Jtinn, LOL! In my opinion the ASR is pretty special and may be the one to beat, and yes the convenience and cable savings pay for a good part of the unit (love that remote as well as the other capabilities). I'd love to hear the darTZeel's head to head-let the winner stay! In my opinion the ASR's I have here are allowing me to hear details with a clarity I didn't think possible without sounding either mechanical, bright or etched like the vast majority of solid state out there, or colored and slow like a lot of the top tube amps. HP was right when he called the ASR revolutionary. I have the ASR Emitter I which is sonically almost identical as the II with slightly less power but some say is more open, transparent and detailed with the II being slightly darker sounding. I can tell you with absolute certainty I don't miss my beloved SET's with the ASR's in the mix. It is not better than tube or solid state, its more like melting the walls of your listening room and seeing a 3 dimensional rendering the space of the recording, the instruments in an amazingly layered space and my own personal grail of "pulsing sphere" effect of sound emanating in all dimensions. It's a little disconcerting at first when you hear it since you're hearing some subtle (and some not so subtle) spatial cues in very familiar recordings that you've just never heard before, with depth that just blows out the back wall of your listening space.
