Best integrated ever made ?

I have been thinking of going to an integrated amp. Has anybody here and heard the Cary sli80? How does it compare to some of the others mentioned here?

badwisdom -

I'm not disparaging your ears in anyway, but I do think maybe your experience and "sea change" simply MUST represent some of very interesting and important auditory "learning" process. Specifically, until you heard the Maestro (btw, will this name work in the American market, where the name recalls for some that goofy minor-league conductor character on Seinfeld) you said you had LOVED the krell integrated. (I've heard the Krell integrated too. I liked it, and was gonna get it, but then I heard a BAT ss amp.... 'nother story) But then you heard the Maestro, and then you said the Krell made you feel as if your ears were bleeding?

Assuming you weren't just writing a bit hyperbolically (is there such a thing as being a "bit" hyperbolic? hmm), this means that a piece of gear Z that you found to sound wonderful to you at point in time A sounded horrible to you at point in time B, all because of your exposure (for only 3 hours!!!) to piece of gear X.

I wonder if this is how our ears can sometimes work: an experience can actually rearrange, in a quite short period of time, our hearing, or at least our subjective experience of our hearing.

No wonder objectivists get worked up at us: we are experimenters in the plasticity of sense experience!

pcanis

IHAVE LISTEN MANY INTEGRATED S AMPLIFIERS AND I THINK THE BEST OF THE BEST IS THE PATHOS TWIN TOWERS.
IT S VERY SWEET DETAILED CLEAN IT HAS WONDERFUL SOUND
AND IF CHANCHE THE TUBES WITH SOMTHIG SPECIAL LIKE
NOS TELEFUNKEN SIEMENS PEARL CRY.VAC ECC 83 THE SOUND
WILL BE TWICE BETTER.
AND THE LAST IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL INTEGRATED IN THE WORLD.
I AM VERY SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH I AM FROM GREECE.

Sokos, what is your e-mail address, or send me an e-mail I can reply back to.

No one understands French? C'est bien une idee francaise. If there are links to the AA Maestro reviews in French, I too would like to read them. Thanks