There's merit to your thinking.
The first group is indeed shoddy and is characterised by flat and lifeless soundstage; shrill upper mids and highs.
While auditioning Home Theater Receivers I thought Denon belonged more to the first group, not musical and Marantz, especially sounded warmer and more musical.I'm not familiar with modern Onkyo and Yamaha but back in the eighties, both were just under the brands in your hi-fi/low end exotic: dynamic, decent imaging but still transistory.
The B&K 140 was damned fine and I believe Parasound has assumed that mantle today. Haven't heard B&K lately.
The only modern super amps I have heard are the Audio Research 200 and Classe' Omega. Wow! Wish I had that kind of money to throw around.They made a pair of von Schweikerts absolutely disappear.
All that said, I've still never heard an amp that bested the Counterpoint 220 when it wasn't smoking and the 80 and 100 were amazing, too. Ditto for the 3.1 and 5.1 pre-amps. Of the same era and still in business is Muse who make a 300 watt monoblock I haven't heard but I owned the Model 100 amp and One pre-amp. Nicely warm, musical and still solid state detailed. Beautifully done inside, too.Which brings us to tubes. For the $$$, there is nothing else. $500 to $1000 buys 95% of what you get in the mega amplifiers except the power. Building Bottlehead or Consonance or buying Jolida or ASL; if you have hi-efficiency speakers, that's it.
And nothing under $5000 in solid state will give you the mids and highs you mentioned. In fact, the SET crowd, of which I'm a member will say only tubes at any price.
And you can certainly pay the price of a nice house for tube amplification these days!
Don't know about the Carver products but the fight with Stereophile was fun.
Posting Rules
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Get a T-Shirt!
