I find it somewhat bemusing that JA brushed off the Chord amplifiers inability to meet it's power output specification - at any load resistance.
Admittedly JA measured about 500W/8ohms - more than enough for most any application - but the manufacturer claims double that and Paul Bolin's text claims "it is very conservatively rated at 1Kw into 8ohms".
If I bought a 100W amplifier and it only produced 50W I'd be a bit pissed off - yeah, it's only 3db extra but you've payed for that.
If I payed $75,000!!! for an amp that claimed a 1KW output, I'd bloody well expect to get that (or something close)....certainly not *half* of the claimed output power. I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation, especially given the price.
Paul Bolin says it's as the best solid-state amp he's heard....great, but why does the manufacturer feel the need to lie about the output spec?
On a different subject, I received my print copy of the March Stereophile in the mail today (I'm in Australia).....still no sign of the digital Zinio version. Don't think I'll be renewing the Zinio subscription, I signed up expecting a 'hot off the press peek'....but it's basically redundant on it's current release schedule.