I'll second what Ramy said about the Acoustic Reality eAR amplifier. I hate to use adjectives like "analog" or "un-digital" to describe its sound because I don't believe in these terms. But I will say that it sounds "right" and "natural", and that's about the highest compliment I can give to a piece of audio gear.
With respect to the key topic of this thread, I think that that digital amps have already grown to dominate the low-end. Just look at the plethora of receivers from the likes of Sony, Panasonic, JVC and others, and you'll be hard pressed to find one that doesn't use a switching amplifer circuit. This is not meant as knock against the technology, but it's merely a reflection of its potential for lower cost which plays into the busines model for affordable consumer gear.
The high-end market is a different ballgame altogether where demand is low, margins are high, and the consumers (though few in number) can be demanding, superstitious, and fickle. For this reason, I think there will always be a market for diversity in the high-end so that digital, linear SS amps, and tubes will continue to co-exist for the foreseeable future. As to the question of why there are so few currently, that's certianly not true in the low-end consumer market. Digital amps are only relatively scarce in the high-end, for now, because of its newness, yet I don't expect it to dominate this end of the market like it has in the low-end for the simple matter of what I noted earlier about how demanding and superstitious this market can be. To wit, the term "digital" still carries a stigma to this day that's hard to shake, whether it's wholly deserved or not.
With respect to the key topic of this thread, I think that that digital amps have already grown to dominate the low-end. Just look at the plethora of receivers from the likes of Sony, Panasonic, JVC and others, and you'll be hard pressed to find one that doesn't use a switching amplifer circuit. This is not meant as knock against the technology, but it's merely a reflection of its potential for lower cost which plays into the busines model for affordable consumer gear.
The high-end market is a different ballgame altogether where demand is low, margins are high, and the consumers (though few in number) can be demanding, superstitious, and fickle. For this reason, I think there will always be a market for diversity in the high-end so that digital, linear SS amps, and tubes will continue to co-exist for the foreseeable future. As to the question of why there are so few currently, that's certianly not true in the low-end consumer market. Digital amps are only relatively scarce in the high-end, for now, because of its newness, yet I don't expect it to dominate this end of the market like it has in the low-end for the simple matter of what I noted earlier about how demanding and superstitious this market can be. To wit, the term "digital" still carries a stigma to this day that's hard to shake, whether it's wholly deserved or not.