One Amp To ‘Rule’ Them All....


Is there one amplifier that everyone can agree on as a contemporary standard? An amplifier that can be considered a standard in both the studio and in a home stereo setup?

What one amplifier does everything very well and can be found in homes and in professional audio engineering environments?

What amp covers all the bases and gives you a glimpse into all qualities of fine musical reproduction?

...something Yamaha? ...something McIntosh?

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1. Studios and homes have very different requirements - space, size, form factor, interconnect standards, protection requirements
2. Weak analogy. The "one"  made pre-ceding rings subservient to and and bent their power to its will. It was not simply the best ring :-)
Interesting Q that deftly ignores the reality of an audio system in context. Ignores upstream preamp or source interactions and ignores speaker load interactions. 
The perfect amplifier would be the one that works best with
the particular speaker to which it would be paired.  For studio speakers, like those made by Genelec, the perfect amplifier, to me, would be one that puts out 0.000 watts/channel.

It is crazy to even speculate what kind of amp--solid state, tube, OTL, single-ended, pushpull--never mind the specific implementation of a particular variety.  I cannot even say what type I like because my favorite amps span OTL, SET and pushpull tube amps and I've only seriously listened to a handful of solid state amps.  

Looking at some of the candidates mentioned here clearly shows how mush everyone's systems, taste, and experience differ.  Every so often magazines like Absolute Sound and Stereophile raise the question of whether a particular amp they are raving about is the best ever or something close to perfection; their choice has been consistently disappointing to me.  Remember Halcro?  After hearing their amp, a friend who is in the industry mentioned how he had tears in his eyes after hearing the Halcro because it made his so nostalgic--it reminded his so much of the Phase Linear 700 (this was NOT meant as a compliment). 

f there is even a perfect amp for me out there, I've not heard it, and it would assuredly not be perfect for even a small fraction of others.


Tim DiParavicini has been making some very fine products for both the studio and home for a very long time as @lukaske mentioned. EAR/Yoshino doesn’t get the respect of some American tube brands due to lack of marketing, but he makes some of the best engineered products available.  The 509 monoblocks are killer!