I didn't think you were. I can read a smiley as good as the next man. This is a generic thing. In other places my claims are treated with polite distain like I was dillusional or too inexperienced to know better. I have no investment in being "right". My ears tell the tale. My neighbor, who is all tubed, is blown away by my amp and I calmly await the opinion of monsieur Triode. If it's an delusion, it's a hell of a convincing one.
I know where Pete is coming from. In general very high efficiency speakers are strange beasts that ruthlessly reveal the character of the electronics behind them because of their ability to turn even the lowest level flaw into an audible sound. Things that would get lost in the sauce on a lower efficiency speaker are put right out front and center on a more efficient one. (Remember the trouble stringdriventhing had with the noise from a rogue 90 driving his rebuilt horn speakers?)
But that said generalities can only guide us so far and you are absolutely right, the only thing that really matters in the end is what you hear with your own ears in your own system. You may make a synergistic match and find the only ice amp that sounds good with your speakers (and on the other hand, your friend my have the synergistic match and when he brings his amp to your house the two of you may very well look at each other and go "Yuck". (Been there, done that.
) It may work out, it may not. But the fun is in the experimentation. You never know unless you try. This of course is why it is good to have a large circle of audio buddies.
And I couldn't agree with you more about being deluded. If a piece of gear puts a smile on my face and gets my foot tapping I call that a good thing. I don't care how or why it works, I'm just happy that it does. I know a lot of audiophiles that would disagree with that way of thinking, In my mind an audio system's job is to increase my enjoyment of music and if it does that in my opinion it has done its jog, and I don't really care how it did it.
