aHobbit,
Not sure where your coming from, but it seems to me that your inclined to believe that I am thrashing the a500 and saying that its inferior to other more expensive amps. This is not the case, actually once I read this topic, I actually thought about auditioning this amp as it performed "similar" to the Class amp in the test. At less than 15K, this seems to be a bargain amplifier given the power rating and performance based in the test. One more thing I do know the difference between an amp, a power amp, an Integrated, a Pre-amp, a Passive pre as I have used this gears for the last 25 years. I have compared several amps (just to be clear parehong integrated amp/ or parehong pre-power combo) and some I can not tell the difference, but to some the difference was night and day. When I started this hobby 25 years ago, I had a hard time telling the difference between different amplifiers, normally I just got the biggest amp/most expensive that my buget can afford, eventally when I slowly learned to listen, I was able to differentiate different characteristics of the amplifiers that I had.
I would put a grain of salt to everything that you read, not everything on the net is fact. Just because someone conducted a test and says that they can not tell the difference between the Class and a500 does not necessarily mean na walang difference. I myself would have a difficult time comparing two amp in a different place and with different gears. Give me both amplifier a week or two and pretty much I can tell you the difference, if theres a difference. Some difference between amplifiers are small, some musical content may not be able to produce that difference. This is the reason why some magazine reviewers are given several weeks to review an audio product. Not sure how long they did the A-B test with Class and A500, but I doubt that it was over a month long.
Mike C.
"tubes and SS amps don't sound the same. therefore, SS amps don't sound the same." hindi po yan ang views ko. eto po
Two different amplifiers can sound different, even if they have the same power rating regardless if its operated by Tubes or Solid State devices.
btw.. these are my views based on my experience, not something that I read from the net.