It's a lot of money to pay for a 2-channel amplifier with a poor damping factor of about 40. Why don't they get rid of their output stage autoformers?
They missed that. They should hire you. Probably walking back and forth along the research lab thinking; why didn't we ask Verdinut first, now we must unload a pile of these for 9k each and they can't even control the speakers well. Damn, this business gets the better of me!! E-very time this damping, damping... Oy!
On a price related note, I respect other aspects of quality. And I found out that the more money I have, the more I respect those other aspects.
Every time I touch the volume knob of my higher than MC462 damping mid level Yamaha I want to slap someone. When I feel those 2g of plastic that have some wiggle room even before affecting the volume (like not being tight enough), my soul suffers.
I said this before, there's a notion of respect you feel with well build products. Respect shown to you. You feel like the engineers didn't think; aah, he's a Crocks wearing white trash, he won't notice anyway, just cram a lot of DSP effects, dazzle him, put gazillion channels and he'll be happy. Feature, features, features... lower-middle class loves me some features.
While building quality gear, engineers and designers think more along the line; if we mess up one little screw, he'll surely notice. You feel this attention. And then there's all this: pride of ownership, almost everlasting, holding the high price, even raising the price over time...
And when all our pathetic little 27 channels YamDenMara AVR's end up in some poor beasts belly poisoning it and killing it (because 28 channel is out) for the sake of Ayn Rand's wet dream, this Mc may play the last farewell filling our lungs with air, making our hearts big and drawing a tear to ones eye making it painfully clear and obvious why it did actually matter all along.