We might contemplate that the
means whereby other amps pursue far more power and ever lower distortion could be sonically less advantageous than FirstWatt's credo of minimalism and simplicity, be that avoidance of negative feedback, elimination of degeneration or biasing up an output transistor with a single part where others might need far more. It's this very subject—why experienced listeners often prefer seemingly inferior-measuring amplifiers—which much disturbed the late Eduardo de Lima of Audiopax. He was convinced that it had to signify something far deeper than just the surface 'more distortion sounds better to them' claim and went on to develop his own theories around it. Luca Chiomenti of Riviera Audio Labs too developed them. If you revisit my
review of his AIC10 integrated, you'll see them spelled out. It makes for interesting reading because so much of it correlates with FirstWatt. As Nelson put it about the SIT-3, "while a lot of people love them, the SIT-1 and SIT-2 have the kind of distortion figures (deliberately) that the 'Measurements-are-God’ folks would shake their heads at. The SIT-3 has 1/5
th the distortion to represent a bit of a departure from the SIT-1 and SIT-2. You could say that the design has moved closer to the mainstream in amplifier offerings in almost every respect, including a lower price tag. This doesn't say very much about the subjective sonic performance but this circuit beat several other contenders (all of them a lot easier to make) in extensive listening. The SIT-3 has an organic quality that breathes more depth and life into the music, stopping short of cartoon. This is one of those all-night, year-after-year pieces." For hard specs, there's 18/30wpc into 8/4Ω max power, a damping factor of 30 and bandwidth of 10Hz-50kHz -3dB.