Okay, bear with me just a moment.

I've given this some thought (ah the benefit of a life without drama that some might find boring!) and I think the last few years have been a new period in Steve's design, and that has led to Zen-esque paces forward in the Decware laboratories. The common focus of these developments seem to have been in the areas of speed and density.

I sense an Einstein connection. Speed (energy) times Density (mass) equals. . . . Well it's been equalling some mind-blowing sound.

Steve may well be traveling into the final frontier of audio engineering. . . .

I guess the real question may be: what else went on at headquarters when the UFO stole the amp?

I agree - Steve's amps were always very "honest" representing the music very well, and I feel his time with Reel to Reel master recordings has helped him better understand what density *is*.  Once you've heard these master tapes, on any Decware amp, you get an appreciation for how much information there is on tape that our more common media formats just don't reproduce. So knowing what that sound is like, when you get something like that in an amp design, your ear catches it and you push that envelop further to see how much density you can get out. Steve's OTL has always been the King of Density to me, and I too feel the 25th Anniversary mods reveal more of that.

As for speed - I've always felt timing was very important to music, and it's why analog formats like the LP have hung around. The record could be a little off/warped, your turntable a little slow or a little fast, but the inherent timing of the recorded instruments on the pico level will at least be consistent with itself. I think a slower amp can help smooth over timing issues (jitter) in the digital realm, and a faster amp helps reveal good timing, which makes for more realism, timbre, and better PRaT.

Sorry, that was a lot of stream of consciousness bla bla bla.

Ultimately, I think truly holographic, realistic sound needs both timing/speed and density. Which is why everyone should experience master tapes at some point; so they know what's possible and when their setup is on the right path towards it.

Oh yeah, I'm constantly amazed at what we have these days. When I first met Steve 20 years ago, I had no idea I'd be listening to the same amp, rebuilt, on something as special as the DirectStream DAC, and being able to swap in various speakers so easily.

Speaking of the DS, and thinking about timing - Ted's work on Jitter, making sure to get chips accurate to 6 picoseconds, and the way DSD samples in general, all lend towards getting that timing closer and closer to analog.

Someday we'll have a digital system that samples fast enough and with enough bandwidth to be as dense and timing accurate as master tapes. Unfortunately I'm not sure enough people realize this is the direction we need to go for there to be any serious R&D on it...the closest we have now is pushing the sampling rate of DSD to 8x. Hopefully we'll find this kind of technology/format in our lifetime.