So, highfigh, it sounds like you would go with Emotiva....
Hmmm...I know they offer the 30 day trial, but it will do me no good as I will not have the NAD to compare it with. I know (seriously hope) it will sound better than the Adcom GFA-5200 that I am running now (in all fairness, at 50wpc, the Adcom is a really good amp).
It seems like with NAD I will have excellent power, all channels driven, to 100wpc.
Yet with Emotiva, their specs are not as good, but I will get 200wpc.
It seems it would be better to forgo the 3db of volume for cleaner power. I am especially critical of 2 channel listening.
They both offer a "mono-block" design, so I should see significant improvement with 2 channel on both.
Fra-GI-le...(that's Italian, you know) I am now leaning back toward the NAD.
Now, for the wildcard, if I up'ed my budget to say, $1200, is there something else I should look at? Rotel 1095?
At this time, I'd wait until I knew more about Emotiva but they definitely look like they could be a contender. I don't buy anything like that without seeing, touching and hearing but the layout looks intelligent and I like the dual voltage part. As far as the distortion, nobody will EVER hear the difference. If a speaker's sensitivity is 87dB at 1W/1M and the THD is .1%, the distortion will be about 30dB below the 87dB and if you have ever measured background noise levels in a normal room, you know it's often in the 55dB-65dB range. That means the THD will be barely audible
but only if someone knows what to listen for or it will be masked by the ambient noise. If the THD drops to .02%, it drops to about -37dB from the reference tone and since we don't listen to reference tones, any kind of complex waveforms with random peaks will completely obscure this distortion.
Anyone who thinks they can hear the THD from an amplifier when the speakers are probably producing more than these numbers should re-examine their ideas, IMO.
I'll take the extra dynamics over a tiny bit less distortion. If the amp runs out of headroom, it will either compress or clip and that's a heck of a lot more than .1%THD.
What makes the Emotiva 'fragile'?
I haven't looked at a Rotel piece of any kind since probably '78, when I started working at a stereo store and we were in the process of drooping that line because they didn't sell well. Personally, if I listen to a system and can hear instruments without being conscious of it being a collection of electronic components, I'm happy. I really don't care what brand or model it is, although I haven't heard many receivers that didn't leave footprints on the sound in some way. I really like the sound of my music server, I don't have a problem with my DVD and CD players but at the moment, I'm really PO'd at DirecTV for dropping XM in favor of Sonic Tap, whatever they hell that is. The sound of XM was several orders of magnitude better. I really don't care if FM sounds great, or not because there's so little good programming, although we do have a college station that's very good. Until I get a new cartridge for my turntable, I don't listen too critically to my albums. I was using a Conrad Johnson amp but I pulled it out to replace some caps and haven't used it in a while. It was nice but it definitely isn't as crisp as a solid state amp. The amp I'm using sounds good but doesn't have many video inputs and all of the audio inputs are analog because it's over 20 years old. It's clean, quiet and all of the controls/input switching are passive. I prefer to keep the signal path simple, if at all possible, and I don't use any of the filters or tone controls. I have used them but I hear differences that aren't just from the tonal change. For that matter, when I use the Rec Out selector to send audio from the server to my basement and garage stereos, I hear a definite difference in my main system, so I leave that off when I'm inside.
I'm not a neurotic purist and I'm not searching for a Grail when it comes to equipment but I do have some definite preferences when it comes to sound.
