Are there other, similar designer/builders, or does Steve Deckert’s shop exist in a vacuum?
I have pleasantly been listening through Decware amplification and speaker design for over a decade. The value at the time was fantastic.
These days, there is a two year waitlist from date of order, and the cost has increased with notoriety and success. Business is booming. All things being equal, Decware is not something that I would consider today for those reasons alone, and that would be my loss.
My question is, are there currently any affordable and readily-available, efficient analog circuits like Steve’s that fill in the niche that Decware inadvertently left behind in 2020?
One of the reasons that Decware is so popular is they make high quality stuff that are not priced ridiculously. A similar amp from some exotic builder or high end brand is probably going to cost more.
Having said that, you can get Japanese or Chinese kits that you can build or get someone to build for a lot less and you can even get prebuilt units if you look hard enough.
Taobao and Alibaba is a good place to start if you are on a budget.