Acurus A200 vs Adcom 5800

No crazy way. The Acurus sounds good to only those of limited hearing or listening experience. I visited a friend that was powering his Martin Logans with an Acurus. He was playing, "Your Not the Man." I recognized the words of the song but not the singer. It sounded a little like Donald Duck it was so grainy, veiled and pinched. I blurted out, "Is that Sade singing?" I was embarassed, but my friend assured me it was and the crummy sound was the fault of his amp. We plugged in my amp and there whe was, Sade. I know I'm going to get flack, but its a true story. That Acurus owner went right out and bought a Sonic Frontiers. Adcom has a much better, though not great, sound than Acurus.

Any planar or ribbon speaker will out perform any dynamic driver when it comes to revealing true downstream character. I ran a series of solid state amps on my Boston acoustics towers, without hearing any significant differences in sonics except for, yes, bass control. As soon as I bought Apogee Stage speakers it was a different story, and the only amp I could find at the time that didn't offend and was within my budget was a used Jolida 1000a. This amp converted several audio friends into going to tubes one way or another. I now own Apogee Duetta Signatures and am using a Pass Labs X150 solid state mated with a Sonic Frontiers Line pre. This combo, even used, is way out of budget for those looking at Acurus of Adcom. I'm just mentioning it because money is need to get a ss amp that rivals tubes. Tubes will still do the job better in the under $2000 range. I just sold my Jolida to a fellow running inefficient Norwegian mini monitors, with titanium tweeters. After trying Adcom unsuccessfully, he is a happy camper now.