Quad ESL-63 and low-powered amps; Sun Audio, Atma

@willemj , somewhere, you posted you could not hear hiss coming from your amplifier ( through the loudspeakers ), and that hiss was not normal. However, your young daughter heard the hiss. Need I say more.

How old are you?

You made me curious, of course, so I did a quick online test (not the equivalent of a more serious test, of course): I could easily hear 13 kHz, which is apparently pretty good for a male in his early sixties, although it reminds you of your physical decline. It does put the audiophile golden ear into perspective, of course.
When I did that blind comparative listening test with Peter Walker's setup I was some 25 years old.

Willemj, you raise good points. And by the way I am sure you know much more about audio than I do, so I will not be making many technical arguments here. A couple of points/questions:

1. As you suggested may be the case, I think you and I have different objectives. I want a system that most effectively tricks my brain into thinking I am listening to a real musical performance, regardless of what distortions or equalizations or trickery is employed. Separately, I don't seek neutrality to a recording because so many recordings are not representative of the original event. I don't want to hear recording flaws perfectly,fine in all their  glory. These topics, though,  have sprouted arguments for decades so probably best we don't chase them here, eh?

2. Maybe this question is a less well-worn road, and I ask this because I am interested in the answer,  not because I am baiting or trying to set you up in any way for a punch line :) ... Couldn't two amps of differing architectures but that each measure flat and neutral (however you measure that), playing music in exactly the same system, sound different? I have read a number of times that playing a dynamic music signal is an entirely different game than is playing test signals. Test signal performance may not be entirely predictive of what happens with a dynamic signal. Is this true? And further, could not the interactions with other components cause the otherwise "measured-equal" amps to sound different because they may operate differently into the real-world speaker load, with real music?

@willemj "There have also been subjective evaluations in the shape of blind tests to see if under controled conditions panels of experienced listeners can distinguish properly designed amplifiers from each other (I participated in one). The answer was that these panels could not distinguish them."

About 10 years ago, I shared a room at CES with a most well-respected and liked (including by me) person in the high-end audio business. If I actually revealed him here some would be floored. One thing I’m not crazy about is he likes to go around challenging people in the most (in my opinion) classless of ways by putting a ridiculous amount of $$$ out there if a person can pass a test he runs to distinguish A versus B. I told him lets not get into the conversation because I don’t play such games, especially with friends or people I like, I just don’t have that kind of ego. Bottom line, the faithful production of music in the home is something I love, not something akin to a male parts measuring contest, though so many make it into that. Anyway, to his absolute astonishment, I (easily!) scored 100%.  He dejectedly / puzzledly / worriedly wondered what he needed to go back to the drawing board to tweak