There is nothing wrong with an integrated amplifier if properly designed and executed. You save money on power cords and interconnects, you save some space too. In this case you don’t save that much of space and the Humboldt doesn’t come cheap, but it is an awesome sounding power house!
HUMBOLDT is the namesake of famed polymath, geographer, naturalist and explorer Alexander v. Humboldt who resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture.
Audionet has two line of products, the one for normal people and the Ultimate one for those with no money issues whatsoever. Guess from which one comes this 61Kgr integrated? The Humboldt was cooking for a year now but it finally made a proper debut in the Munich 2019 show, paired with Dynaudio’s latest and superbly engineered Confidence 50 speakers and I could stop here by saying this was one of the best systems of the entire show, even within the cost no object category. That is a 42.000euro amplifier driving a $27.000 pair of speakers and it easily competes for affordable best of show system.
The Humboldt packs 250W @8Ohms and some 400.000μF of filtering capacitance, drove the heck out of the Dynaudios while keeping the presentation fluid and detailed at the same time. Bass slam? check! Soundstage wide and deep? check! The best looking integrated of the show? Please, this amp was designed by none other than Hartmut Esslinger, of Apple II and Macintosh fame. I am completely sold on the looks and the sound of Audionet’s top of the line electronics.
Did you seriously just refer to a system consisting of a €35,000 amplifier and $40,000 speakers “affordable”? Are you really that out of touch with 99.9% of the humans on planet Earth? I’m not sure whether I envy you or feel sorry for you.
Affordable “best of show system” to be exact. It’s all relative.