Speaking of Chinese-made, I love my Onix SP3. Link: http://www.av123.com/products_category_pack.php?section=processors&brand=33
Right now, it's $1200 packaged together with some excellent monitor speakers. The speakers are slightly forward sounding, could be too intense if you like a really laid-back sound, and this is a revealing combo, but I think it's truly excellent for the price on anything but poor recordings. If you just want an amp and no speakers, don't buy from AV123 (Onix's distributor), there are a few right now on Audiogon for about $500-550 Also check out Srajan's review of this amp on 6moons.com. But note that I only love this amp with the Telefunken smooth plate ECC83 12AX7 input tube replacements I got from eBay for a little over $50. There are many Telefunken fakes out there; buy from someone reputable. The Telefunkens I got were marked GAP COMPUTOR. They made the sound slightly warmer and added a tiny bit of reverb. Without swapping the 12AX7 tubes, I was neutral on this amp. Since these tubes and the Bolder-modded linear PSU I got for my SB3, I haven't had the desire to change anything on my system. I'm using an Ack! dAck! 2.0 with ultra-resolution option as an outboard DAC. -- JohnnyLightOn ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnnyLightOn's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=28 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32099 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
