I value both fact and opinion.

How you personally choose to accept opinion and what you end up doing with that is up to you. It's okay to disagree.

Without railroading the conversation any further which it ends here between us, I heard minor nuances between amps. What I heard is not backed by any factual data or rigorous testing criteria and was never intended to. Just a dude on reddit casually commenting on a few amps and reflecting upon what was heard.

Since I had the Liquid Spark, the 788 AND for the sake of being able to contribute and form an opinion that isn't 100% spewing out of my ass by going off memory or looking at somebodies review I made an effort to physically sample the amps and it just so happens that I had a shared experience as the OP. How I compared the amps is about as simple as you can get it which in short is hooking the two amps up to a line switcher to the same DAC, do your best to keep to the same volume level and let it rip on a few songs and then switch to the next amp, sometimes at different intervals. This isn't ASR levels of conclusions or findings but the simple mans way of comparing something as you'll get on reddit.

As for the 'house sound' topic pertaining to the review piece linked, I said this seems 'plausible' based on my own time spent with the Liquid Spark and going through these simple little exercises. Whether it's nonsensical or not, I don't really care as there is no value in me taking a deep dive into a budget amp to find out why or what. I'm not curious and if you say that what I'm hearing is a placebo, then so be it, I'll continue enjoying my placebo effect.