Are Pass Labs amps probably the best ever you can buy ?

@almarg 
I just crunched the numbers on Wolf's speakers assuming a typical room size and speaker placement. He should only require about 9 watts to get up over 101dB at 14 feet away. That figures out to about 9.5dB of gain. The SIT3 would work. It wouldn't work for me though. I need about 3dB of pre-amp gain to get where I want to be with the F5 at it's 15.5dB. It's easy enough to fix that if I wanted to. Getting it up around 19 is a matter of swapping 4 resistors. Most people do make that change when running 32V rails. I didn't. 

I've heard a top end Pass System and I'm .... mystified. I'm sorry but they don't do it for me. They're not even as good as Parasound Halo line. To my ears they are thin and not particularly revealing.

If I had the money and space I'd buy Ayre and never ever look at Pass again.

Peace.

There "is" a Nelson Pass designed vintage SS amp that for the money and to me that is "Crazy good" sounding. The "Nakamichi PA-7", is one of his "Stasis" designs he did for them and are built like tanks and rated "200Wpc. @8Ohm" and down to 2Ohm very stable as well in my experience.
  OR, the last year of that model was 225Wpc. Those are marked, Pa-7ii. 
    "No roman numerals on this keyboard!"
I have one rig put together using nine of them. "Tri-amped mains plus surrounds and a bi-amped center for watching movies". But I do need to either turn the heat down or off in the winter about half-way through a movie! They are a nice design for a class A/B and reliable.
They seem to run about $1200-1500 for a nice one, But I have seen them for 4-600 as well.
But the nice one's? "As in mint cosmetically and serviced".  I think they are a hell of a deal as long as serviced by a good rep. company. Most were bought of course by guy's that still take allot of pride in them. One I bought even had the orig. top removed and a vented plexiglass top installed so you can see that giant "Nakamichi" labeled, toroidal transformer in the front that is about 9" in dia. and the four big caps. It's my favorite one of the bunch. I do get lots of comments from friends on it. But it's not to impress anyone but, "Lil 'ole me! And they do a good job of that. In fact the "Firefight" at the end of the movie, "The Accountant"? My friends still gossip about that as we watched it the room with that rig! Amazing! 
 And, Just think of all the good that the $13,500 that you saved would do for your favorite charity! Or you could start your own!

But I wanna keep my Had amp...I like it...and have decided to send the 4 grand to Almarg as that seems fair. However, there was a temporary weird crackling sound from my speakers which I now realize was Kosst
"underscore" Amojan crunching their numbers. 

Yes, that sounds very fair indeed, Wolfie. And it will cover most of the cost of my XA25.

I’ll let you know when the check arrives.

Best regards
-- Al 😊