I think that if the headphone companies built better headphones, then amps that are wire-with-gain would sound better than the present situation where a synergy exists between a headphone and an inferior amp. Pipe dream? most probably. Until the headphone manufacturers use the best wire-with-gain amps we will continue having the problem that now exists. We really have no real idea what amps most companies use to voice and test their phones. It would be interesting to find out what Stax amp Stax used to test and develop the SR009, and what it would have been if they used the BHSE as their test rig.