Bel Canto EVO 200.2

I have had the EVO in my system several times for several days at a time. It is a good amp but has a dryness in the midrange and can get congested in complex passages. I ended up getting a Marsh amp and prefer it over the EVO.

sws, i agree with your statement that the midrange may be a bit dry, but the reason for that is its inherent low noise floor that we are not accustomed to, it gives the illusion of a dryness in the midband. although the evo may be system specific i have a very lush midrange and do not experience the dryness that you speak of. the funny thing is that many people compare the sound of evo to tube amps in which tubes=lush midrange. as for the congestion part, well that i'm going to have to disagree with completely, in fact the congestion argument in general i think is flawed. most amps, unless they are clipping, will not have any problem with complex passages. the main problem that hinders "complexity" in systems is the recording. you have to figure that not every instrument has its own microphone and therefore some instruments may smear with others in the area especially in loud passages where many varying instruments are competing for the same airspace at the same time. not saying that the marsh isn't better in your system or in all systems, i was just replying to your comments with my personal experience with the evo.

Vintgeguru is on target. Hearing the EVo with and without an upsampling DAC and good cables showed a huge difference on the same material. I listened to jazzy mid-70s Santana, without the DAC his solo was a bit vieled and recessed; with the DAC it suddenly stood out clean and pure -- I was impressed at the difference. The better the source, the better the EVo sounds. With TI just coming out with a great, cheap chip to do upsampling to 24/192Hz, I'm waiting for next year's DACs to upgrade.

I own the EVo and never find myself thinking about my next amp upgdrade except maybe a second EVo for mono operation. In terms of parts cost, how much do you think transistors cost in normal amps? I have seen a lot of people critisize Bel Canto for just packaging someone elses technology but there aren't too many other companies delivering on it.

sws2 piqued my interest in the marsh line of amps and it just so happened that a friend/dealer had his line in. so i asked to demo one and i got to take home the a200s. while the marsh was very nice in some ways, it was terribly harsh sounding. i had another fellow audiophile over and we listened to both switching them in and out after listening time and time again to certain tracks. the conclusion we came to was that although the marsh had 95% of the low level detail of the evo, its ambience and soundstage just wasn't quite there. also, as noted before, there was very noticeable sibilance and the midrange seemed real edgy. depending on the system used, this may be a desired trait. in my system, the harshness of the top end and the edgy midrange didn't bring the best out of my ribbon driver. i would imagine in a system in which the speakers were very inefficient and in which the top end seems darker and or more lush then accurate and real detailed. not to say the marsh won't perform well in any other system, but in my experience with it i wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for most of the positive aspects of the evo. i would also like to agree with morasp above, if this technology and the effort to build them is so cheap and i quote from a poster on another forum "simple for any DIY'er" why hasn't any other company jumped on the bandwagon seeing the potential for sales with its demand, after all there is a 3 week back order on the evo.