Digital certainly has potential benefits (reduced concerns about cooling and greater efficiency both mean direct manufacturing savings in heat sinks and power supplies). The Axiom amp is a good example - it has gotten very good reviews, but at what cost? As far as features are concerned, it's a flattened 7700 (balanced inputs and 7x200W all channels driven) for nearly $4000. I know how much current my system is drawing when it's cranked up - replacing $2000 work of solid state amps with $4000 worth of digital amps will save me some equipment space and will provide a utility bill payback measured in decades. In fact, my best guess is that I'd be lucky (based on my system usage and current draw) to save $1.80 a month in utility costs. Round that to an even $2.00 (may save a bit more in cooling in the summer, lose a bit of free heating in winter), and that's an 83.3 year payback, assuming I sold my existing amps for their list prices (which wouldn't happen, since my newest amp is approaching two years old). If there was an audible benefit that warranted an extra $2000 investment or I had a situation where I was really constrained on space and heat gain, I could happily take that 80- to 100-year payback (or as much of it as I live to see) as a bonus from using an amp like this. In the absence of those, I'm content to stay with what I've got.

This breed of amps will most certainly become a staple of receiver amp sections - it's already that way for some, as Panasonic's been using digital amps in their receivers for some time now - and, who knows, it may allow receivers to pack better amp sections as the technology matures and becomes more affordable, since the two benefits mentioned earlier are going to pay the biggest dividends in the crowded real estate inside a receiver chassis. I agree with Altec, though, that it will be slower to gain significant adoption in separate power amps. A company like Outlaw will likely be well served to stick to good quality, well built, good sounding solid state hardware until an amp like the A1400-8 can be built for the same price or less than class A/B and be a match for those amps sonically. From what I've seen in the marketplace, we're not there yet.