Miked. I have a Marantz 67se, Anthem pre 2 Anthem mca 2 and Paradigm studo ref 80s. The upgrade path will be the amp first then the speakers, both of which go to the TV room. This will make for great home theatre and give the kids a system to play other than mine. Then maybe next year buy a new source when the formats are settled. Logicaly I thought the Amp 2 by Anthem would be the one. My dealer has steered me away from this. He sells very few and he is really a big Anthem fan. He really likes the MCA series and feels you need to spend about 2.5x the $$ to make the step worthwhile. The mca is a great bargin but a little rich in bass for me and I think that's what Anthem had in mind as this product is focused toward home theatre. Having said that,at 200 plus hours,it is still smoothing out,which really suprised me.So if you listen to one check to see if its broken in because the bass in particular has really changed on this amp since new. So as I said wednesday I'll listen to to the Volks amp anthem combo and hopefully the Amp2 at the same time. Ths Volks amp is besause my dealer thinks it will be best in my system and suit my tastes. If theres no quantum leap in at least one catagory, that is if it's just a suttle improvment, Im tempted to save to the summer and buy a Sim Audio w3. This is the 120x2 top line amp and it would be a keeper. As long as your speakers are reasonably effecient this is the one. Perfectly neutral, tight tight bass and imaging as good as it gets. Ive heard this with 4 different speakers now and its bang on every time. Definatly not a rich coloured sound if thats what you like but. Any ways who knows I too have read good things about the Amp 2 and just maybe it will be the one. Will post in about a week or so. cheers steve
