I have owned many versions of the McCormack amps over the years including the top level .5 DNA Platinums, and 1.0 DNA Platinums.
To this day there has been no amp "Better" overall. Different, more expensive etc... Yeah sure.
Head to head with Clayton Mono blocks pure Class A, or Mcintosh MC402 really the McCormacks still sound very capable, especially with the Plitron Transformer upgrade they will drive anything down to .5 ohm load.
A couple things to keep in mind trying to drop a McCormack out of your system is not only do they drive anything, but they have VERY high gain honestly. Around 31 to 32 db input at 100,000 ohms which also makes them far more powerful than many amps from the "Low volume" perspective. I had a BOW which was about a 6000.00 amp from a local dealer to test out. It was a 26 db input which seems to be the average, and I see your Schiit Audio here looks about the same.
Honestly that BOW was far lower output unless you wanted to really crank it up beyond what your use to with the McCormack. Being the McCormack is about 6 db higher gain it is a very significant difference in most systems with the extra 6 db trust me.
Good Luck, but honestly in this case I doubt it is a better amp or worth the money unless you really go to something much higher in the audio world. And yes I highly suggest auditioning anything because the DNA from a standard A-B amp will be hard to beat on any day of the week anyway.
(by the way I have only heard one amp to this day that truly bettered the modified McCormacks for the price, or musicality, and it was not Krell, Conrad Johnson, Audio Research, BAT, Mcintosh or any of the known big boys!)
