[ylee]

6 days after I took delivery of this amp, I continue to enjoy listening to it for a few hours a day. Considering I have four kids my wife has been very understanding of my passion! If I had the time I'd listen to it 6 hours a day. It's that enjoyable.

The amp's tonal balance is deepening as time goes on. At first, this was a lean sounding amp. With less-than-good recordings it remains so. With well-recorded/mastered albums however it sounds great. The bass extension is all there and quite stunning on organ recordings. Despite the transparency and clarity, it is very smooth sounding and I find myself completely devoid of listening fatigue. The soundstaging is very wide, extending about a couple feet beyond the speakers positions. Listening to Vangelis's "Chung Kuo" is quite a treat! Again, for $2995 this amplifier gives a full experience of where state-of-the-art amplifier technology is. I bought this wanting to play with it and was prepared to move on to a much more expensive amp within the next couple years. Given how good the AHB2 is, I no longer feel that need or desire.

I ordered a pair of Benchmark's Canare cable with Speakon connectors on the amp end and two pairs of spades on the speaker end for each channel so I can hook it up to the barrier strips on my Vandersteens. I'll post impressions of my system with that cable burned in a few weeks.