Jeff Rowland's Continumm

Dave,

don't want to rain on your parade. Enjoy your equipment.

Having experienced the Rowland sound, I was more impressed with the Ayre sound....much more so. Maybe at some point, I will post my thoughts in more detail. But I am not concerned if others take me seriously or not. All that matters to me is what I like, and to me my preference is clear.

My earlier remarks could have been better expressed, and I am sorry for how my remarks came across to you or other audiogon members.

06-01-08: Pinkus said:
"Dave,

don't want to rain on your parade."

Thanks, but don't worry, I don't need your validation.

I'm looking forward to your thoughtful review.

Dave

Some of us like vanilla and some of us like chocolate.

This is the most thoughtful observation rendered here. We all want to believe that our preferences have relevance. They do, too. But not to everyone. Only to us.

I see people in here promising to furnish us with their "findings", as if scientific studies were being conducted and measurements reported. In fact, what we are hearing is one persons opinion experienced in his room in his mood in his system with whatever weighted selection he prefers as his evaluation music. There are no facts to be given in these kind of circumstances. Findings, I grant you, sounds heavier and more authoritative than opinion or impression, but that, in fact, is all that is being offered....one guy's one view. And isn't it interesting how we are always knocked out by unprecedented levels of (fill in the blank - clarity, nuance, gestalt, palpability, etc.)when we plug in the item that just emptied our wallet and within a month or a year, it has become our weak link.

There are no absolutes to be had and nobody is right or wrong in their personal preferences. Failure to honor that axiom is where we go wrong.

Well Macrojack, the specs of the Continuum are very good, but I suspect that many others amps have comparable raw specs.

I think many of us DO indeed try to state our preferences in our reviews. All the JRDG stuff that I've heard lean toward open, transparent, dynamic and very close to colorless. Lots of people will not like that, prefering perhaps something more forward or with softer highs. I prefer open, detailed highs, but sweet and not etched. One hard sounding IC will make the Continuum sound hard, so your associated equipment needs to be chosen accordingly.

Anyway, I think these A'gon reviews are useful. Just like reading Stereophile or TAS, you need to take things with a grain of salt and look at the reviewer's systems and preferences in order to get some idea if your tastes might line up. That's easy to do here, since most reviewers do post their systems and it's easy to see what they've said about other components. So, reviews here are useful, if used with appropriate caution.

Dave