Benchmark ABH2 compared to Merrill Element Series and other ultra high end amps

@soundhound Thanks for the feedback. It is what D Schieder (sp?) said in his Dagago review but that was only 1 person's feedback. I am also using good interconnects, Audience Au24SE (not sure of exact model). It sounds great. I contacted Audience to ask if these XLR's can carry a 24 dBu signal and the person responding to me did not know, though I imagine someone there would know.

I can add to the AHB2 with demanding speaker. I demoed a single stereo AHB2 with Magico A3 and compared it to the 2 Mark Levinson amps that were under consideration.  The 585 integrated and the $20K mono blocks. The AHB2 was the worst performer. However, at home on my KEF LS50's the AHB2 sounded much better. I attributed this bad showing to not enough power in stereo for the A3.

I sold the ABH2 after that demo. However, now that I have the HPA4 preamp I will be getting the AHB2 again to pair with the LS50 speaker. On that speaker the AHB2 sounds excellent.

soundhound,
You cannot have it all in any system.  If you like fine stats like the ML CLX, you value accuracy and detail.  The Benchmark AHB2 is an accurate amp in like manner.  There are certainly many amps that emphasize power and large scale dynamics, which will make the stat sound more like a dynamic speaker.  Unlike people who say the AHB2 is lifeless, I find that other amps which are fuller and rolled off in HF by comparison, take away from the exciting subtle musical detail that the AHB2 reveals.  The Merrill 114 is worth auditioning if you want warmth and fullness in lower midrange and bass.

I can see from the comments that there are many opinions most of which are well grounded. I regularly attend live concerts - principally symphonic and opera.  I was fortunate to attend two performances of the Metropolitan Opera in February before the pandemic hit New York.  When listening to recorded music I value natural timbres, the minimization of distortion, and the ability to follow the musical intent of the performers.   I agree that the AHB2 has a low noise floor and so reveals details that help to convey the intent of musical performers; in my system I was disappointed that a single amp did not provide accurate timbres from recordings of artists  that I have heard live. No system that I can afford will provide a perfect replication of all live music.  However, one wants to optimize their system within the limits of their resources. Experienced listeners reviewers, not a single individual, have had good results with AHB2's driving electrostatics, including a single AHB2 driving Quads and, contrary to my naive expectations, good results from mono'ed AHB2's with other electrostatics including the CLX and hybrid ML's.  When I started this thread some months ago, I did not have any first hand experience with the AHB2.  I probably need to audition the mono'ed AHB2's, the newer Merrill amps and probably the Constellation Taurus as well.

soundhound, 
Yes, I agree.  As a violinist, I enjoy the sound under my ear and a few feet away playing string quartets, and playing in the orchestra.  Unfortunately, as a concertgoer sitting even in the 1st row center, my perceptions have been greatly diluted in the amount of musically important detail I have heard, compared to my close encounters as a player.  The first row is approximately the sound "heard" by the microphones in most recordings, so to make a valid comparison between your system and being there, the 1st row is the approximate reference.  Even the 2nd row is veiled compared to the 1st row, because high freq are short wavelengths which are absorbed by any distance.  One day, when playing in the 2nd violin section, I sat close to the French horn.  Usually on recordings played on most systems, the horn is an amorphous glob of vague sound, but sitting close I heard lots of rawness and spiky attacks in the tone even when the music was sostenuto.  Most people think of the horn as a smooth midrange instrument, but James Boyk showed that it has significant overtones as high as 9kHz.  The tuba has lots of bass energy, but it also has significant high freq overtones that enhance its clarity and power.  On most systems, the tuba sounds like wooly muddy thuds because HF are not sufficiently revealed.  

So to reveal the truth, I want an amp to have as much detail as possible.  Since we cannot have everything in any system, I have made the choice to go for components that sacrifice bass extension and fullness in order to get maximum detail in mid bass and higher freq.  The ML CLX is a great example of such a speaker that rolls off bass at 56 Hz, which has the effect of maximizing the clarity where most of the music is.  Although I have never heard the flagship Neolith, my guess is that it does not have the clarity of the CLX in that range, although it appeals to the bass lovers.