Those words are so true...I also firmly believe, now, that the chances of experiencing “when you can’t shut it off” and “experience on command” is greatly increased when an Anniversary Modded ZTPRE is in the chain...with any DecWare Amp.
It just keeps gettin better. Work and sleep are certainly a necessity, but more important... a matter of opinion!
It was “one of those nights”
Best,
Scott

As I set here tonight listening to the SE84UFO2 /DNA2 combo I am simply amazed... it's been weeks now with this combo and I recently updated my ZTPRE with the Anniversary mods and the stock SE84UFO2 can easily communicate the improvements! I have to say I'm pretty pleased with that!  

In the ongoing struggle to realize what the hell is what and it's influence on the final sound you hear, for my entire 4' and above life, I have examined the the main players which are; room, speakers, amp, source.  We can put preamp and source into the same category as they are really hard to separate.  Since the room is typically 40% or more of the sound, lets remove that too.  This leaves the never-ending contemplation between the sound that the source brings to the table vs, the speaker, vs, the amplifier.  Which is more important?

The Zen answer is that none is more important.  All must be completely equal and perfectly balanced to achieve nirvana.  If one is actually better than the others it will upset that balance and nirvana can no longer happen.

Until you get to that level, what is the dominating force between the three... I would have to say, source. The source is the most important followed by the amplifier and then by the speakers. Now keep in mind that depending on the color of your bathroom tile, it wouldn't be hard to present an argument for the exact opposite which is; the Speaker are the most important, followed by the amplifier, followed by the source and. lastly the room.

An interesting reflection is that in the struggle to listen to "regular stellar Decware amplifiers" after being wrecked by the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifiers, I felt the need to do 25th Anniversary mods to everything which I did. This speeded things up and narrowed the gap between the Holy Grail 25th Anniversary amp and everything else.  

Now I set here listening to a stock SE84UFO2 which btw at some point in the journey I felt I couldn't listen to anymore after having my reference elevated so high...  Now here I set for two weeks enjoying the shit out of it having instead elevated the source which specifically in this case was the ZTPRE.  

So it really kinda proves that that the game is everything in front of the amplifier's input jack.  Interconnects, preamps, gain stages, sources...

The sound I am hearing right now as I write this is full on lucid.  You hear it and you think you can't believe it.  Now here's an interesting twist...

I have not heard the 25th Anniversary amp driven by the ZTPRE with Anniversary mods yet!  Oh God, here we go...  


Steve

OK, I'm just setting here reflecting... see what you thing of this:

In a perfect utopia (heaven) all source components would be exactly the same technology and quality and manufactured by the same entity.  There would be a standard issue source component to all listeners on the planet. The source component would be the combined efforts and genius of all the audiophile engineers on the planet. Basically all the minds on the planet that care about audio quality working together to forge a standard that is soo good it is no longer judged on a planetary basis but on a galactic basis. That way all we would then have to worry about is speaker and room and amplifiers.

Of course, the technology would have automatic fart-detection on a musical level in so much as it would be able to look at the dynamic range, the phase angle across frequencies, the compression, pitch accuracy, harmonic integrity, tone scale and palpability to easily detect BULLSHIT quality recordings and delete them. This would make it impossible for bullshit recordings to pollute our consciousness and enable those producing them to ascend to a higher level of musical genius where their spirit actually comes through instead of the electronics creating an artificial or shall we say wishful attempt at the same thing.

There is nothing more horrifying than listening to your very expensive high fidelity sound reproduction system sound like complete shit because it so so good it accurately reproduces whatever is on the recording good or bad!

I think that there is one more piece of this chain that is being overlooked.
The person listening to it, YOU!
I contend that music sounds better when you're feeling positive.
I also believe that listening to music puts you in a better mood, so it somewhat becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Good mood=better sound.

I’m not quite yet in the market for one, but Steve what USB stick DAC is impressing you!?