Tubes Asylum: OK, here goes.... by vinylphile

...I'm not one for reviews and all the typical audiophile jargon, but I can say that on initial listening I far prefer the Cary V12R. Here are the differences I have noticed thus far:

Tone - the biggest difference...I find the Cary presentation to be more consistent with a "tube sound" - i.e. warm, full, fleshed out but without sounding the least bit "rolled off" at either extreme. More depth to the sound and soundstage.

Power - the Rogues take the cake here - having more objective as well as subjective power. I pretty much always ran them in triode mode with my Maggie 1.6's and they never ran out of juice. When I switched to Ultralinear for more dynamic or bass-heavy music the difference in dB and bass response was minimal in my set-up. However, the Cary seems to run out of juice with bass-heavy music in triode so I sometimes end up flipping to UL for this type of music.

Imaging - while the Rogues may have been a touch more "pinpoint" in the solid-state sense of the word, the Cary is more 3-dimensional with an added palpability to the presentation - a sound that I prefer.

In any event, these two comparably-priced amps present extremely different sounds - very interesting. I suppose if you need the power and enjoy deep bass and pinpoint imaging the Rogue may be for you. However, I'm enjoying the warmth, timbre and inner detail that I find to be the strengths of the Cary. Having recently moved to a Cary preamp as well, I am completely smitten with the Cary sound - especially in my system and room. Now listening to Angela Hewitt playing Chopin nocturnes on Hyperion SACD and the sound is absolutely breathtaking...

So, there you go....a little mini-review writtin by a non-reviewer! Hope it helps!