test, I doubt the distortion was 5 times as high on the Accuphase as the specs would want use to believe. The Marantz also beat its own specified output power into 8ohm by 20% but that's pretty common.

I'm actually pretty curious how these "budget" premium amplifiers hold up today, because the second hand prices are pretty low.