what's the best amp. you have listened to?

[lt cdr data]

hmm, tricky one, following the post below, got me thinking...

I'm not actually sure, I think a modded pioneer a300 tbh, not much power, a very humble amp., but this one did something I havne' t heard others do, the transient response was astounding, other further modded ones didn't have it, and I have no idea why...it was bought brand new tho and then modded, perhaps others aged somewhat but I don't hold to that.

putting my neck on the line, I was very impressed with the sound of a crest 8001 pro series, not impressed with the internals tho' very hard to work upon.

this may be a tad contentious, but I do not generally believe price is guarantee of sound qualit, I find it hard to say what the "best" is, how do you define sound quality, however, in an amp, price is generally proportional to power, there is a school of thought that parallel devices are bad, esp. in the hifi arena, however, that is chock full of rubbish, and that the less power, the better, even 1 watt, this I feel comes from the amount of distortion in a small signal swing I reckon in single ended tube amps, however, that is nullified by the low distortion of a transistor feedback amplifier.

so one generally pays for either power, or output stage, or power supply, so you get huge heatsinks or high power, none of which necessarily objectively improve sound quality

I maintain you cannot design a hifi objective in an amp ie for a massive soundstage or fantastic rhythm, you can scarcely voice an amplifier, merely tinker with the bandwidth, the sound that results cannot really be designed in as such, sure one can perhaps losely use monoblocs to improve crosstalk, perhaps improve speed and all that, but I doubt one can predict string tone harmonics from frequency response

I have found a few mosfet output stages do sound quite tubey, ie loose bass and softer top end tho'.

that's my view

anyway, over to others....

[nigelwright7557]

This is very subjective coz what sounds good to one person might sound not so good to someone else.

As a guitar player i like an amp with loads of valve type distortion.
Yet for listening to cd's I prefer a nice flat solid state amp.

[Ian Finch]

I'll go along with that. Anything complex, choral or megavoiced benefits also from very low distortion IMHO. However there is room, I think, for something "musical" with sparse, simpler program. Indeed, some less gifted vocalists seem to need it.

That makes it difficult to say what is the finest amp. Sure, I have heard some great, recognized amps but on some program it was often difficult to say whether they actually sounded better or worse than some cheaper, generic products.

[Charles Darwin]

I like my instrument amps to be valve jobs (like Mesa/Boogie guitar amps and Ampeg bass amps, Hammond organs and Leslies) as they are an essential part of the instruments sound.

On replay I have not heard anything better than MC2 Audio amplifiers, regardless of material.