Here's my thinking: When Amir reviews this amp, more people will be knocking at Dylan's door to buy one.
Therefore, my strategy was to buy one and get in the queue before this review.
I predict my thinking was good on this one, for once. I had been waiting for the review, but then I thought, why? So I can take delivery in 2023, after Dylan gets his PhD and moves on to other things? Sometimes, I'm kind dumb about stuff like that and I miss out.
Some notes about the hump in distortion at higher powers: At those higher powers, there will be lots of distortion from a variety of sources, not least of which will be our ears and our speakers. To my thinking, allowing a modest increase in distortion for once-yearly demonstrations for our buddies when our wives are not home to provide abundant power to fill out every potential peak is a worthy tradeoff. And even so, the power produced by this amp into 8 ohms ~200 watts) was at 0.004% distortion (-88 dB). My B&K amp is speced at 125 wpc into 8 ohms at 0.09% distortion (meaning: -61 dB at full power). This amp's distortion performance is in the land of fantasy for amps back in the day, when 200-250 watts/channel was about as big as any mortal could afford. For any short peak that calls for more than 160 watts, this amp is cleaner than a Purifi amp.
But it doesn't reach 1% distortion until something well over 300 watts into 8 ohms, for about 2 dB of "headroom". My B&K amp specifies 1.2 dB of headroom, presumably to mean something similar--additional power that isn't at the speced distortion, perhaps, but still is not into hard clipping.
My speakers are nominally 6-ohm with 91-dB sensitivity. I cannot imagine any scenario where this amp will be pushing the boundary of its maximum power, even for that annual demonstration. At normal loud listening, this amp will be putting out 5 watts or less on average, where this amp's distortion is down around -100 dB (0.0001%), and it will still play peaks 18 dB up from there without distortion over 1%.
The B&K is a great amp; this is better.
Rick "waiting his turn" Denney