Best Amp for Timbre, Depth and Spatial Resolution?

NVP...your third point makes absolutely no sense at all. Is this discussion really about imagining differences? You can easily test an amp for output balance, and you can test if speakers are matched, and an amp alone has tonal characteristics for days...I think sleep deprivation has set in among the posters.

"an amp alone has tonal characteristics"

Maybe if you listen with a large enough sample size of different speakers to determine.

But what is "best" or even better will be determined more by other things I think.

Mapman and Wolf, I am only bouncing ideas.

My point is that if speakers placement has been optimized properly, one should still be able to detect small differences in soundstage when changing amp because of the reasons I have stated above. Of course, we talk about small differences. Further, because each amp controls the subwoofer of speaker differently, the speaker position might also need to be slightly changed when changing amps. Therefore, because most of these small differences are cause by the interactions between amp, speakers and room, IMO it is basically impossible to determine them by performing measurements on a single component (except maybe for point 3). One has to try the various amps in his room.

Wolf, some example: left channel has slightly higher distortions/volume then the right channel. I clearly stated that I do not know I significant/large such differences can be. Thus, it should have been clear that I was only a guess.

Brands do not say a lot about what the properties/talents are of there amps, sources, cables and speakers. What we Always do is burn it in and then listen. Since I do this work you compare all the time. This how you learn the differences in sound, the way the image is projected, the speed and timing, the weight and layers in the low freq. and how much resolution there is. This you do with your ears. I listend a lot to clasical live music. I use the way I heard voices and instruments to be played in the right proportion. The first thing I Always do wenn I visit people for the first time is changing the position of the speakers. So the voice is in the middle and the instruments and voices have the right proportion. I also create a better balance focused on the acoutics of the room. I always use tape to make small changes to hear what will be the right place. Even with cables you can change a lot to the spound, drive, resolution, deptha nd control of the amp.

The advantage of Audyssey pro compared to most other acoustic systems for amps is sound realism and more drive and resolution. With many you loose a lot of drive and resolution. Some were talking about the difference between the left and right speaker. because when one is in the corner and the other one is free. Often you will hear the focus is more forwared to the speaker in the corner. With Audyssey Pro you do not have this problem anymore. It adapts to the right volume a speaker gives at the place were it is set. I measure at different places and hights because I want to measure the best dynamics possible. This gives a huge improvement over the Audyssey way of measuring. With Audyssey EQ and volume I also get more resolution. With the Pass Labs XP-20 I did not have the clear level of words endings at sss, ttt or th for example. Most acoustic problems you get in the lowest freq. With Audyssey Pro they're gone and you hear more layers of the low freq. Because the acoustic problems covered these layers.