I thought I should add my 2 cents since I have just been through this experience. Let me be clear-this is ONLY my perspective, my experience, and what I have heard for myself and from others. I also should mention I see listening to music can be divided into two sets of perceptions. ONe is the OOH AHH category-it's so clean, great bass, it's so smooth, etc. Then the other category is the emotional category where you want to jump up and start playing air guitar or you get choked up if the mood is right on certain songs. I have found the two categories sometimes do not necessarily match. My goal is the second category. I want to be emotionally touched by the music. Having said that, here is what I have found.
Since 1980 I have owned HK, Adcom, NAD, Rotel, Plinius, and Bel Canto. I recently owned a Bel Canto EVo2, Gen 2 ingegrated amp for approximately three years. I recently sold it for financial reasons but thought it was a wonderful piece of gear, well built, nice ergonomics, etc. From a sonic standpoint it was almost perfect. Clear, good bass, holographic, fast, and sometimes a little thin or bright in the treble but I attributed that to my speakers. It seemed to avoid most of the pitfalls of solid state amps. I enjoyed every minute I had it and would probably still have it had I not run into money trouble. However, the longer I had it the more I noticed that something was missing. I could never put my finger on it.
After I sold the unit I had to use a little NAD 7020 receiver. As impressive at it is, it is not quite as clean or quite as powerful (darn close though) but I was stunned by the muscality, by the emotional impact it had. Then it hit me. What I was missing with the digital amp was the emotional connection to the music. I talked to the dealer that had sold me the unit and he was not surprised to hear this. He said the trend he is seeing is that people think the digital is wonderful at first. But over a period of time, for many it seems to take a couple years, people begin to realize something is missing. He lent out one of the units a couple years ago to a big shot audiophile. This individual had the unit for about two weeks. He brought it back in and made the statement, "It is great; it does nothing wrong; does everything almost perfectly and I hate it." He couldn't explain why. A salesman at a well-known high end distributor who carried these items told me over the phone that he had spent a great deal of time listening to the Bel Canto and his feeling was it did everything well but the 'soul' was stripped from the music.
Once again, this is only my experience living with this type of amp for the last three years and what I have heard from others. As I said, I probably would still have it but knowing what I know now, I am not sure how long I would have kept it. I guess it is going to affect everybody differently and like everything else in audio, it is all in what you like, not what anybody else likes.
