@ryder This was with 3 different speakers.
- all Hegel components with the KEF Blade
- all Mark Levinson components with Magico A3
- all Luxman components with TAD ME1 and 2 sets of Harbeth somethings
Now each of these systems had either the integrated or preamp + DAC + amp. The only way to have a better comparison than what I had was to have the same speakers with all these systems. In my world that is not possible and I did manage to get a great feel for the quality of each group of systems. The particular value of my observation was within the sub-group of each system when I was able to see were each companies integrated amp fit relative to the top end separates. In this case the variability in the speakers did not matter so much to me.
- all Hegel components with the KEF Blade
- all Mark Levinson components with Magico A3
- all Luxman components with TAD ME1 and 2 sets of Harbeth somethings
Now each of these systems had either the integrated or preamp + DAC + amp. The only way to have a better comparison than what I had was to have the same speakers with all these systems. In my world that is not possible and I did manage to get a great feel for the quality of each group of systems. The particular value of my observation was within the sub-group of each system when I was able to see were each companies integrated amp fit relative to the top end separates. In this case the variability in the speakers did not matter so much to me.