I believe that, in the end, a straight wire with gain should be satisfying. I analyzed for many years what is causing 'musicality' in sound reproduction. Went from 300B to class D, from TDA1543NOS to Sabre32dac, from turntable to sd-card streaming, From Redbook to SACD, from mini monitors to 4way speaker systems. What lessons did i learn? In every standard commercial set of equipment, whatever the price, an average of only 12 bits will reach your ears. The source information which we need for the 'foot tapping experience' is lost in the chain. To compensate we get lost in the 'hifi fiction'; up- and oversampling, dithering, resampling, tubes, harmonics, noise, cables etc. And there are more variables like acoustic environment, mechanical resonances of speakers and mass inertia of drivers. That's what is making it all so damn difficult to choose components like 'the right amp' It's pretty personal. Last years my goal was to get more of the lost bits to my ears. The further i get in this journey, the more i realized that a straight approach, 'a wire with gain' is the way to get there.