Short List of Amps I prefer over the Pass Labs XA25 or INT 25

@atmasphere,  interesting and beautiful theory /hypothesis on harmonic orders. it is not easy to imagine how it works in practice. how different harmonic orders are related in phase/time, why their combination should lead to a soft pleasing sound? how many amps with 0 distortion did you see, what you mean when you refer to an amp without any distortion? and what if the distortion is too small, say .001? would then still a several harmonic order sound with distortion be better, by the way, how many harmonic orders give tube amps (all of them the same number)? 

i was a tube fun for 15 year used only tube amps. once i tried a class ab/a amp i was indeed pleased and even released with a clean clear sound that it produced. if your auditioning experience is based on  a sound with distortion, you are merely in a wrong musical world. it is a personal matter whether you like it or not. in painting, i personally like impressionism the most, because i like to see the world in this alternative way. but ii think sound and music is something different, one naturally prefers a natural uncolored sound that come from musical instruments. if there is a luck of some details and sound is not clean,  you do not really perceive what the artists wished to express. 

 i personally do not like colored sound that produce many expensive and extremely expensive amps (and also speakers). they just to not sound right for me. currently, i am pleased with Cherry Megaschino class D amp which sounds very neutral, detailed and clean, is much smaller and consumes much less energy. 

Sounds like you would be in love with the Lejonklou products.

@atmasphere, interesting and beautiful theory /hypothesis on harmonic orders. it is not easy to imagine how it works in practice. how different harmonic orders are related in phase/time, why their combination should lead to a soft pleasing sound? how many amps with 0 distortion did you see, what you mean when you refer to an amp without any distortion? and what if the distortion is too small, say .001? would then still a several harmonic order sound with distortion be better, by the way, how many harmonic orders give tube amps (all of them the same number)?

i was a tube fun for 15 year used only tube amps. once i tried a class ab/a amp i was indeed pleased and even released with a clean clear sound that it produced. if your auditioning experience is based on a sound with distortion, you are merely in a wrong musical world.

There are no amps with '0 distortion'. Such is impossible at the current time! 0.001% is audible if there are no lower orders to mask their presence. This is due to the fact that the ear uses the higher orders to sense sound pressure, and so is keenly sensitive to their presence.


All amps make distortion, and since the ear converts all forms of distortion into tonality, this is the primary difference you hear between amps. IOW **everyone** is basing their auditioning experience based on a sound with distortion.

Speaking of femto-distortion (TM) what ever happened to Halcro?  Wasn't the exceedingly small amount of distortion and noise their trademark? Here one moment, gone the next.

It looks like that we are deemed to hear distortion from the day we are born. And that the audio engineers try to make the the pain easier, i.e., the distortion in audio reproduction a most pleasing possible. The impressionists also faced a similar situation and have decided to represent explicitly the "reality" with a distortion, that turned out to be a very nice idea. It seems that the audio engineers are on the same way,  not so bad.

Nevertheless, let me mention that i do distinguish and highly appreciate audio reproduction with "a little" distortion (0.001-0.005 is perhaps an acceptable range). Two class D Cherry amplifiers that i use now (a small integrated Maraschino and a larger Megamaraschino) do reproduce with little distortion, clear and detailed as far as i can see.
I wonder if they give just one or several harmonic orders(???), i.e., whether it is a well-masked sound with the distortion (impressionists vs realists question; ironically i like more impressionists in painting - perhaps, that is why i spent the most of my time in the past  auditioning  tube amps).