Stltrains, I have not heard the NewForce amp as yet. I was attracted to it and to this thread because of its promise of a low cost, musical and crisp sounding solution. Still am, in spite of having found on this thread a small minority of 'true believers', which remind me of the strictures of the regimes mentioned above. Autocratic regimes are not at all only about mass murders, violence, political repression, invasion of other countries, etc. . . They are also about the slow smuthering of open discourse in the fine arts, and the choking of differing aesthetics and philosophical schools of thought around the fine arts--musical or otherwise, by those who have aspoused the Truth. Please do look up the life and times of Zdanov, the ideolog of social realism in the arts. Please do rest assured that I will still post to this thread and others like it, and I will eventually have the opportunity to listen to the NewForce and evaluate it critically and with a completely open mind, in spite of any minor stridencies encountered in these pages.