[timeout59]

Johnnyprod this is for you since you said let you know what I think. The short of it is you can't go wrong with the 300B-v with your speakers, in my opinion. Since we have essentially the same speakers I'm comfortable saying that. Besides sounding great, other benefits for me, it's small and easy to move in and out of the system, and doesn't have as many tubes to heat the room too much in summer.

Only cavaet might be the type of music we listen to. I listen almost exclusively to small group jazz, acoustic instruments played into recording microphones. Big band jazz also and lots of female vocal. I don't want to come across as snobbish, I like rock but just don't listen to it much in my system.

This is getting long so here's the point. I'm hearing an improvement in that certain things have a purity and presence, a sort of clarity to the sound. Where I hear it most is ride cymbals, hi-hat, snare drum, the upper keys of a piano, vibraphone. Female vocals are more "in the room."

This is compared to my Don Sachs Valhalla integrated which I have been so happy with since January 2021. That amp improved things so much and it seems a perfect match with my Spatial Audio X3 speakers. Deep wide sound stage, solid images, very real sounding. Also the Valhalla does a lot of what I said above. The 300B-v does it all but more of the clarity in the the things I said above.

It's hard to describe these things and that's the best I can do, and I'm pretty old at 71 so might be a person with better hearing would hear it differently.

The bass with the 300B-v might not be quite as tight, a little looser sounding than the other amp. Not sure why that would be since the bass drivers are powered by the plate amps in the speakers. Maybe because the speakers use speaker level inputs to drive the bass amps, the character of the main amp comes through, which is preferable way to do it I think. However I like the bass with the 300B-v despite this.

I'm going to connect the other amp up now and see if I feel the same way about everything.