Is Odyssey Power amp Stratos better than Krell?

Sorlowski, I don't think anything you said above is out of line as your entitled to your opinion! If I got a headache from listening to the Tact, I would say so as well. I also appreciate your opinion on the Spectral as I was thinking of trying that amp! I am happy for you that you believe your ears & not the reviews (not everyone can go to audio shows & may rely more on accurate reviews) but your not really free until you can be satisfied with one system & maybe you are. Might be a tall order for most audiophiles as I am making my own efforts here. Also your very fortunate to live near or in New York & have access to all those fine audio shows. I live in a country setting and have to climb a telephone pole just to answer the phone. Just kidding! Anyway it is my opinion that when purchasing a pair of speakers that your laying the foundation to a great system hopefully & will effect your choices on other components, matching can be critical here. That is why it may be important to see what speakers the reviewer is using. But in regards to power amps, it has been said that one mans bright sounding amplifier is another mans extended amp which I think you basically said as well.

"but your not really free until you can be satisfied with one system & maybe you are"
Not yet, I'm not free in that department, still looking, far from it..., But I can say that with Spratek/Clayton I'm much more satisfied (with previous MF A300 I was extremely unhappy even Streophile glorified it and I bought it to my latter dismay !!!), but I still do not own decent cdp (bought Sony SACD after glorifying reviews - what a piece of c...), so there is long way in front of me,
"not everyone can go to audio shows " sometimes I'm not sure if going to them is good thing, after show I'm not able for a month to listen to anything, and after every show bar is rising, you are becoming more demanding dreaming about VAC, WAVAC ... (having SS nightmares :)

i think people analyze gear too much,,,until the biases become audible.

Jsujo, good answer. I just purchased some new CDs & a couple of records the other day. Its time to start listening to music! Sorlowski, don't attend too many audio shows, you might get bitten by the upgrade bug again. What you don't know can't hurt you.

Hang on a second... the reason tubes (in certain topologies) sound lush and smooth is due to the predominantly even-order harmonic distortion they possess... heck, my 300B amp has it in spades.

Looking at the Soundstage measurements for the Odyssey Khartago, it appears to have dominant even order harmonic distortion... compare those figures to single-ended tube amplifiers (or amplifiers that try and be 'tubey') reviewed by the same site and you can see the similarities... as opposed to solid-state amps (or push-pull tube amps) which have odd-order harmonic distortion.

So if the Khartago is similar to other Odyssey amps (and it should, they all use the same circuit board) then their line will definately sound more tubey than most solid state gear, and perhaps more 'tubey' than a lot of push-pull tube gear! Based on those measurements alone, the Khartago is definately an amp I would like to at least *try* if I want to get a bit more power than my 300B SET amp provides, yet retain the tube-like sound. A good place to start at least considering how affordable it is!