" I have seen the future, I can't afford it"
not really
i suspect Ralph is right
There are plenty of frontiers to be pushed back
i do have much much respect for Nelson and he is a deep thinker and a doer - you don't always see those together.. my first real high end amp was his 400, probably should have kept it...
the pount about what people hear hear and how is critical, iMO critical to moving forward in a science based way vs opinion on flavors...
for example 30 years of work at Vandersteen on the importance of preserving time and phase and now MQA and the recognition of spatial blur and human sensitivity to blur vs the IMO previous holy grail of flat response.
a systems thinker might say MQA is no advance if you feed a cleaned up temporal signal into an amp with high levels of negative FB
so IMO expanding the frontier is more about alignment of design philosophy across the system vs just box obsession...
putting my $ where my ears are
ordered Vandersteen amps
some innovations:
built in power conditioning
built in HRS isolation
no digital chips in the analog control circuits
unique topology with 5 parts in signal Paton emitervresisters
liquid cooled
list goes on
and on
so yes innovation alive and well
and frankly IMO a very exciting time in Audio
