Hi Phaelon,
You state my point much better and more concise as I could have done. What spontaneously comes to mind is the old Jadis gear or the AR preamps, the Sp 8 to 12 and their 78 and 150 amps from the seventies or was it the eighties, the Stax monoblocks, all the Spectrals, the ML 20 monos, the early Krell 100 and 200 and yes most of Tim Paravicinis designs and all the Atmas, just to mention a few. That gear has tons of PRAT, is immensely musical, when set up right.
I have a humble Jolida, which is a bit modded and tube rolled which to my ears sounds more musical than Manuel Hubers gear ever will and if you want to get close to his costs, still quite a bit less though, there is the Zanden chain, which sometimes comes uncannily close to what I know of live music.
The FM Accoustics, like the Goldmund stuff by the way, have sheer perfect specs, perform at a level which seems to have all the attributes we crave for, but somehow they don't involve me in the music. To put it simply, they somehow seem to leave me cold, even bore me. Maybe I need the "distortion of tubes", although please there is also SS gear in my little list.
Cheers,