I need to tell you up front that I work for a high end dealer and Intuitive is one of our brands. While they are not perfect, all the praise you hear about is well deserved.
Even if you go back and look at all the designs Dale did under the Essence name for 30 years and talk to other companies who know him you will discover that there are true genus' in our industry that have been black balled and kept out of the "inner Circle" Dale is one of these.
The last 2 stores I worked at sold his stuff either when it was Essence or now that it is Intuitive and I have never had any other product that made customers love their systems for so long and create such a cult following.
Often I hear that someone wants to upgrade but can't find anything they like as well at almost any price so they stick with their Intuitive or Essence products until Dale comes up with an upgrade.
I have never had any other company that could build more than one thing that was a legend in the making and Dale seems to do it almost all the time in several categories. This is hard to believe. I have only been unimpressed twice in the 25 years I have been around his stuff and I am almost impossible to impress, ask my wife.
The only speakers I have heard clearly beat them in every way were the Kharma speakers at $90,000 and that was hooked up to LAMM Labs.
Intuitive has a flagship speaker called the Danali that is better in most ways over the Kharmas but not in every way.
It is so ridiculous how good his stuff is that his amps are considered major upgrades over the likes of Gryphon, MBL, Symphonic Line, and LAMM. Of course this means that he makes Krell sound like a Radio Shack receiver.
Last month a customer in California got rid of his 1 year old CAT pre-amp for a 8 year old Essence pre-amp and he told me he never could believe that anything could make a CAT sound so ordinary unless he heard it himself.
Be warned, you will never look at audio the same again.