David Berning live

Being a member of SFAF I was able to attend this virtual meeting and can say that it was a very educational experience. In my opinion, David Berning is one of the top audio engineers of our time. Mark Schneider on the other hand did not impressive me at all.

Agreed, David has been a powerful creative force in the world of high end audio (and beyond). The ZOTL circuit coupled with his proprietary power supply topology are what make his amps and those produced by LTA among the best available at any price. 
 

@clio09 What you may be missing is the role that Mark has played in bringing David’s technology to a wider audience. His gifting is in product design and manufacturing. As is often the case with brilliant thinkers like David, his capacity and interest in scaling production while maintaining reliability was somewhat limited and this is where his partnership with Mark has paid dividends for audiophiles who want world class sound and dependable gear at sane prices. Without Mark’s talents only the ultra rich would be able to enjoy the benefits of David’s designs.

@dodgealum No I didn’t miss that and I think it’s great that David Berning’s technology can reach more people. However, in my opinion, there are distinct differences between Berning components and LTA components.

I also don’t agree with your comment that without LTA only the ultra rich can enjoy David’s designs. I don’t consider myself ultra rich, although I am far from indigent, yet I have a few Berning gems in my possession. In the scheme of things while the price of entry to Berning products has gone up considerably over the last decade, they’re not out of reach, not by today’s standards anyway.

I recently ordered an LTA MZ2 to be both a preamp and headphone amp and looking forward to hearing the benefits of the ZOTL design.  I also recently had my McCormack DNA 0.5 RevA amp get full upgrades through SMcAudio and was interested to learn that they do high-end research for David’s cost-no-object designs and that the fruits of that research trickles down into SMcAudio’s DNA upgrades.  I’m about to hear the results of adding both the MZ2 and upgraded DNA 0.5 to my system and feel like I’ll be wired into David’s brain in no small part.  Truly an icon in our audio world. 

My Quadrature Z monoblocks have a base that Steve designed. It’s made of copper and provides a multi-layer damping and ground system. This feature is available through Rick Brown at Hi-Fi One who represents the Berning product line.

Steve is one of the nicest guys in the business. I had the pleasure of meeting him at some of the SoCal audio society events when I lived in the area. In my opinion he is another one of the top audio engineers out there, but he tends to keep a low profile.