Classe 201 -vs- Odyssey Stratos

Hey Rjones, did you get the monoblock version of the Stratos or the basic Stratos. Also wondering if you got the cap upgrade?

If you think the Stratos was better than the Classe 201, can you tell me where it pulled ahead? I cant wait to see for myself how this thing performs!

Thanks.

I got my stratos a week ago, i have extreme monos,
I ll tell you they are very good, I have only 120
hours on them,but the sound I am hearing is good.
I have heard the classe 201 they are good too,but
IMO I like the the stratos better, they are very
smoooth.. and natural. and powerful.

i recieved my odyssey extreme mono's a month or so ago,
time to go listen to tunes, i'm going to forget about surffing the net for a while and enjoy my music-enough said

Hi, I received my Stratos amp w/ the cap upgrade in the middle of January. Right out of the box I was very impressed w/ its build quality. Very good connectors and casing. Even the feet are of very good quality. It is a very large and heavy piece of equipment. Don't underestimate this, you'll need a lot of rack space for this beast. I had a minor problem w/ my unit after a couple of weeks. It failed to power up. An internal soldered wire had come loose. I spoke to Klaus and he gave his okay to resolder the wire. It was easy and the unit works perfectly now. He was very upset this had occurred. He did seem genuinely concerned. No big deal, but it did happen.

Intitially I thought the sound of the amp was poor. Harsh and constrained. No kidding. Odyssey recommends 1 month of burn in. I believe it. I didn't want to judge this amp too harshly at first, so I burned it in w/ continuous music play for the recommended month. Nearly 24/7 play. Things didn't really improve for at least 3 weeks. But they did improve, significantly. After 1 month the unit sounded good. No complaints.

I'm replacing a 20 year old Hafler DH200. Frankly the two amps sounded similar. I found it hard to distinguish the two. Maybe my ears are lame, who knows. I'm considering keeping the Hafler and selling the Odyssey. I'm not sure what to do. I have no complaints about this unit. But it's not blowing me away. This could be due to my system, but the amp didn't improve things significantly over the old trusty Hafler. IMO, of course.

System: Denon DCM370 CDP
B&K Pt3 II pre
VandenHul d102 IC's
B&W CDM9 Nt's speakers

Hammergjh, sell the Stratos, buy some music!

I liked the Odyssey better then the Classe's mentioned above in monoblock form, mainly because I found the Classe too laid back and I'm not a fan of a 75th row seat, which simply annoyed me right off the bat! I found the Stratos more transparent through the midrange, handling vocals slightly better, but not rivaling the Classe in terms of bass power and articulation, nor its vast and deep soundstage which trounced the Odyssey. That said, in my expereince in my system, for the same or less money on the used market the PS Audio and Bel Canto Digital amps easily dispose of the Odyssey or the Classe amp in most regards (except most notably wrt build quality!)....