Bill - unfortunately I don't live in an area with many respectable dealers. Therefore, I need to rely on others who may or may not have tried various combinations. Its fine for you and writers in magazines to say "go listen" or "you owe it to yourself to listen to X" (hard data). Sure, sure....assume that we are all surrounded by dealers with every product on the planet. For me, it's Best Buy - and one without a Magnolia component I might add. I'm 4 to 5 hours away from any decent dealers.
So, I am not driving myself crazy. I am gathering opinions and views and digesting all of them. If I was driving myself crazy, I would get out of this hobby. Life is too short. I enjoy the mixing and matching to no end. We have some brilliant folks on this site and their input and views are invaluable. Given the logistic challenges of what I previously mentioned, we need to use the power of the collective (the Borg!). Yes, yes, we don't hear the same. I agree. But I certainly value the opinions of the folks on AA a lot more than some idiot teenager listening to his MP3's on his ipod (I was in the Apple Store trying to buy a connector and when I enquired into the new "Mastered for iTunes (24/96 recordings)" which has been rumored, he informed me that MP3's were the highest quality of music you could buy). I didn't have the time (or patience) to educate him.
That being said, I DID have a chance to demo the Pass xa series yesterday. I was completely floored by what I heard. Grabbing my checkbook now....
Mike
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