Odyssey Stratus.........

[dvjorge]

Guys,

I don't know anything about Odyssey but one thing is really impressing me. The Odyssey Stratus has 128 review in this forum with 4.95 starts. Awesome !!!!! There are only a few with this rate. Also, reading some of reviews, I found that most people who own it, also own MF,Linn, Rotel, Krell, PS, Audio Reserch, Classe, Arcam, B&W, Avalon, Dynaudio, Meridian, Cary,etc.
So, it is a good idea to try with it.

[topspeed]

Guys,

I don't know anything about Odyssey but one thing is really impressing me. The Odyssey Stratus has 128 review in this forum with 4.95 starts. Awesome !!!!! There are only a few with this rate. Also, reading some of reviews, I found that most people who own it, also own MF,Linn, Rotel, Krell, PS, Audio Reserch, Classe, Arcam, B&W, Avalon, Dynaudio, Meridian, Cary,etc.
So, it is a good idea to try with it.

Read my review. It's about as fair and unbiased as I could make it (blind, level matched, and more than one opinion, including the Stratos' owner).
http://www.audioreview.com/Amplifier...7_1583crx.aspx
If the link doesn't take you to it, the review is a couple of pages in dated October 2003.

That said, don't believe everything you read in the reviews section.

First and foremost, most of the reviews are going to be by the product owner and therefore heavily biased. Seriously, do you know many people that are going to plunk down over $1K and then tell the world they made a mistake? Yeah, me neither.

Secondly, I've found the review section of AR to be Klaus' personal playground. After I wrote my review (which you'll note has the highest approval rating...by a fair margin) I was contacted by Klaus and lambasted for my appraisal of his baby. He informed me that he was not going to stand for it and less than 12 hours later my review was pulled! Needless to say, I was a tad miffed. After directly questioning AR's ethics and receiving some support from a few of the guys here, they reinstated my review a few days later. Reviews submitted directly after this incident address items that Klaus and I had specifically debated leading me to conclude that shills had put them there. I'm not guessing on this, I'm absolutely positive. There's no other way they would have addressed these issues otherwise.

Finally, I was recently PM'd by a person at avsforum.com regarding his Khartago; a smaller, less powerful Stratos. He wasn't nearly as impressed as he thought he would be and Klaus' magical customer service that everyone raves about disappears as soon as you want to utilize the money back guarantee. Calls aren't returned and Klaus, being the superior salesman that he is (I'm not kidding btw, he's a helluva salesperson) kept trying to talk him into keeping it or upgrading to the Stratos! Huh? Isn't that like asking someone who doesn't like a 2 door Focus to trade it in for the 4 door?

HOWEVER...
After all that ranting I still have to give the amp it's due. It is a very good $1K amp and for the type of sound you're looking for, it's perfect. It is not smooth, romantic, or tube-like in any way, and that seems to be how you like it. There are some truly idiotic "idiosyncrasies" that Klaus tries to use to explain away deficiencies, such as a (get this) 3 week warm-up period for optimum sound. 3 weeks?!? This is after a recommended burn-in period of oh...400 hrs! Yeah...right. To my ears, the Stratos is not the giant killer that the reviews make it out to be but you do get your money's worth. There are certainly worse amps. However, more money will buy you better sound.

FWIW, the owner of the Stratos replaced his Odyssey's with a more expensive C-J not long after our comparo.

Hope this helps.