Best Amp for Timbre, Depth and Spatial Resolution?

For that kind of money i'd look for a 2nd hand Modwright KWI-200 & put the spare change into some Stillpoints Ultra SS or Wave Kinetics A10-U8 feet.

What I said earlier we sold and ues the Behringer in the past. Audyssey pro is superior in quality and in use. With the professional microphone you can measure a lot more information than with many other acoustic systems. Audyssey EQ and Volume give you more resolution and drive. This you loose with many other acoustic systems. We work at mm precisions. When you do not use like this, Audyssey is useless. For most people who have this as a hobby it is useless. I also use the targetcurves. I read a lot about human hearing. It did cost me a lot of info and tests to understand it.

Hi all,

I just thought I would add a little of my personal experience to the idea of amp specs IMD, THD etc. and subjective listening impressions. I have been in development of a unique amp circuit that our designer chose to optimize with Mosfet output devices. As the circuit by design is extraordinarily resolving based on the speed of the circuit "slew rate" among other reasons which allows for easy subjective feedback to any changes to parts, bias setting, resonance control and the like, I'd like to share some specifics that may possibly be useful to this thread. As the design incorporates 4 output devices per channel producing 170 @ 8ohms and 280 into 4 ohms it will easily drive a flat 4 ohm load. But just "driving" a low impedance load isn't the real issue. A large contributor to the power rating is the result of the bias we choose to run. Higher bias gives greater output and stability into more difficult loads. The interesting thing with bias is that on a scope one of the most critical distortion measures to keep low is the second order harmonic. It is lowest with a lower bias setting. This is the distortion measurement most subjectively responded to as it effects mostly the critical mid and upper mid-range frequencies. In order get an optimally low second order harmonic we chose to sacrifice some power handling. So aside from "power handling" there are critical distortion characteristics that do matter a great deal within each design. Our second order harmonic along with the critical IMD which is a direct result of internal square wave function is spectacular down to 4 ohms "flat". If the 4 ohm nominal speaker has dips below 4 (which many do) the distortion characteristics change and the subjective emotional connection with the music may be compromised (If the speakers are of sufficient resolving power). But this is based on our design goals and cost to performance criteria. What ultimately matters most is your emotional response to the system in your space. If you look at the specs of THE most "realistic" sounding amps on the market i.e. Viola, Technical Brain, Audionet etc. their distortion specs are spectacular but the subjective sound quality is a result of subjective optimizing of everything based on their design goals. As most here know, specs alone certainly don't make a great amp but without great specs the potential isn't there.