Powerful but musical. Very bood bass, but very integrated with the middle and high frequencies, so the music as a whole is clear but with a very deed soundstage.
Solid design.
Sweet and very realistic human voice reproduction.
Excel and shine with jazz,classical (especially string instruments like violins, cello, etc), accoustic and new age.
Solid reproduction with other kind of music.
As Electrocompaniet says "If music really matters" this is your amp.
XLR capability (fully balanced).
Home theater input makes easy to integrate into a HT envinronment.

None.
Not an amp for listening heavy metal (it would be a waste).

I´ve been an Electrocompaniet user for several years. I also own a AW60 power amplifier. I bought the integrated ECI-5 to get advantage of the pre-amplifier, but also for its power (120 W at 8ohms and 80A Peak current).
The ECI-5 is a truly high end piece of equipment. Impecable buit, solid and carefully designed. The sound is amazing and can compete with anything in the market in the 2000-5000 USD range with no problem. It excels in jazz, classical, accoustic, neg age music, but also very good with any other kind of music.

Used with transparent kind of speakers (B&W, Castle, Tannoy, etc) it gives a highly musical performance. But with more sweet speakers like Sonus Faber it really shines, giving its owner a truly envolving sound difficult to find at any price.

Similar Products Used:

EC AW 60
Meridian amplifiers
Rotel (varios models)