@pokey77
i agree with your statement above. The Dag is indeed a special amplifier that 99% of you would be blown away by. It is soooo romantic and smooth while remaining detailed.
I had an interesting discussion last night with someone who made the same point about my comparison which involved 2 separate approaches to amplification.
That said, let’s not forget that even the $250k relentless mono blocks are single chassis so Dan D Agostino must not feel the need to do any external power supplies as what he did back in his days with Krell.
Nelson Pass’ approach is totally different with his XS monos. There are over 100 output devices per side, huge transformers, monstrous capacitors, carbon fiber binding posts, etc, etc. He pretty much just went all out and dropped the entire world inside these amps. Also, most of you might not know this, but there was roughly one million dollars spent just in research and development on the xs amplifiers alone. Word on the street is that the .8 series is nearing the end of its life cycle and will go bye bye very soon. Once that is replaced with something else, then the xs amps will probably go bye bye, but keep in mind they were released in 2013 so i am calculating that the xs amps will remain current until about 2022-2023 which would mark a decade since their release.
They are having difficulties revamping what took a million dollars to research and build. It is no easy task by any means, but as we all know all good things come to an end.
On a separate note guys, i know i had mentioned that i was going to bring another power amplifier to battle here, but to be honest i have decided to not chase this amp which was the Boulder 2060. I want to focus on amps that make more sense and so far here is what i am thinking:
-Pass Labs xa200.8 (how close are they to the xs300s?)
-Gryphon Mephisto (would this have the muscularity of the xs300?)
-Boulder 2160 (how is their new house sound with these new amps?)
-Gryphon Antileon Evo (this is supposed to best the mephisto?)
-Luxman Reference Monos (to be released to the press in December)
That is pretty much the list that i have in my head when it comes to amplifiers that i feel could push the XS300s. Of course, there are other amplifiers that i could have interest in, but not to compete and just rather pick them apart when it comes to their sound. I could use more affordable amps to simply gauge how good they are by comparing to my xs300s.
i agree with your statement above. The Dag is indeed a special amplifier that 99% of you would be blown away by. It is soooo romantic and smooth while remaining detailed.
I had an interesting discussion last night with someone who made the same point about my comparison which involved 2 separate approaches to amplification.
That said, let’s not forget that even the $250k relentless mono blocks are single chassis so Dan D Agostino must not feel the need to do any external power supplies as what he did back in his days with Krell.
Nelson Pass’ approach is totally different with his XS monos. There are over 100 output devices per side, huge transformers, monstrous capacitors, carbon fiber binding posts, etc, etc. He pretty much just went all out and dropped the entire world inside these amps. Also, most of you might not know this, but there was roughly one million dollars spent just in research and development on the xs amplifiers alone. Word on the street is that the .8 series is nearing the end of its life cycle and will go bye bye very soon. Once that is replaced with something else, then the xs amps will probably go bye bye, but keep in mind they were released in 2013 so i am calculating that the xs amps will remain current until about 2022-2023 which would mark a decade since their release.
They are having difficulties revamping what took a million dollars to research and build. It is no easy task by any means, but as we all know all good things come to an end.
On a separate note guys, i know i had mentioned that i was going to bring another power amplifier to battle here, but to be honest i have decided to not chase this amp which was the Boulder 2060. I want to focus on amps that make more sense and so far here is what i am thinking:
-Pass Labs xa200.8 (how close are they to the xs300s?)
-Gryphon Mephisto (would this have the muscularity of the xs300?)
-Boulder 2160 (how is their new house sound with these new amps?)
-Gryphon Antileon Evo (this is supposed to best the mephisto?)
-Luxman Reference Monos (to be released to the press in December)
That is pretty much the list that i have in my head when it comes to amplifiers that i feel could push the XS300s. Of course, there are other amplifiers that i could have interest in, but not to compete and just rather pick them apart when it comes to their sound. I could use more affordable amps to simply gauge how good they are by comparing to my xs300s.