Atma-Sphere Class D… Amazing

Real KNOWLEDGE in audio.......is how something sounds

How something "sounds" is subjective, an opinion, not a fact, and thus not "real knowledge", which is something that has meaning beyond one's self.

You can't seem to get beyond the simple truth that your experienced subjective reality and beliefs are nothing but opinions and are no more valid than anyone else's. The guru complex.

I have had the GAN 400 and Nova 500 within my system. As well as others I don’t recal the model numbers. I believe they are low feedback not zero. Just remember this advice is coming from someone who believes Nelson Pass, Dave Hafler, Ralph Karsten, Frank Van Alstine, Keith Johnson, Bob Carver, Dieter Burmester, John Curl, David Berning, Saul Marantz and others should be siliconing and wire tying their amps together. And none really have a clue how to make a great amp. And all could learn a lot from him. So you should take what he says with a grain of salt. On top of that… He’s never had a product brought to market. If he had and had implemented his design features of Wood, Silicone and wire ties to hold his amps together. He’d be a world class Audio Engineer. Or at the very least making millions  updating and modifying Pass Labs XA250.8’s. As they aren’t glued together and held together with wire ties. And the people that can afford a cobbled together subpar Pass XA250.8 would be on waiting lists for him to tweak their amps. For me I’ll stick with Nelson, Saul, Ralph for professionally designed and built equipment. I’ll put money on that he can’t make an Atma-Sphere amp sound better. He should buy a set. Tweak them. And Ill bring mine for and AB test to his house, apartment, or trailer park that he lives in. I’d like to see him put his money where his mouth is. 

Concentrating just on GaN amps, the observations made for Atmosphere GaN monos may well be applied to a number of other GaN amps. I honestly can see no proof of superiority except that I read a number of subjective expressions. I readily believe that Atmosphere d amps sound wonderful, and would really like to know more on how much better are they than the other GaN amps. This thread, so far, didn’t help me in this. Too many subjective points of view.

How do you define "superiority"? Of course all you have read here are subjective opinions because the vast majority of people here either believe their opinion actually has relevance to those besides themselves or they believe the opinions of others have relevance to themselves. As I have said repeatedly, the only possible way to actually compare amplifiers in a way that can be logically and rationally valid is by looking at the specs. The specs won't tell you if you will like the sound, but they do provide useful data about the performance, design, and can give hints about the sound. As such, they are a good starting point. Any discussion outside of the measured performance is simply subjective opinion and a waste of one's time when it comes to how you will feel about the sound.

The only way to make any judgments of how you will judge the sound of an amp (or any other audio component) in your system, in your room, is to experience it first hand. The opinions of others, regardless of their experience, are not guaranteed to be yours no matter how hard they try to convince you that they "know" some mystical "truth" because they have been "listening to wire" for 40 years.

@ricevs "You need a source that has some kind of digital volume control at 32 bits or more so you won’t mess up the sound."

Would Roon quality? Can you give us some examples. Thanks.

I’ll put money on that he can’t make an Atma-Sphere amp sound better

There is no "better", only different, when it comes to subjective value judgments. No doubt the tweak guru could place Ralph's GaN amp on a pile of horse manure and someone would say it sounds "better" sitting on horse manure than it does sitting on cow manure. But that "better" is only true for that listener and has no meaning to others. Opinions based on subjective perceptions are not facts! Your opinion about how amps sound is no more valid than the tweak guru's opinion to others- they all are meaningless outside a population of one. Of course, you aren't trying to profit off of your opinions and aren't claiming to possess "universal" knowledge...