Anyone heard the marsh and odyssey amps?

I have an audiobuddy with the Marsh 400 amp (200w) driving Martin Logans and he LOVES it. He says the Marsh amps are absolute giant killers, with quality parts, superbly built and unfailingly musical. He is not easy to impress so I would audition them if you have the opportunity. Marsh is also coming out with 400w monoblocks in 2001, price-point around $3000. E-mail me if you would like my friend's addy.

I have a Marsh P2000 preamp and am amazed by the quality it offers. They have an excellent web site: www.marshsounddesign.com Also, I listened to the Odyssey system at the last Stereophile show- it was very impressive.

The Marsh A400S bottom line: aesthetics C+, warranty C+, sound quality straight A ! This amplifier is about what's inside it. And at that, primarily its "intellectual" content, namely the circuit design and smart parts choices. Mr Marsh must know a trick or two that other designers (i.e. at Levinson or Krell) do not know, because he has built an amp that outperforms the best solid state around in many areas, and all for $2,000. Mind you, I'm not sure that this is the amp for impossible speaker loads --in that case probably you should wait for the new Marsh monoblocks or go with a Krell or something like that. But if you have reasonable speakers and are looking for sonic purity that is not unrealistically clinical, nor blatantly euphonic, this is your amp ! The Marsh delivers in all aspects of the frequency range in a virtually seamless manner. The bass is very controlled but quite lively and best matched to speakers with good bass extension. The Marsh delivers a truly audiophile quality bass, in my opinion. The midrange is simply unbelievable; it is so transparent and pure that the Marsh will convey your source information to your speakers virtually without artifacts (read noise) or colorations, unlike most other amps, be they solid state or tubes. And the Marsh will deliver detail without artificially delineating the mids. In this area it is as good as the best amps around. The highs are well balanced, airy, realistic, never harsh (if your speaker has the right tweeter). All parts of the spectrum are in my opinion presented more realistically than in the Bryston 4B-ST, which is also an overachieving amp in its price class. Again, I would chose this amp over many Levinson's or Krells costing $8, $10 or $15K. Dynamics are outstanding, at both micro and macro levels. Orchestral nuances are presented realistically, as are bombastic highs. Rock or pop, given the right recording, will sound great (but if you feed it crap it will sound like crap). Usage is convenient: it does not weigh a ton (but is pretty substantial), has two pairs of binding posts for bi-wiring, and is fully balanced (also has RCA inputs). My take: this amp will drive 99% of the speakers out there better than 99% of the amps out there.

I have no experience with the Marsh, but the Odyssey (monoblocks) are the best sounding amps I've ever heard. They are built like battleships, but they sound like pure music. The price to performance ratio is hard to beat...at $1795 a pair for the mono's. I feel you would have to spend at least twice as much to get anywhere near this level of performance.

WOW, What a rave review. I wish my Marsh 400 was that good. I think the Marsh is a fine amp and a great bargin. I use mine as a back up amp and for times when I need the power. I agree with many of the things that J_c stated. I do think another point of view is needed. If you have 8 to 15 grand to spend on an amp you can do MUCH better. As I said, I think this is a fine amp and can compete against amps in the 5k range. My tube stuff slautghers this amp.