I get really cross when SINAD *ALONE* is used as a metric of amp quality!
In the UK, Rega were/are one of the good guys, making reliable, affordable (in the scheme of things) products which helped many users over the years to enjoy music at home. In the UK market, their after sales care is superb too if needed!
Now, I appreciate the above is seemingly of no interest to people here, especially at the huge price hikes Rega products suffer in export markets (greedy distributors as well as shipping charges?), but I also have to appreciate the increasingly off-pace attitudes and beliefs of the company founder who's still around and about there it seems and who used to permeate a certain almost insufferable smugness to us UK dealers before he took more of a back seat thirty or so years back.
So, where does this leave the OP, who probably made his decision ages ago now? The full width amps are fine, durable and 'different' in appeal from the ubiquitous Yamahas, needing half an hour to forty five minutes to fully stabilise (all models and repeatable) and once stabilised, they ALL sound the same, the larger amps offering more power and greater perceived headroom because of it. Rega don't believe in 'specs' as such in the way 'we here' do as long as performance is 'good enough,' so I suspect none of their amps from Io to Osiris actually 'measure' very well. Their electronics designer likes valves - nuff said... UK prices are reasonably fair as the entire build is in the UK still.
