george hifi,
Maybe you do much less listening than analyzing specs. The Levinson ML2 fully broken in which I owned years ago was syrupy euphonic and veiled at low/moderate volumes with my electrostatic speakers. Instead of claiming ricevs is a promoter for his amp, why don't you spend a little money, find out whether the phase shift has any relevance in your listening. No risk to you, and then you could have more credible comments. Alternatively, have someone gather a bunch of amps whose specs are unknown to you, do comparative listening, and see for yourself whether listening tests correlate with the specs. The truth is that there is a very small correlation, but not enough to differentiate among good or great amps. I have heard class D amps that sound euphonic/rolled off in HF, and others that sound harsh.
Maybe you do much less listening than analyzing specs. The Levinson ML2 fully broken in which I owned years ago was syrupy euphonic and veiled at low/moderate volumes with my electrostatic speakers. Instead of claiming ricevs is a promoter for his amp, why don't you spend a little money, find out whether the phase shift has any relevance in your listening. No risk to you, and then you could have more credible comments. Alternatively, have someone gather a bunch of amps whose specs are unknown to you, do comparative listening, and see for yourself whether listening tests correlate with the specs. The truth is that there is a very small correlation, but not enough to differentiate among good or great amps. I have heard class D amps that sound euphonic/rolled off in HF, and others that sound harsh.