jgubman:  I haven't heard this product yet, but if you are looking for a used headphone amp THE place to look is the For Sale forum at http://www.head-fi.org.

This is so tempting-I'd really like to hear what people think of the RADs.  I had a window open to MACCONNECTION all day yesterday but couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger.

Well, my Powerwave came this morning, less than 48 hours after ordering it from macconnection. Thanks for everyone's suggestions here. I fortunately have been working at home today (no, really) and was able to plug it in and get some initial impressions.

It is hard to take it seriously at first. The shipping box was smaller than I expected (about the size of a couple hardcover books). Inside was an even smaller box. When I opened it the damn thing is the size of a couple of decks of cards lying next to each other!

I recently ripped my CD collection onto a file server using the APE lossless compression format, so I plugged my HP laptop (811g connection to the file server) with J River MediaCenter into the Powerwave. I unhooked my front pair of Omega TS-1's from the AMC 2030 el-34 tube amp that normally drives them, and plugged their attached Mapleshade cables (which are fortunately only bare wires - no spades or bananas), into the decidedly non-audiophile breakout cable that plugs into the speaker-level mini-jack on the back. Spades or bananas will not fit into the little cheesy spring-terminal connections. Needless to say my expectations were dropping at this point.

I let music play for about 5 hours in total, in case the amp needed breakin. Initial impressions were that the tonal balance is quite warm and nice, and compared favorably with the sound from the AMC. Depth was very restricted initially. I let the amp warm up more while I resumed doing some work, and later downloaded the USB ASIO driver demo from usb-audio.com. I reset Media Center to output ASIO, and immediately noticed more depth and a more relaxed presentation.  I bought the ASIO software - it's worth it.

Is this amp a good match for the TS-1's? Amazingly so, in fact. I have never heard a solid-state amp that I liked with them, but I could easily live with the Powerwave sound. In my largish room (14 X 30 X 7) I needed a bit more power, but the Powerwave otherwise was smooth and natural sounding. Omegas are easy to drive, and the Powerwave would no doubt have a lot of trouble with some other speakers in larger rooms.

The Powerwave was so easy to listen to that I got to the point where I was afraid to put the AMC back in the system. After I did, it highlighted a couple of weaknesses in the Powerwave. The soundstage depth is still not up to tube amp standards. There is also an ease and sense of presence that tube amps have that I really like. The Powerwave got closer than I expected, but not completely. Finally, 15 watts is 15 watts. Tube amps tend to sound bigger than their power rating; the Powerwave did not.

I'm keeping it. In fact, I'll probably end up building 2 or 3 bedroom/office systems with Powerwaves and Omegas (the TS-3 model most likely). It has also impressed the hell out of me in terms of the potential of this technology. I can't wait to hear future more powerful versions.

So, is there a friggin' magic trick to make both channels work?  I've either got a bad breakout cable or the amp is fucked right outta the box.  It's a pretty chintzy speaker connector, that's for sure.  

Only the left channel will work with the USB input, so I used the line in to hook up a portable CD player, and only the left channel works with that, too.  Switching the speaker around gets sound from both speakers, but not at the same time.

I'm assuming the amp is simply not working, but if there's any trick to getting sound from both channels I'd be anxious to hear it.

Sounds like you have a bad unit. Mine worked in 2 channels out of the box.

I tried the RCA inputs, fed by the preamp outputs of my NAD 742. Forget what I said before about the amps lacking power - they rock! I had trouble getting higher volumes levels through the USB input; not so using the rca's. Perhaps the driver circuit between the internal DAC and the Tripath chip is not very powerful? Who knows. I'm now getting a wider soundstage and a much bigger sound.

I'm keeping the Pwave in my system over the weekend to try movies.

Not a bad little amp huh?   This is the future boys.  Paperback sized Audiophile grade systems for under $500 bucks.  The only thing missing is the high rez format.  I hear that Steve Jobs is an Audiophile maybe he'll look into opening the BMW of iTunes stores and start offering uncompressed 24bit music for purhcase.