I enjoyed reading the 6Moons review of the Amp 1
Gaincard chip amp by Audio Oasis. The guy has a way with words...
_lots of them_ ... but gives a good description of why short
signal paths in these spartan designs give the music
a better attack over such as SET amps. The guy
says the equivalent of 'smoother is not always better.'

This is likely a debatable point but the logic made sense.