A minimal structure high-performance voltage follower / amplifier

It is well known that when a transistor is set up such that the Vce, Ic and power dissipation do not change, it does (almost) not distort. On the other hand, you still want to use the transistor to amplify voltage or current. Jacques Exbrayat decided to solve that apparent conflict, and came up with a minimal structure small/mid power voltage follower without global negative feedback and with high objective performance. The result is not very simple, but the signal path is, and the performance is stellar.