Quote: Point 2 would not be caused by failing to ground the amplifier to the case. The only reason grounding is recommended is because otherwise you get hum when you use it with sources with a high output impedance AFAIK. The sparks likely came from some resistors touching the screw...

  Quote: It's not a personal attack. He gave those measurements as part of his argument. They are not applicable to his argument, yet comprise a large proportion of his post and are referred to as a real world example. They are far too limited both in scope and accuracy to even come close...

Quote: I didn't quote AMB because he was going on about his favourite non-existent spectre of "ground contamination." I also felt he was being disingenuous in several places. Lest you accuse me of railroading (I'm deeply sorry for not having time to quote counterarguments and annotate...

In some ways, smearing cake on the PCB would be a better tweak if it actually worked. Balanced amps tend to need rather more parts, so you're paying a premium for...what exactly?   Anyways, here's an engineer from Benchmark on the subject, who knows vastly more about the matter than me...

Quote: Please explain in what way tubes have a more transparent midrange than solid state amps. This reads like unsubstantiated myth propogation.  

Perhaps they could cryogenically freeze their PR department to significantly reduce customer edginess due to BS claims.

Quote: True, but just being a choice doesn't necessarily justify it. I can choose to smear cake over my PCB and even entertain the idea that it works best for optimum treble clarity...it's a deliberately stupid example, but the principle of being able to challenge a design choice stands...

I would recommend an Objective 2, considerably under budget and completely transparent. You're welcome to spend money on unknown quantities, but the O2 is just a verified wire with gain. Colour the sound to your taste with an equaliser and you've got audio nivana. Buy from Epiphany Acoustics or...

The question is at what point cables can be considered "good." Not a very difficult one IMHO...

The uDAC actually clips from its line outputs (yup, Nuforce are that incompetent) so that could be what you're hearing. 2.5X gain is plenty anyhow, looking at the sensitivity of your headphones. 6X gain is designed to be used with MP3 players and other devices with low voltage outputs and will...

Controversial is one way of putting it. I would advise a cheap SS amplifier and an equaliser in the face of strident highs: a lot less hassle IMHO. Tube amps are pretty though.

Crossover distortion can be minimised in a decent class AB design: even cheap opamps that are suited to audio applications have negligable crossover distortion. When you talk about simplicity of signal path are you talking about single-ended amplifiers?

Move had already happened by then, unfortunately. I think that people are reading too much into opamp rolling. Opamp rolling works on two principles:   1) That you know better than the designer/designer cut corners of some sort. 2) That audible differences will result even when neither...

There are engineers that believe lots of things. None of these things have ever been produced under controlled conditions. I wonder why.   Also, how did this end up in Sound Science? Kinda ironic, surely, moving a thread that is turning to the subject of opamp rolling into Sound Science...

What's actually wrong with the current cases? The photos of the JDS Labs amps in particular I've seen look very nice. Nobody is about to wax lyrical for a paragraph about their beauty, but they certainly don't embarrass themselves. I don't think it's fair to paint something like the JDS Labs...