The Law of Accelerating Returns

@mahgister gotta disagree. The technology can easily be the bottleneck once the acoustics are addressed properly. An integrated amp however means less technology integration to get right. The experts have addressed that for you and the product solution is solved for you regardless of room. Now you can deal with the thing unique in each case which is the acoustics of the room and integrating just the speakers to amp and room. Much easier to get right technically. All electronics are different still however so even an integrated amp may still be the bottleneck in the end. At that point if it matters you want a better integrated amp. It all matters. Just a matter of how practically one goes about getting all the parts of the system right. The complete system includes the room and ones ears which are always different in each case. Cheer!

It’s true that if the system is in good shape ie no serious bottleneck then one is free to deal with the room. You can hire experts for that as well or most people can just have at it themselves with some good references for guidance. It’s another advantage of an integrated solution. One can then focus on speakers and acoustics better and acoustics always vary by room.

Every system has a bottleneck, ie the thing that limits performance. It’s just a question of how much it matters.  Can be very hard to determine with hifi gear.  It takes a lot of work regression testing ie changing one thing at a time and comparing.  Even then it is a subjective comparison and not an objective one so results will vary FBOFW .   It can be a real exercise in futility in some cases to get it all truly optimized for best technical performance .   That’s what engineers are for!

New integrated amps and all in one units from reputable makers are a great way to avoid serious bottlenecks at a price point by letting the experts integrate things for you properly. Integrated amp technology has come a long way. There is probably one out there to satisfy most anyone. Except those who prefer to do it themselves of course.