That basically means the amp you used for audition was clipping. Anyway for your tastes, focal is not the right speaker. You need an L-Acoustics stack with crown amps

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Long time no see Chaos. Hows it going?
The amp might have been clipping, didn't sound it though, but are the focals really capable of 115db @ 10 feet with less than 10% THD @ 120Hz and below? Nope. I already have a speaker which suits my tastes perfectly driven by a QSC amp, just got em. If you are in Cal you are welcome to an audition, please bring stuff you know to get a good feel for it. Still listening to Dream Theater?
I am not sure on that one Decadent_Specter - I agree loudspeaker and room are important but so are amplification and sources and receivers are the worst offenders of all. But anyways it is just my humble opinion and like you mentioned I am one of those who does not have a lot of knowledge in these matters so I will be sure to audition with my music when I do. I also try to educate myself by using the good resources of this forum.
Cheers
Sid
It depends on whom you ask some people say amps sound the same others say they are different. I think it depends on if the amp is "coloring" the sound at some frequency, and more importantly THD ratings for the amp. I am not one to believe in fancy amps, lots of power, good THD specs etc, is a good amp IMO, if the specs are true of course. I have used some pro amps (I don't like home amps) and I can attest to that fact that amps make a difference but not quite as much as some publications would have you believe. I primarily think of the difference is in power/THD terms, and of course the ability of an amp to handle some difficult loads.
Sources do matter, much like amps but their effect on the overall sound is not as great as the other two factors, nor will everyone be able to appreciate the difference of a 192kbps MP3 versus a flac, particularly in a blind test. Simply because you would be feeding the cleanest source in the world to a low end 2.0 PC speaker doesn't mean it will sound good, its going to sound horrible (subjectively, there are those who would enjoy it). I'm not even going to touch on its SPL/THD capability. Likewise if the room has a lot of reflections and peaks and nulls its going to be messy.
This is my take on sound. I'm not the most knowledgeable on audio theory by any means but I know what I need to know and what I like and it works out fine for me. YMMV.