I liked the cable very much but now I don't know anymore if the upgrade value in price is worth it (difference between balanced and unbalanced equipment). Maybe a high-end unbalanced amp is much better then a budget balanced amp (I believe it is much better now).

I had several of those (balanced and unbalanced) and I liked them alot.
I can't remember if they had the newer "silver" drivers.
I compared them with the HD600 and they sounded better.

Cardas cables have a good value for the price.
I can't remember really how they sound anymore since I sold them a couple of years ago.

I tried this amp with a Sennheiser HD650 and I was not very impressed (I remember I was not very impressed when I tried it a couple of years ago). Maybe the tubes were not in good condition).
But I did not try this amp as a speaker amp because I did not have them yet and neither an AKG K1000.
An advantage is that you can use the amp both as speaker amp and phone amp.
Anyway I shouldn't have started this review because it is more then 2 years ago since I owned it.
If I could I would delete this all.
 
 

A couple of years ago I had a big amp like this one but one with 4 headphone inputs and sold it on headfi.
 
I can't remember very well how much difference there is between balanced operation and unbalanced (I only remember there was a difference in sound level - when I listened to a balanced and unbalanced HD650 both at the same sound level then the balanced HD650 phones sounded a bit louder).

First I tried the newer Squeezebox Duet which has a display on the remote control but I prefer the Classic because the display is much bigger then the display of the newer remote control.
 
I have never enjoyed music so much with this device, just scan your music and it imports all your iTunes playlists or your music folders if you don't use iTunes (in my case I don't) and use the handy remote control to listen to it (random lists are also possible). 
And there is another advantage as well. Sound on a pc can sometimes sound a bit bad because of the electricity (I read this and heard it).
With a music server device, the music is sent from your hard drive to the Squeezebox via IP packets (network packets) and in my case it is then sent to the Dac via coaxial cable.

This is a nice amp for its price! It really drives my GS1000i very good. Unfortunately I can not compare it with other amps and I can't remember how my other high-end amp sounded. Sometimes I regret that I didn't save a little more to buy the Corda Jazz amp which only costs like 100 euro more and which has the balanced option (without need to recable your phone to balanced).

This is my third GS1000 and this time I will keep it for a longer time.
 
I wanted a bigger soundstage when I had a SR325i so I sold the SR325i to fund the purchase of a headfi GS1000i and I like the soundstage much more.
 
The GS1000i does not need a powerful amp and the Meier Audio Swing succeeds to drive it without using the high-gain switch at medium volume level (but the Squeezebox volume is almost at full).