Once you get to a basic level of competence in an amp, how it makes you feel, its usability, its features, its reliability, and how much you like the aesthetics is all that really matters....at whatever price point doesn't give you buyer's remorse and/or make you feel like you didn't treat yourself a little.
ASR members get a little too wrapped up in chasing SINAD porn sometimes.
I wouldn't disagree at all with those sentiments. Thing is, I still tend to 'listen with my eyes' over a certain price point, I do still have the remnants of 'gear lust' when I see a top Luxman amp (my vibes on Accuphase are mixed as it seems the bench performance is merely competent rather than excellent and probably worse than the sensible Yamaha integrateds and now discontinued class A-B pro amps that seemed to measure really well under a grand)). I look lovingly at a new big Luxman but don't lust after it as I know how much has gone into the casework engineering. I do feel that getting top cases outside of the far east may well be expensive (it certainly is for UK makers) and in the past, our audio manufacturers had a terrible time finding good cost effective ways of clothing their designs (Meridian managed though in their heyday but spoiled it with constant 'subjective' design twiddling internally, at least with their CD players back then - from 200 to 500 model ranges definitely)
An old friend and dealer just told me he's had occasional contact with Bent from Hegel and seems to feel Hegel came first before any design work for others. Second hand info so please take it as such.
I think this place is wonderful for tests and discussions on state of the art less expensive (bargain priced) gear bought by a 'head' rather than a 'heart' consideration. Not sure the audiophile (mostly audiophool sadly) community has even begun to acknowledge, let alone change, their eye-fi perspectives yet. Best we can do is smile quietly to ourselves while the audiophile fraternity chases its collective tail trying to find audio nirvana which they'll never find no matter how much money they spend...
Anyway, I mean neither any ill and know and like the way the Hegel works and 'feels,' the simplicity, performance and cost fitting in well with a moderately comfortably off music lover buying nice speakers in the £4k (US $7k) region. Different people to forum watchers and posters and apparently most don't even know forums exist for audio gear and probably care even less frankly.
