I was just the guy switching out gear behind the foam divider. I wasn't doing the judging.
I tried to remain the neutral host.
However, I did spend a considerable amount of time with all but one of the amps prior to the event.
The reason for the T-amp doing so well, in my opinion, is because there is so little there in the signal path. It is a very transparent amp that sounds exactly like whatever is feeding it.
I was feeding it with about as good of a front end, power supply, and cables as money can buy, and it sounded like it.
Secondly, the speakers were fairly efficient at 91db. So while we may have pushed the little T-amp to its limits, it wasn't asked to do any more than that. No one knew or suspected that it was only an 8 watt amp.