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As Steve has said before (who like me is also someone from a 'Naim/flat-earth background'), the type of valve gear him and I use now exhibits all the renowned traits of a good Naim system (pace, rhythm and timing, speed, and 'bass drive'), but with all the things that, for us, Naim gear does less well (tonal colour/richness, texture, image height and depth, etc), so we've now got the best of both worlds... It's essentially valves for discerning 'Naimees'!
This is probably a rather controversial statement, but a good Naim/'flat-earth' system actually has quite a lot in common with the type of valve equipment we use now and champion on AoS, in terms of how effectively the musical message (and the emotive element therein) is conveyed, which is something I think good Naim/'flat-earth' systems do very well. They can be a little rough around the edges (one has to prioritise certain aspects of presentation and thus make compromises when voicing equipment - all manufacturers do), but a good Naim system, in my experience, can be very musically addictive.
Steve and I weren't going to just abandon, all of a sudden, the principles we've adopted and believed in for years! Quite simply, the valve equipment we use now gave us more of what we always loved about the musical presentation of a top-flight, (properly set-up) Naim/'flat-earth' system, so in that sense, we haven't abandoned our 'FE' principles, far from it - and probably never will.... These principles are at the core of what AoS stands for in a hi-fi sense.
Hopefully that should clarify things a little. It's the correlation between what 'flat-earth' traditionally meant