Review on Yamaha A-S301BL Integrated Stereo Amplifier - Enhanced Natural Sound | Black by Brandon Grzankowski

I bought the AS-S501SL 18 months ago. I wasn't impressed with the sound and found listening to the Yamaha was a chore. The front was a NAD CD player and a Schitt Modi II DAC. The speakers were modified from Large Advents which I converted to two way with a horn operating at frequencies above 1kHz or so. Not liking the amp, he left the living room and went into the bedroom. An old NAD C 315BEE took its place and everything sounded fine with it. I've always liked NAD: it's bulletproof and has a slightly warm (what some people call "dark") tone. No goosebumps, but not bad. Then my Modi died. Both of my Schitt products rotted, although one died due to a thunderstorm, so. . . . After visiting my local audio showroom (Audio Systems in Austin) I came home with a NAD DAC which was an improvement. I returned to the store a month later and couldn't resist a pair of Sonus Faber Chameleon B's. Wow. What an improvement over Advent. Really nice. Oddly enough, I couldn't help but taste Yamaha's thin-sounding, dry, etched, annoying integrated amp. Holy smokers, what was I thinking? Yamaha made everything sound so much better. The humble NAD amp was replaced and sent to the bedroom. I mainly listen to classical music, but also Brazilian music, jazz and so-called indie rock. The amp handles everything with aplomb and the system sounds beautiful to my ears. I listened to the original Martin Logan CLS, Altec Lansing 605, my own Magnepan (owned and sold twice) and higher sensitivity speakers driven by SE amps (2A3, 300B, 6B4G Get*Set*Go). I've heard all sorts of decent devices. But I'm lazy and prefer what Yamaha does: it sounds good and does it effortlessly.