Crown amps

Pro audio amps are probably the closest thing going to the proverbial straight wire with gain.

Many audiophiles don't necessarily want a straight wire with gain and rather prefer an amp that may well be voiced a certain way.

Whoaru, What is your personal take on their sound quality?

"Pro" amps are fine and they run the gamut of average sound quality to supreme sound quality.

However, pro products are made for and intended to be use in specific applications.

Your application is "studio" or "mastering" not abuse ("touring" or large venue, etc.).

You should choose the model that comes closest to your application. If having an equaliser is important, then the Carver mentioned above would be, on paper, a better bet than the Crown. If the equaliser is not indispensable, choose an amp without it: with pro you (usually) get what you pay for, so if you don't really need s/thing don't pay for it.:)

*One extreme example of pro vs. home use/hi-end, FM Acoustics, a Swiss company, makes pro amps. They are very expensive and outstanding -- probably better than most hi-end offerings.

My personal take is that they sound fine. Note this is based on only a weekend of listening to a Crown K2.

I rented it to evaluate for subwoofer duty but just for fun, I connected it to some speakers I have - Definitive Tech BP-30 and Paradigm Studio 100v2. The results were much better than I had expected given the stigma surrounding them in some circles. The clarity and seemingly limitless power were amazing (keep in mind the K2 is 500 wpc).

When/if my old Yamaha amps ever fail and it's not economically feasible to repair them, I will be seriously considering pro amps.

I didn't mention before but I have a QSC amp that I bought strictly for use as a subwoofer amp. Just for laughs I hooked it up full range to good speakers and took a listen. The joke was on me. It sounded so good that I looked up the specs (which I hadn't paid much attention to) and found that they were in all ways comparable to home audio amps. The QSC does have a fan which makes it too noisy to use in the listening room (my amps are in the cellar) and it is not digital so it gets hot and needs the fan.

As the saying goes..."Don't judge a book by its cover".