The Best Solidstate Amps, The Most Respected Solidstate Amplifiers

We’ve been wondering about just who would be on a list of the top contenders for the Champion of the World in several categories of high-end audio equipment.

Contenders are either the products we know to be great and hearing them several times actually *sound* great, those that we suspect to be great, and those that are generally considered to be great.

Note that some of this has to do with fashion, and some has to do with popularity, and some to do with actual performance.

To put it simply, if you won the lottery today – what would you want to audition tomorrow?

Solid-state Amplifiers:

[This is such a hard category. There is such a lack of satisfaction with SS amps amongst audiophiles it causes a new heir-apparent to be nominated approximately every 6 months. The previous was Soulution. Before that it was Vitus. Before that it was Gryphon. Before that was Boulder. Now it is Technical Brain? D’Agostino? ]

MBL (sound)

Ayre (sound)

Nagra MSA (sound?)

FM Acoustics (rep)

Soulution (rep)

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Others? Anybody? Remember they have to be recognized as a tip top performer by at least some percentage of audiophiles.

There are a TON of solid-state amplifiers out there. But do people really like any of them? Or is it just reviewer hype?.

If you want to nominate others, please leave a comment!