Brian Hoskins said:There should be some governing rules when it comes to specs I think. Manufacturers should have to quote power outputs at the same level of distortion. That way you don't get away with fooling poor unsuspecting customers into buying a high power NOISE generator.
It's already done, any decent manufacturer (and ALL PA manufacturers) quote power outputs as RMS, feeding a specific load, and at a low distortion level. The Behringer amp I mentioned provides 2400W in to 4 ohms in bridged mode at 1KHz and 0.1% THD.
What you should never believe though is car audio specs, or computer speaker specs.