Point to point wiring.

Miler- In my opinion, PCB mounted components, be they thru-hole or SMT, ensure that all units are manufactured identically, whereas point-point wiring varies from assembler to assembler, or even with the same assembler during the course of the workday. And there is the obvious cost advantage over point-point except for an extremely small run. My two cents....

Audioengr- While the dielectric absorbtion of PCBs may be higher than that of "good cabling", the signal path on a well designed circuit card assembly (typically) would be much shorter. Does on cancel the other? Like most things in our hobby, implementation counts heavily.

As far as a grounding scheme, I do not see how you can (unequivically) say that star grounding results in a soft-sounding-amp with no dynamics. That certainly is a generalization.

Russ- Audio and video engineer.