Are future improvements in Amp/PreAmps slowing to a crawl?

@roger_paul 

I read what you wrote 3 times and I still have no idea what you're talking about. No band in the EM spectrum requires air or any other medium to travel. We can send vibration (kinetic energy) through all kinds of mediums. That's how sonic welders work. The speed of sound through a speaker diaphragm is a very important characteristic of the diaphragm. 
I'm not sure what you're talking about as "speed" in a wave. EM flows through conductors pretty damn fast; a significant fraction of the speed of light. The information that gives rise to spacial cues has nothing to do with the fundamental of any tone. It's entirely the product of harmonics and phase. 

My answer is "yes".  But I approach it with three factors in mind: 1) is it organically musical; 2) is it transparent, and 3) is it reliable.  I believe we essentially are there with at least some gear..

kosst_amojan

"I'm not sure what you're talking about as "speed" in a wave"

Sound waves travel at Mach One approx 750mph. Thats considerably slower than the speed of electricity / light.

After sound waves get converted into electricity it is the job of the amplifier [chain] to make a larger version of the input signal and pass it on only to be converted back to sound waves by your speakers. When this whole process of converting it one way and then back to the "original" way is examined we can see that the handling of the fragile "data" that is embedded in the signal has been compromised or corrupted. The degree of damage to the signal is not readily noticed because it is so slight. The problem is that the integrity of the payload (embedded image) has been modified by a composite of non-linear events no matter how small. This is like recording with an apple and playing back with an orange.

I wanted to make the electrical handling of the smallest detail the highest priority. This is why I refer to a cloning process because all the data is recovered at a "DNA" level and duplicated or repeated. When 100% of the signal is "cloned" then the copy at the output also contains the marker or cue that it is "live". This marker is the first thing to go in conventional amplifiers.

Aside from the obvious visual cues, a phenomenon at the concert hall tells your brain this is live. Your brain recognizes the medium of air because air does not distort. If you are trying to make your brain accept music fed through (any process other than air) then you better make sure it does not distort otherwise the "live" characteristic is not in the final conversion.

Roger

The real advances in preamps and amps in the future will involve metaphysics not physics. I'm afraid they've run out of options trying to somehow improve upon the current model. More designers must think outside the box. 🕋

Sound travels through all kinds of things at all kinds of different speeds, even air depending on pressure and humidity. Amplifier distortion is the product of nonlinearity in the gain devices, pure and simple. On the other hand, most people feel that amps with extremely low distortion figures sound analytical and lifeless. Like it or not, you're listening to recorded music on a stereo, both of which are the products of hundreds if not thousands of opinions about microphones, recording, mixing, components, designs philosophies, materials, and speakers. 
The question of how to build an amp that conveys all that information seems to be answered so far as I can tell. I'm listening to one example of how it can be done right now.