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First off audiophiles and cult members have more in common than either would care to admit.
The human ear does seem to enjoy the non linear distortion characteristics of a tube amplifier, but without good speakers, its all for naught.
I once had the experience of being in a living room designed for an audiophile. The entire house was built with the ultimate goal of reproducing sound properly. The walls and ceiling contained achingly high end soffit mounted speakers. The room's furniture was designed, chosen, and placed for its ability to diffuse or reflect sound to such a degree that the beyond massive granite coffee table was used to reflect certain frequencies from a certain speaker to recreate ambiance. The sound was so close to real it was spooky. The power amp being used to demonstrate this was from Radio Shack. No this was not the amp that would be ultimately used, it was brought onsite by one of the speaker providers. Pretty good evidence of the relative importance of speaker versus amplifier.
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