True, but how many of us are going to ship 30kg power amplifiers across the Pacific or risk multi thousand dollar esoteric pieces to freight companies?
I'll bet there are plenty of very high performing amplifiers sitting in the lounge rooms of many of the members here. Amplifiers bought in a different time at significant cost and designed by incredibly skilled engineers and manufacturers. Amplifiers that were already very competently reviewed by magazines of the past where measurements were everything.
So ultimately, Amir gets mostly plenty of lightweight little Chinese toys to test because they are, let's face it, disposable and no-one is going to get too upset if they get lost or wrecked in transit.
What a preposterous comment. First off, lets' grant your premise about "plenty of light weight little Chinese toys".
1) Weight has almost no correlation to performance with respect to the topic of contention on this thread. The only thing size seems to have some relevance toward, is power. And all the tertiary reasons something that consumers lots of power, requires larger housing (cooling, etc..)
2) If there was any correlation, it would seem power amps, which are bigger in size than desktop amps, do far more poorly, so in actually, your premise - if true, would actually be unfavorable to you two-fold. On the one hand you're getting lighter products that perform better at the same time. But then again I think this is the only point you could reasonably defend, seeing as how desktop amps consume less power, and keeping distortion and other undesirable aspects down in such packages is easier than something capable of 100's of W's. But if we made the comparison 1:1, this point still flies in your face when you bring up the "Chinese toys" part. DX3 Pro still a king in it's own right from last year, and the Matrix DAC the king period. Don't see how those are "toys no one would get too upset if they got lost or wrecked".
3) Why would something that performs, very good, or as good as any one of those behemoths(you allude to as the antithesis to the toys of today) be "disposable"? This makes zero sense, unless you're speaking with varied intent as if to say "yeah these are so light, acquiring another wouldn't be a problem to have shipped to you". But even there it doesn't make sense because anyone that is worried about shipping costs, isn't going to be buying boutique hunks of equipment they need aid lifting.
4) To be frank on a similar level as you... Anytime I see older equipment, based on experience and measurements here, I instantly prepare myself with "how bad's this gonna be?" So this whole "Amplifiers bought in a different time at significant cost and designed by incredibly skilled engineers and manufacturers." is nonsense in the same sense your insinuation of "little Chinese toys" being "disposable" is..
5) Lastly, I don't even know what point you're making addressing DonH56's post. The tonality seemed to be a jab against current-day Chinese products. As if to suggest any sizable group of people that care about fidelity would go out of their way to procure some of these undiscovered older gems only waiting in unknown living rooms to potentially shatter the SINAD metrics gathered here. Made worse by the fact that EVEN IF these products perform as good as their Chinese counter parts, you're still paying an arm and leg. Now I have an RME DAC, and you might ask why I would get that since it's basically a big-boy DX3 Pro. Well it's not because of it's "Made in Germany" designation, but everything that follows that with respect to RME themselves, and the fact it offers more creature comforts than any DAC on the planet to this day.
Outside of simply having a curiousity-driven desire to archive where we were in the past - I couldn't care less about owning some of that gear over any of the devices you consider lightweight toys. Even more importantly, calling such devices disposable? I don't get it.. Why even say that?
