For those that have been waiting as eagerly as I have for news, I "received" the first two of my Le Amp II's nearly 2 weeks ago. I say "received" because they got to Malaysia just after I moved to Jakarta. Fortunatly a good friend (who put me on to nOhr in the first place) agreed to take delivery and give them a good test run. The following is his (almost) unedited email.
"After about 20 hours of burning in here follows my assessment of your new amps to date.
First some good news. I've has a close look at the amp that appears to have a LED not functioning. If you look closely there is a faint blue light visible through a minute gap between the face plate and the amp body. I assume that the LED is simply out of its slot (maybe it was dislodged at the time of the voltage modification). It should be a very simple matter to rectify. As it turns out the blue light seems to be the same LED as is used in my original le Amp. As it is behind a screen and the light output is considerably diffused, as long as the amp faces the back of the speakers it is hard to detect a distracting light source and you probably will not need to disconnect them.
Now for the really good news. The amps are sounding great. I mistakenly plugged the low pass filters in today and boy did the sound just leap out of the Paradigms!!!. Obviously it {expletive deleted!} up the cross over point but it really improved an already good sound. It should sound brilliant with the Vandensteen crossovers and subs. The sound is very smoooooth, open and dynamic with lots of lateral and back to front depth. The high range is smooth and not strident, the mid range is powerful and whilst the bass is a bit muddy (except when the cross overs are in place), this appears to be due to intermodular distortion and doubling up of bass (both full range speakers and subs are fighting against each other). With crossovers installed it will sound very impressive.
Despite Mr Barnes's previous rave about the aesthetics of the amp I'd have to say they look a little amateurish - more like a prototypes than top shelf hi fi but this may be because, despite the delay, they were rushed out in the end. A minor quibble in the end given the level or performance for the money spent.
Finally as I said earlier you will definitely need banana plugs if you are using anything other then the thinnest gauge cable. The inputs are high enough quality but the holes for bare wire are minuscule.
I look forward to listening to the amps in your system after a hundred or so hours of burning in."
Obviously I also look forward to hearing them when my household goods finally follow me to Indonesia. Oh, and the screen wording is Watts
