What could I expect to hear from a Class A amp?

"...nobody remotely comes close to Pass Lab on Class A amplifiers. Otherwise there would have been well-informed and fairly objective challenges left and right."

I'll submit Clayton Audio as a strong competitor to Pass Labs performance-wise, but they're obviously a much smaller company that sells far fewer amps so they're not close in that regard.

Spatine, As I've said I'm a big fan of Nelson Pass but in my experience I think ( and this is just my opinion) Gryphons class A amps are superior for some applications. The Antileon signature is $31,000 the Colosseum is $50.000 and the Colosseum monos are ( I think) $75,000. What makes them more universally useful is that they continue to increase class a power down to 1/2 ohm impedance. ie. 150w/8 ohms, 300w/4ohms, 600w/2ohms, 1200w/1ohm, 2400w/.5ohms. They have 2 power cords and I plug each into a dedicated 20amp outlet. Now in practice they would rarely exceed 600w output but they are impervious to load. This won't matter to people with efficient speakers with benign loads but it mattered to me in my case. That said Pass represents better value and if you don't need the extra oomph then I would go with them. If however you really dig class A but have challenging speakers or money is no object then Gryphon is a better way to go IMHO. This is not a put down of Pass. I really like their electronics and I especially like their people and business philosophy. - Jim

I did listen to Clayton's at a show. It blends in among the good amplifiers. It's interesting to note that big players have not caught on to Class A in big ways. May be they figure the R&D it takes to compete against Pass take so many years that it's not worth the risk. The little guys are still at Square One and thus don't have much to loose. Just pondering here.

The 'big players' prefer to sell convenience. IMO, their equipment sounds like it is built for that too :)

So there is plenty of room in the market for smaller companies that base their marketing and products on higher performance features like Class A operation.

Thanks for the knowledge guys! Feel free to keep writing your thoughts. I would love to get my hands on ANY class a stuff just to see what observations I could make...