Latest D'Agostino monoblock amps???


It gets a ragging on in the comments section, you'd think the amps would have been 120% perfect in bias and everything else, before it was unleashed to Stereophile to review and bench test.
This happens all too much, with excuses made of being bumped around or the shipping etc
https://www.stereophile.com/content/dan-dagostino-master-audio-systems-progression-m550-monoblock-po...

Cheers George
128x128georgehifi
Jim Austin really got his feathers ruffled over this one! I was surprised how defensive he became.
Well credit to Stereophile for publishing it, they could have just burred it or got a new unit. 
As for the D'Agostino, there is always a love fest around them but I don’t get it. The progression monos sounded ok/good on a wilson audio wilson alexia 2 but the audio research gear on the Sasha 2 30s later sounded better to me…  less hard and less forced, all in all more enjoyable and I am not a AR fan (too soft for me). Maybe the ones I heard had “shipping” damage lol. 

Does not matter though as I would not shell out $45k for any amp so I am just the peanut gallery. 
" We can do this better because it measures better, and it does this better. It was more about technology than listening. But at D'Agostino, we listen a lot. Listening is the most important thing, not how it measures.""

When I was at a demo about 5 years ago where Dan D said similar words about how he designs his amps I was not impressed. I knew those amps were not for me. Different stokes for different folks. 
How convenient. Rightly or wrongly; after being forced out of the company he founded, it just rings of sour grapes. But to be fair, this is not the first time Stereophile has found the measurements of expensive gear to be disappointing. The high end should be better.