27-Nov-2015, 08:43
Bob - as dilemmas go, that's quite a nice one to have! It think to answer your question, you need to decide yourself what your medium term hifi desires actually are. If you read this thread from the beginning you will find posts that explain the difference between the amps, and establish a basic hierarchy of sound quality, D200, 250, 400, 800. Or to be clear, there are good technical reasons why the D400 sounds better than the D250. Having said that, the cost to go to the D250 does look temptingly low. Very tempting indeed! Now, once you have your D250, you then of course have the option one day to go dual mono D800. Consider this, you are not paying that much now (relatively speaking) to make the jump to a D250. In time, the second hand cost of companion D250's will presumably keep falling. So with a bit of patience, you could go D250 now, and then D800 a little further down the road. The total cost of this might not be much more in total than the cost of the D400 option next year. However, if you really have no desire ever to get to a D800, then as I said earlier, the D400 is ahead of the D250 with respect to sound quality, so that might make this better option.
