...I think my ears need cleaning out. Ok, here's the story. I was reading one of those other hifi sites when I started noticing a bit of interest around the T-Amp and it's brethren. Some people were calling it a giant-killer, saying it would beat £k's worth of amplification. Now, I've got a very good BS detector, and I will admit that it was flashing red at this point. But I was curious. So I went on fleabay and found that very (very) similar amps (that use the same TA2024 amp chip) are available from HK/China for about £25 delivered, including UK power supply - no shaving adapters here. Gotta be worth a punt thought I. A few clicks later, and £26 poorer, I was patiently waiting for my SMSL T-Amp to arrive. About ten days later it did so, with a postage mark from China. Not bad, all things considered. So what does it sound like? For the first couple of hours, painful. Sharp and harsh. I then went to bed and left it playing quietly overnight and came back to it in the morning. What a difference. Gone were the sharp highs, replaced by a very detailed, well separated sound. Instruments sound like instruments (acoustic timbre especially), timing is excellent, and little details that I hadn't noticed before are coming to the fore. There's also a good punch to the sound - something that none of my previous integrateds (RA820 included) have been able to match. Now, there is a catch. The rated output of these little devices (and they are little - about the same size as a pack of 20 superkings) is pretty low. They say 25w. No it isn't. At 23W into 4 ohms it's producing 10% distortion - not pretty. This isn't a party animal or an amp that can successfully drive insensitive speakers. Or one for big rooms. But, keep within it's limits (9W into 8 ohms is 0.001% or something similarly daft), which in my room and with my speakers (2.75m x 3.75m and MS20i Pearls) is more than enough, and it sounds excellent. Am I selling my Naims? Not yet - that would be a huge step to take without a lot of comparisions and time to acclimatise to both amps. And I'd need some way of switching inputs and a phono stage. But the sound quality at moderate volumes suggests that if I needed the cash that the Naims could provide, I could happily live with the little £26 beastie. For a second room / kitchen etc, I think it's pretty much unbeatable given the cost. Maybe syringing would help... 
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