Interesting point of view. My concern has always been that you cannot match the performance of a really good integrated without equally good interconnects, power cords, cones, rack, fuse, etc. and by the time all this is done you have spent way more money to get about the same results as the integrated. If that.My experience is the contrary. I’ve owned a Rogue CMII and it doesn’t take expensive separates or cables to exceed its performance. That goes for many integrateds. The CMII uses decent parts quality here and there but is built to meet a price point. Its volume control is one of the cheapest Alps Pots available.
The assertion that integrateds benefit from shorter signal paths and fewer insertion losses isn’t reality in my experience. The physical proximity of the low-level signals in relation to the power supplies seems a far greater detriment. And an additional pair of cables really doesn’t result in enough insertion loss to be an audible problem. Even a $3K integrated can sound quite a lot better if it allows bypassing of its internal preamp with an outboard unit, even if the outboard component is something like a $500 DAC/preamp combo.
