The imperfect amp: Pass or Ayre?

So in my system with Vandersteen 5A Carbons, my Pass XA 60.8s do an admirable job, checking almost all of the boxes of the sonic attributes I’m looking for. Then comes along an opportunity recently to demo a pair of Vandersteen M5-HPA’s. Immediately I notice a couple of things 1) there’s a better image center fill, a quality that Ralph (atmasphere) mentioned, and something I noticed about the Ayre KX-5 twenty preamp that I demoed a couple of years ago and 2) instruments sound more natural. The sax on The Girl from Ipanema sounds more like live, with an almost tangible weightiness to it as well. Massed strings are smoother as well.  Now the Pass is no slouch, but theses amps take it to another level IMO. There’s a small amount of upper midrange glare that I hear sometimes which has been alleviated. RV told me that his time and phase accurate speakers need a no feedback design (specifically no global?) to sound their best. Is it the push push design that makes the main difference I wonder? How much is due to the low parts count for in the signal path? I know the Stereophile review is coming which should be interesting.

If recordings captured performances perfectly we would want a perfect amplifier.  They don't so we choose amps that allow us to enjoy imperfect recordings.

Ralph a tour de force post and recognition of the true scientist engineers that also LISTEN

Eric two points of clarification; Yes the relative distortion levels between components is massive, especially when comparing transducers to gain devices. AND look at the Ayre QSB DAC white paper for a Phd in filters that measure well but sound worse...hence the measure/listen switch, 

Wolf - harshing the mellow love it....what low distortion strings are ya using on the eight thousand dollar wonder ?

@earthtones  Welcome to the unfair advantage of Vandersteen powered bass and finally an amplifier PURPOSE designed to exploit that advantage. The M7- HPA replaced the Ayre in my system, not a fair fight for a lot of reasons. yes Vandersteen had very specific goals to hit for odd order harmonic distortion in the M7 and M5. Really a towering achievement IMO and little understood : just 5 parts in audio signal path, liquid cooling for bias set point and device stability, no emiter resistors, analog temp control ( no RF trash near audio ), built in HRS suspended truss isolation, 128 V DBS....cyclotronic circuit....the list goes on, but of. course the music and the listening are the gig....