Point to Point vs Circuit Board

Fact is most products are a compromise. Some gold platers sound half as good as they should due to designers lack of understanding of / effort at selecting and tuning components for a circuit

The distinctions go much finer than PCB or P2P. FRP, ceramic, bakelite / platings, thickness, routing / solid, stranded, silicone, PVC, teflon, silver, copper / SMT or PTH ad infinitum all have an effect both on cost and sonics. There is never a free lunch.

Like anything, there are biases and prejudices in audio design. Take 10 great sounding amps and 10 highly skilled designers. Rotate the amps through the designers and you will have 100 new amplifiers. Some improved, some not... all of which will depend on the rest of the system used to evaluate the design. Nothing is designed in isolation.

If you design the board properly you simply won't be able to tell the difference between a properly hand wired example vs the same circuit on a circuit board.

Some may not but some may. Many times we played beat the proto...

Atma Sphere makes fine, well designed products. I'm not slagging them off, but 'properly' has nothing to do with it.

There are vast differences between controlled impedances on a circuit board and a hand wired prototype. SS gear can shrink by 50% between prototype and release changing noise radiation and absorption. A PCB has maximum track separation of 1 thickness between sides, contains ground planes and power distribution, all of which can affect the sound. PCB materials can affect the sound. Maintaining PCB tolerances in a handwired prototype is next to impossible. Prototypes types of any ilk are seldom evaluated in the retail packaging. Parts used in the prototype are sometimes superseded / improved necessitating a few steps back or sideways...

Simple circuits of tube amps invite point to point wiring, but for a solid state amp you would have wiring everywhere along with interference caused by all the wiring going everywhere, the routing would become too complex for sure.

Incorrect. A transistor has 3 pins, a tube typically has 6 to 9. A tube amp invites P2P wiring as the mechanics of an exposed tube in a socket on a chassis provide a layout.

SS products could be similarly designed with sockets on a backplane, but costs would be prohibitive. P2P is impractical for many of todays electronics with panel gewgaws and remote control.

PWB, first described in 1903, and transistors became popular about the same time in the 1960’s.

Too many individual wires means too much noise.

Utter nonsense.

Bad layout, routing and impedance understanding cause devices to have low SNR, not the interconnect method.