Decware - any substance here?

Now that I have had my Torii MKIII for nearly two months, I am ready to make an educated comparison with my other amps.
My Bottlehead 300B Paramounts are a great bargain, and a great way to experience 300B goodness on a budget. They give
world-class clarity using EH Gold tubes, and with my Clarity
speaker cables they have serious 8 watts each indeed...

Then I have my PrimaLuna Prologue 5 stereo amp, Gold Lion KT88s, no NFB, 36wpc. This amp is very clean and powerful into my 96dB Tannoy Canterbury SEs, very smooth and involving, also very cost-effective and reliable. It gives a very good account of the music, and not bad space...

My Torii MK III exhibits very high power with excellent clarity and it increases the level of detail, with no hifi artifacts at all, just the music.

I hope my economic world doesn't collapse so I don't have to sell any of them, but the Torii is really special!

I'm strongly considering the Torii MK III, but I'm in a delicate situation.

I'm pursuing a system that maximizes involvement and vocals (a romantic sound, basically), and though I don't have anything against accuracy/detail/dynamics/bass, I'll sacrifice them without a second thought if it gets me more of those two traits.

So, would the Torii be for me? It seems most people are espousing the traits like detail/bass/dynamics that I do not care about, whereas I've heard worrying things about involvement and vocals. In regards to involvement, I've heard from one person this errs more towards an intellectual presentation than an emotional one. Not that the Torii isn't emotional, but if I'm searching for the most emotional/involving amp possible, would I be directed towards the Torii? I also haven't heard much about the vocals, which to me I guess means they're good but not a standout, I'd suppose?

It's a sticky issue for me whether or not to audition, mostly because I can't. I'm sitting on Cary 805C monoblocks that I just purchased, and I'm trying to figure out whether I made the wrong decision and I should just get the Torii. I don't have a pre-amp, so I'll have to buy one, and after that I just don't have the money to float to get a Torii.

The Torii by itself is not a romantic sounding amp and probably errs a bit towards the analytical. I found to flesh out emotion and involvement an excellent preamplifier was in order. I used an Audion pre when I had my Torii--a nice pairing.

Note: The Torii is hard to made to a preamp.

Hygienist, I am a vocal junkie. The Torri is incredible with vocals, both male and female. The kind that gives you goosebumps. I do not use a preamp but rather my Anedio D2 dac direct. It makes for incredible transparancy and yet at the same time the most intimate presentation I have heard. I ended up going back to the stock JJ's 6AC7 but rolled with different rectifiers (Svetlana 1957 5c3s/5u4g  Rectifiers - texture kings) and 61NP-EV input tubes (a bit of warmth and seduction). These input tubes and rectifiers contribute to the vocal quality you are after. When tube rolling for male vocals I use the Johnny Cash American albums and anything by Mark Lanegan/Isabel Campbell, Morphine, Tom Waits ballards, and Houndog, for female vocals, Lhasa and Isabel Campbell. I am in heaven. With this combo and my Zu Superfly's the vocals are startling in there immediacy, texture and emotion. Source is critical for the Torii to really shine.

Orangecrush: I had almost the exact same tube compliment and the same fantastic results with Zu Omen Defs w/ HO Drivers paired with the Torii. Do you have the old HO drivers or the new Nano Drivers?

Vocals were amazing, life like and very convincing. In addition the Torii was very fast, quite detailed, and the best amp that I owned in combination with the OmenDefs (and I bought and auditioned many fine and expensive amps). For vocals, it was not quite as good as the Coincident Frankenstein 300's, but in the end I sold the Franks and kept the Torii as it had 99% of the performance in the vocals and was much better with more dynamic and bass heavy music.

However, as we all should know, it's all about synergy! When I sold the Zu's and changed to Pendragons, I could not tame the bass from the Torii And I spent long hours trying to figure it out to no avail. The Torii is very transparent, quite detailed, and definitely will reveal system weaknesses. So if you are in need of more warmth in your system then I would go with a different amp, and if you want to stick with Decware the Mini Torii is on the warmer side of neutral than the Torii.

I can unequivocally say that Zu plus Decware is a fantastic pairing! Now that I have Zu Def Iii's I wish I had the Torii back, though the new Zu drivers are less warm and more detailed than the older drivers, so that may affect the synergy again.