One Amp To ‘Rule’ Them All....


Is there one amplifier that everyone can agree on as a contemporary standard? An amplifier that can be considered a standard in both the studio and in a home stereo setup?

What one amplifier does everything very well and can be found in homes and in professional audio engineering environments?

What amp covers all the bases and gives you a glimpse into all qualities of fine musical reproduction?

...something Yamaha? ...something McIntosh?

128x128brettmcee
The perfect amplifier would be the one that works best with
the particular speaker to which it would be paired.  For studio speakers, like those made by Genelec, the perfect amplifier, to me, would be one that puts out 0.000 watts/channel.

It is crazy to even speculate what kind of amp--solid state, tube, OTL, single-ended, pushpull--never mind the specific implementation of a particular variety.  I cannot even say what type I like because my favorite amps span OTL, SET and pushpull tube amps and I've only seriously listened to a handful of solid state amps.  

Looking at some of the candidates mentioned here clearly shows how mush everyone's systems, taste, and experience differ.  Every so often magazines like Absolute Sound and Stereophile raise the question of whether a particular amp they are raving about is the best ever or something close to perfection; their choice has been consistently disappointing to me.  Remember Halcro?  After hearing their amp, a friend who is in the industry mentioned how he had tears in his eyes after hearing the Halcro because it made his so nostalgic--it reminded his so much of the Phase Linear 700 (this was NOT meant as a compliment). 

f there is even a perfect amp for me out there, I've not heard it, and it would assuredly not be perfect for even a small fraction of others.


Tim DiParavicini has been making some very fine products for both the studio and home for a very long time as @lukaske mentioned. EAR/Yoshino doesn’t get the respect of some American tube brands due to lack of marketing, but he makes some of the best engineered products available.  The 509 monoblocks are killer!
That’s a silly question. The only way to answer that, is to pick the greatest value product. Because it’s easy to see the greatest amps if you step into the $50k+ arena and start looking at amps like the CH Precision M1 ($94k) or the Gryphon Mephisto ($150k). But if you want an amp that an audiophile (audiophile being a person that will spend crazy money compared to someone else with the same budget) would realize is a game changer within reach, I’d go with the:

NuPrime Evolution One

https://totallywired.nz/nuprime-2/nuprime-evolution-one/

Ok ok ok....so I also think in trying to define an amp that is a common/standard point of reference, the amp needs to be somewhat common and affordable. 

Again I am not looking for the ‘perfect’ amp, I am looking for us to define an amp that does everything pretty well and consistently, and is something that pros and consumers have heard and can agree on as a competent piece of gear.

My goal: I am interested in being able to talk more specifically and exactingly about the different qualities we know and love in audio amplification. To do this we all need a common point of reference. It does not need to be perfect but must produce most or all of the qualities inherent in ‘quality’ amplification.

Why would this be adventageous? For one we could begin to define ‘how much more’ or ‘how much better’ one amp does something vs the common reference amplifier. This would help us make better choices and would probably even hep designers zero in on how to evolve certain qualities in amplification.

Adcom? Yamaha? Hafler?

There has got to be an amp that you could ‘live with’ that pros and consumer can agree upon.  Come on people!

Once we define/decide on this common reference amp we can all start doing so serious exploration!!!