People believe and say and do all kinds of things......does not make it true.....same for me. What I state about op amps is my experience.....if Ralph has a different EXPERIENCE then that is fine. The only way to know what is true in this case is to try a discrete op amp in place of the one he uses and listen. I am not doing that....are you? So, neither of us knows what would happen......but since my experience has been universal (that is, no matter where and how you use an op amp......it has a sonic signature)......I bet it would be the same here.
This is what Ralph stated: "Our input buffer has a gain of 2, which is to say there’s a lot of feedback and with modern opamps, as long as you don’t ask more than about 20dB or so, they will be as neutral as you can get."
The above statement is not my experience......again, no matter how much feedback...all op amps sound different (and none of them are neutral)....all of them: discrete and Integrated circuit ones.
BTW, Nord, Apollon, VTV, etc. sell amps that have discrete input buffer option....so you can roll op amps......all op amp options sound different from each other.....this buffer is on the input of a class D Purifi module......it uses very little gain.....just like Ralph......you can also put adapter boards in these discrete op amp input boards with regular op amps on them.....yes, they sound different again....and not as good as the discrete ones.....go read their sites......email them....they will tell you about how different they sound......I am not the only one in the world with this experience.....lots and lots of people have rolled the latest op amps.......
Shall we move on? Or shall we keep talking about things that we cannot prove?