Brooks Berdan very much liked the Music Reference amps (and he was extremely hard to please), recommending and selling them to his customers. But some of his customers wanted to spend more money (bragging rights? bling?), and Brooks didn't mind taking his 40 points out of a $10,000-$20,000 sale instead of a $2,000-$4,000 one.
If more consumers carefully read John Atkinson's test bench reports they would have a much better idea what's going on under the hood of the amps that get reviewed. Amplifier sound quality is determined by many things, but just as a Pop song's ultimate quality is limited by it's chord structure and melody, an amp can not outperform the limitations imposed upon it by it's basic design. Changing the fuse in an amplifier, even if you perceive it to make a difference, is not going to improve the amp's linearity, increase it's power output, or decrease it's instability when driven into clipping. And spending more money on an amp does not necessarily buy one any of those. But you knew that ;-) .
