@orangejello
Seriously speaking, do you notice depth, 3-D sound in the two amplifiers? Is the timbre/tonality correct?
There are factors that can not be measured and you have to rely on ears used to appreciate good/very good recordings with acoustic instrumentation and high/very high DR.
Tonality is excellent with the AHB2.
As for depth, I am not quite sure what you mean in the context of modern recordings. In the studio I don't know how engineers manufacture depth. I know how sound is placed in the the horizontal plane using panning. But the other two dimensions...?
However, depth can certainly be heard when the recording captures the ambient queues of the recording venue. In that respect the AHB2 is also excellent. It is funny that you mentioned this because I heard an EXTREME example of this last night - the likes of which I have not heard before.
Since yesterday was so nice, I will throw in this little anecdote. We went out yesterday afternoon to eat street tacos and drink margaritas with some friends. After getting pretty happy, we walked across the street. There was a new vinyl shop there. Of course I had to drag everyone in. What do you know... the owner is a good friend of mine, recently retired, who had closed down his old shop over a year ago. I had lost touch with him. Seems a divorce revitalized him, and he decided to get back into the business again. Great to see him. Anyway, we bought about a dozen records from him for about $35. One of them was the record I am referring to.
The vinyl is "Arkiv Productions - 198 318, Antonio Vivaldi" recorded in the mid-sixties in a church in Berlin. It consists of four concertos for various instruments. On one side of the album there is a concerto, "Concerto con Violino Principale et Altro Violino per Eco in Lontano" which means "Concerto for Principal Violin and Other Violin for Echo in the Far". I only just now translated this. Aahha!!!
While I was listening I was puzzled in the extreme as to what was going on in the recording. I seems that Vivaldi actually wrote this in order to achieve an echo effect. Back then the only way to do this was to put pieces of the orchestra at greater distance from the main orchestra in a large church. This was rendered with eyebrow-raising precision with the AHB2.
You can hear three distinct depths. There is the main orchestra and soloist at the first level. Then there is a small group of strings at the next level- maybe 20-30 feet back. The echo chamber instruments were placed at the third level WAY in the back of the church (which has a lot of reverberant energy). The effect is really interesting, and the engineers captured it very well. You hear the main orchestra and when they are silent or only the violin soloist is playing, you sometimes here this island of strings much further back at the second level. And when Vivaldi whats the full echo, you hear the third layer very far away. Subjectively it sound like they are almost one hundred feet back. They may well have been.
So here you have a recording with very deliberately recorded depth perspective. The AHB2 made it clear to me what I was hearing. I just couldn't figure on why the recording was done that way. As I begun to write this, I translated the Italian and it is clear that this is exactly what I was meant to be hearing. Cool, huh?
Now, this is such an extreme example that the most mediocre system would hand you back a good deal of this. But with the AHB2, you are not guessing at all as to what is going on.
Other classical recordings where depth is know to be consistently and naturally captured are the Mercury Living Presence recordings and the RCA Shaded Dog series. These sound as I would expect on the AHB2. If I recall correctly, the NAD struck me as a little bit flatter. But I am going to stick with the AHB2 for a another week or so before comparing to the NAD.
As far as tonality is concerned, we also picked up an album that was fairly ubiquitous in the sixties for 50 cents - in great condition.
Misa Criolla. There are 4 pages of fine ink drawings in the gate fold. This is an excellent Phillips recording. The voices in the choir are exquisite and very well delineated. You couldn't ask for more, and the AHB2 delivered.