If i had the money.....

Tweety, in probably less than a year these amps will probably be on the used market for between $3k and $4k. So if you can wait until a magazine declares some new greatest flavors of the month, and people get a handle on the sound of these amps (and decide if it is or is not what they are looking for), you will probably be able to pick these up for a good price used.

Sean, great composers and musicians can see the music on a page, and instantly hear it in their heads. I do not have this talent. And I sure cannot look at any specs of an amp on a written page and translate them into the sound of an amplifier, especially how it will sound in my given system. Sean, if you can do this, more power to you. I cannot. To me, this makes specifications worthless. This does not even take into consideration the fact that the specifications may be WRONG or MISLEADING. This is knowlege that you are being fed by someone else, and many times it is the manufacturer. I am not going to say that all manufacturer specs are wrong or misleading, but as with ANY information put out by a manufacturer (of Hifi magazine), the specs must be taken with a grain of salt. This is much like audio reviews. Specs can be fudged, or made to look better than they really are (through omission) or even mislead by emphasize different things.

Anyway, the only thing I fully trust is my ear. And sometimes I ask for a second opinion from a friend's ear if I have a question or need to confirm something.

KF

On what Rcrump describes...

Yes, an integrative approach can also be applied to specs, i.e. seeing a greater whole through seeing the networking of the parts in action. Enough integration and you can develope an intuitiveness for seeing what is coming (a certain degree of prescience is what integrative knowledge gives you, which is only a further expansion of the temporal abilities that we already have; it has little to do with the parts themselves).

But, remember, Einstein said, "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality they are not certain, as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality."

The gear you choose is a reflection of a designer's active and receptive abilities, meaning that the sound produced, and how it may or may not catalyze your mind into deeper listening, is a finction of the designer's orientation. Attachment to the parts leads towards an analytic presentation; using the parts but transcending their attachment - seeing their future function in their integration, as Crump describes - leads to a different design and result upon the listener.

Specs is specs is specs, but you can't feel the warmth of the sun through a study of chromatics... It tells you alot ABOUT the sun (active mind), but it not the experience of the sun (receptive mind).

Hear hear!