[akiroz]

I've been designing and building amps for a good 2 now and came to a conclusion that specs and measurements have little to do with how good things sound.
Since most measurements are made with standard waves (i.e. sine, square) and amps perform quite well with these signals, but its a completely different story if we're dealing with music waves.
For instance, many OP-Amps have high specs (ie. THD+N < 0.00001%) but its tested with a signal generator on a "dummy" load.

 

[DeadMan]

I'm gonna have to eat my words. Out of curiousity I plugged my Sony MDR-ZX700's into my Sony AV amp and fed it a SPDIF signal (sadly only 16/96 capable but still worth a listen). The difference is night and day. Suddenly the bass end opened up and the soundstage came alive! OK gonna have to get a decent DAC (FiOO E17?)