Mark,
I would have to agree with JohnK here.
I just demoed a Parasound Halo, an Anthem MCA20 and my Onkyo DS797 together over the past 2 weeks.
There were no golden lights, insights from angels, rainbow colours or dogs playing poker. My Axioms were still bright. The bass was still tight.
All 3 amp sections sounded excellent and identical (using an A/B listening setup, 2 speakers running in mono each powered by a different amp) with only the Onkyo lagging a bit in its power output to preamp volume setting.
e.g using the Onkyo as a preamp, it had to maintain a volume of 83 on the scale of 0-100 to hit a 98dB peak over 3 test tones whereas the Parasound Halo A23 for example would do the same at 73 on the Onkyo volume knob.
By far a deciding factor on which amp was better came down to aesthetics and features for price.
On another note, the forgotten component, one's listening environment, makes a HUGE impact on sound. Just this week i brought my Axioms over to a friend's basement. He has yet to purchase any speakers of quality so we did a trial run in his movie viewing/listening room with my equipment.
His room is far more furnished than my own with a thicker rug, no drop ceiling and more inside walls with a proper subfloor (approx. 16x18 room). My own basement (approx. 12x15) has 3 concrete walls and a concrete floor, lightly finished with drywall and a thin carpet.
The difference in sound from the Axioms in my basement to his was just superb. The Axioms were no longer bright whatsoever. The soundstage was seamless and quite easy to setup (no fussy tweaking of the speaker angles). His basement had more room to move the M60s further apart and to sit a couple of more feet back.The bass from the EP350 no longer "rattled" but rather "rumbled" the room far more smoothly than in my own place. This was one area in which i was finally satisfied with the EP350 performance for the price that we paid.
I had never been 100% pleased with the sound of our Axioms in our own listening room (referring only to music, not HT) but i suspected that a couple of tweaks would be needed to the design our listening room after moving to a new house sometime in the near future.
Those tweaks are ALL about the room!!
