Anybody else waiting for GaN and Purify to have a baby?

+1.

have ears that to some degree have been conditioned to tube-borne 2nd order harmonic distortion, which gives a special sense of warmth, fleshiness and body to the music... super clean solid state, even the really top stuff that is not hampered by odd order harmonic and im distortion (heard as hardness, harshness and stridency)

Been down that path with massive Amprex 805 SET monoblocks, and yes it was very novel for a couple of years, but music seem to loose itself of sense, immediacy, slam, and startle factor.
To me nothing beats out Linear SS Pure Class-A to at least >50w then you have your "warmth" and "fleshiness" but also with hyper detail and sense, immediacy, slam, and startle factor.
The rest can be A/B out to 200w.
Like a Gryphon Antillion switched to 50w-A or even better 100w-A Class-A mode, (10w-A was a little bit artificial but good for non serious listening dinner music), mind you this is on Wilson Alexia’s

Cheers George

Alberto PURPOSEFULLY used 400kHz in the first version because he noticed no improvement in sq beyond that. His amps were considered awesome with that frequency. The newer tubes now use 800kHz, purportedly offering increased resolution across the frequency board.By the way, the use of these frequencies certainly disproves George’s position of go 1.5MHz or don’t go at all.

As you increase the switching frequency you run into an issue with deadtime. I'm not going to go into what's actually going on here but I'll just say that the output filter plays an enormous role in the switching. So you may find that if you increase the switching frequency you may have more need for deadtime, not less! If you increase the filter frequency you get on a different part of its discharge curve and this will have a direct effect on the deadtime required. But the overarching issue is controlling noise and ringing as you increase the switching frequency!


@georgehifi  You might consider that because you heard one particular tube amplifier, that does not mean you've heard them all! I'm not a particular fan of SETs either, although I'm very aware of some of their strengths. I think their weaknesses outweigh their strengths and like you, I want more detail and impact than they seem capable.

reporting back on the mini gan 5

top-line -- for 750 bucks it is very very good... but not close (and with very different voicing) to the agd audions in overall performance, i would say perhaps 60-70% of the way there to the really superb agd’s

i have not yet compared to the full bevy of ss and tube amps i have on hand, but so far i have let the mini 5 run in for 48 hours and listened to it for 3 days exclusively, enjoyed it a lot, then i made a swap, changing in the agd audions, then went back and forth a few times to confirm what i was hearing

(reminder - source is chord hugo tt2 w m scaler in amp mode, straight into the amps’ xlr inputs, driving spendor sp100r2 speakers, i know 9 grand worth of dac front end, into 10 grand plus speakers, but this allows for a clear comparison/revelation of sonic deltas) - the spendors are not a difficult load but are very revealing throughout the range - i do not have ’torture test speakers’ needing gobs of current into low impedance at troubling phase angles... on purpose, i might add :)

the mini 5 is a superbly clear amp, you can hear the speed, the openness, ultra low distortion, the excellent image it throws, wide and fairly deep, locates instruments quite well, nice timbral purity and excellent bass control - the treble is especially clean and impressive, it is clean without stridency - no typical class ab type of hardness, minimal grain here, very impressive in this regard - it is also very dynamic, the black background allow notes to hang in the air, and leading edges are exceptionally clean and expansion of loudness in music happens effortlessly

the build quality is what i would call good, well conceived budget gear... solid case, not too resonant, decent feet, plugs and binding posts are what you would expect at this price level, solid choices made here... on/off button feels fine, is positive -- the only thing that feels notably ’cheapie’ is the plastic jumper plugs on the back that allow for choice of input gain (a nice feature!)... they kinda stick out some from the back panel and can be broken or hit if not careful

now... swap in the agd’s...

immediately you get a sense of a different voicing and ’a tier above’ kind of sound... the agds are clear, but also notably rich and ’full fat’ while the mini 5 is leaner -- more a tasty ’ice-milk’ than luscious haagen daz through the midrange and midbass... one hears the agd’s are ’luxurious’ where the mini is crisp, cheerful and clear with more prominent, forward (but very clean) lower treble ...thus a more ’solid state’ presentation from the mini 5 whereas the agd’s are quite tube-like (in the best possible way) from highs through mid bass - the agd’s have more of a sense of relaxedness/ease, effortlessness, richness to the music - both are built on a very solid tuneful powerful (when called for) bass foundation... in terms of imaging, the agd’s have a magic where the music is saturated in tone but the image is deep and location and specificity is also superb... once again, it is a ’no tradeoffs’ kind of sound - you get everything that tubes give (sweetness, density/body, holography, tonal truth) but with effortless speed, and inner light and deep powerful ’no excuses’, ’best of solid state’ quality of bass

another way to describe the mini 5 is it is a fairly miraculous 750 dollar amp with a sound that would qualify as outstanding mid-to-upper middle tier solid state (think mccormack dna or belles class ab) type of sound, sibilance very well controlled, excellent spatial capabilities (more wide than deep), transparent nuanced, if a slightly lean midrange, and great bass

whereas the agd’s are a true ’highest order’, you-can-have-everything-you-hoped-for kind of amp - what so many of us has sought and pursued, best of tubes and solid state, at the same time, nothing sacrificed (except 7500 bucks hahaha)

what i will do now is compare the mini 5 to some others such as the nuprime ida-8, w4s st series ice power amp, belles sa-30 class a, arc 100.2 (old stalwart and fave)...