Hey, Guys and Gals and Robots, I'm new and I've never posted on things like these but I figured I'd give my two cents from my end of the industry...
If anyone cares, I am a 25 year AV specialty retailer veteran and I brought one of these amps into the shop based on the buzz 4-5 weeks before this review. And yes, I have been just an average lurker/avid reader till, I guess, now.
First off.. Decent looking product, okay in the hands (you know when you pick something special up) but I wasn't expecting much aesthetically based on the price. Connectors were good, especially for the price, functionality and the bridging seemed straightforward. That god-awful light though! Pay attention to the market people, it has to look good in a rack, hello.
The real surprise is when I hooked it up to a pair of LS50 Metas (8 ohms, but we all know they should be 4) and compare it to other amplifiers I had on hand, I always had to turn the Starke up higher than the others... Anthem MCA 5 Gen 2, Audio Control Avalon G4, and even a 1990s Citation 5.1 with 100 watts @ 8 Ohms. I did try other loads too like the Magnepan LRS and 1.7s, Sonus Faber Olympica Nova Vs, KEF R3s, even Premier 800F, so I don't wanna hear shit from anyone lol.
All had the same issue relatively... again, this was in real-world use, I was listening mostly because I care about the perceived performance and not what a published measurement says. You can hear real-world differences in the things that matter... background noise, sure we all know when something sounds really clean, and you bet your ass power is one of those things. So I took out a UMIK-1 and sure enough compared to the Citation (which was the real shocker) it was 9-11 dB down at the MLP, grabbed the SPL meter, just the same in general. Most average people wouldn't really notice 3 dB, but when something like this happens, it's broke PERIOD. I don't have time to run tests that a manufacturer should have done way back in prototyping. So I bridged it, yay! 3 more dB than it's already ****** power delivery, what a joke. Of course, I thought I must have done something wrong, I'm still an ape. Nope! I checked everything I could think of.
Then weeks later, on my favorite review site, was this same amp. YAY! I feel kind of vindicated so I gave that Rep an earful of my finding and Amir's measurements. He reached out to Starke for an answer or comment, whom I'm sure will read this, and their answer was... ASR methods, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sorry, we can give a refund??? And that's all she wrote folks. I have not done that yet BTW. But honestly, they can keep my money if they can produce factual unbiased paperwork on this unit. I'm getting sick of this "take my word" shit... back it up! A refund is a bow-out in my book. Feels like F'n kindergarten out there from my end sometimes folks, seriously. Don't get a "D" on your paper and try to defend it with whimsical explanations like my nephews. It wasn't a bad-sounding piece either. And let me be clear, all they had to do was meet the specifications they set for themselves and they would have been good like Amir said. I would have sold these for my big immersive system's surround speakers all day long.
Wow, this went way longer than I thought. If this Amp gets re-reviewed by Amir favorably, by the time you read this... my bad. I'm a working man and I just figured I'd give back to a community that has brought me so much help. Sorry if the writing and grammar suck, sorry-not-sorry for any language, and I might not even proofread this so there! Like I said I never do these things because I type way too many client emails to wanna do it at night too. I thought I just might actually have info that matters for once.
Thanks to the best community out there! Cheers!