Montaldo, thanks for your friendly response. My aim is what Peter Walker once called 'the closest approach to the original sound'. There are many problems with that, and the two biggest ones are the recording and mastering on the one hand, and the speakers and their in-room response on the other. The former set of problems we can do little about other than vote with our money/feet, the latter you and I have solved to the best of what I at least believe is possible, by using Quad electrostats (plus subwoofer support). In between those two ends of the reproduction chain I want to keep things neutral, and with the designer of our speakers I believe that can be achieved without too much trouble. If you believe or fear a perfect match is hard, just try the current incarnation of your speaker designer's own take at the problem of amplifier design, the Quad QSP or now the Artera. I love my more or less identical 606-2.
Of course there are all kinds of ways in which you can make an amplifier that sounds bad, and there are all kinds of ways in which you can make an amplifier that sounds very sweet but that is not neutral or accurate. And yes, you have to measure in real life situations such as a realistic speaker load. But after all that, it is still quite doable to design amplifiers in different ways, and at the end of the day have them all sound equally neutral. Here, listening tests are of course the final arbiter, but they have to be done under controlled conditions, and as I wrote, I did join one of those blind tests, run by Peter Walker himself, and the result was sobering (I had expected to be able to distinguish the different amplifiers).
By the way, if there is one suggestion I may do, it is to use a DSpeaker Antimode 8033 to tame your subwoofers. I did, and it was the best audio investment of many years, particularly with electrostats.
Of course there are all kinds of ways in which you can make an amplifier that sounds bad, and there are all kinds of ways in which you can make an amplifier that sounds very sweet but that is not neutral or accurate. And yes, you have to measure in real life situations such as a realistic speaker load. But after all that, it is still quite doable to design amplifiers in different ways, and at the end of the day have them all sound equally neutral. Here, listening tests are of course the final arbiter, but they have to be done under controlled conditions, and as I wrote, I did join one of those blind tests, run by Peter Walker himself, and the result was sobering (I had expected to be able to distinguish the different amplifiers).
By the way, if there is one suggestion I may do, it is to use a DSpeaker Antimode 8033 to tame your subwoofers. I did, and it was the best audio investment of many years, particularly with electrostats.