Again thank you to everybody who have taken time to reply.
I enjoy reading everybody’s opinions it’s all very interesting.
To clarify my experience some more. (Warning I may use some buzz words without fully understanding their meaning and of course this is only my opinion and shouldn’t influence anybody else’s potential purchase) I’m not sure if it’s the defects in the tracks themselves that this amp is picking up but instead the way that it puts them across, in my setup and in my environment. As mentioned before I love so much about this amp, it’s extremely insightful and seems to separate the music beautifully, highlighting so much detail that wasn’t present to me before. I’m really not surprised this amp has such a large fan base.
But, I personally I like to listen to music with a good level of volume especially with this amount of detail on offer to listen to. I find that this amp (in my system and in my environment) is perhaps too forthright, it has almost too much verve and punchiness, to me, at volume, the music becomes almost shouty to the point where I have to turn it down to a lot lower level and as mentioned before the softer tracks are less relaxing and therefore mildly tiring.
Of course the big caveat is that I have been previously used to listening to a lesser amp perhaps and that it may just be that this listening experience is just different.
The bottom line is that I would really like to have much of this “sound” in my life, if only I could calm it down a bit. I am interested to read about the potential for things becoming perhaps more neutral the further up the tree you climb, I’m not averse to going down the pre/power route if this is the way for me to achieve my HiFi nirvana, although I might have to look at the second hand market.
As mentioned before I’m happy to go for a better streamer, or Dac, or both, or new speakers (I read on a different thread that the spendor d7’s might be a good match for what I’m trying to achieve.
I take on board the suggestions of demoing lots of different amps but this will take time. Anything I can learn from you guys would perhaps speed this process up.
Currently though I’m just not sure which way to go, tomorrow morning I’m faced with having to hand this beautiful amp back without a plan and with an amp shaped hole in my life.