Class D Amplification Announcement

@lloydc Have you heard any of the newer GaN- or Purify-based amps?  They’re not your father’s Class D anymore. 

there is no top sparkle, midrange has never had lively crunch as A or AB no matter how many times you sell your selves they are so awesome, better than class A or AB,                ................Nobody says it's better than A- A/B...

Really? We've been making class A amplifiers for 49 years. While I am certainly not talking about all class D amplifiers, we feel that our class D amps sound better than our class A amps in that they are just as smooth in the mids and highs but exhibit greater detail in the rear of the soundstage (owing to lower distortion). FWIW our class A amps (which are triode OTLs) have been getting nice reviews and awards in the high end press for decades now.

If you have not heard Purifi super tweaked, GaN super tweaked, etc.....you have not heard what class D can do.  Have you heard AGD?  Have you heard the new Merrill MX amp just shown at a show?  Have you heard the Atmasphere monos?  Have you heard VTV with latest Purifi and discrete buffer on input?  Have you heard the Ultra stereo from Orchard?  Or the now gone big Cherrys?....or the Apollon amps?  Have you?  What is possible RIGHT NOW is not what was a few years ago.  It would be good to mention what class D you heard and when you heard it for reference.  Class D is changing all the time and getting better and better.  We shall see if Mytek can finally bring out their GaN based amps soon.....they said recently the mono blocks would start shipping in sept......of course, they were suppose to ship last summer.  Their modded Pascal based amps are pretty darn good so these new much more expensive GaN based amps have to be much better......or they won't sell.  I wish you a happy class d day.

soix, thank you for the evenhanded response.

The problem with comparisons to other gear as the basis for a review is twofold.

First, to take that approach assumes that everyone, or even most, interested in the piece of gear being reviewed has heard all the other competing gear which are “what most would consider to be head on competitors/alternatives”. Big assumption; and as we all know the “opinions” of many are often based on reviews and word of mouth, not actual first hand experience. Not to mention, the sonic effects of the necessarily different rooms, cables, ancillary gear, setup. Moreover, consider how much disagreement there already exists among audiophiles about the pros and cons of a lot of even top gear.

Secondly, most audiophiles have heard (hopefully often) the sound of music in a live setting. A review that relates what the reviewer hears to the sound of live music, subjectivity and all, seems to me will be much more effective in conveying a sense of what the reviewer hears. Some might consider this approach invalid because of issues around subjectivity, but ask why this same concern should not apply to our perception of the “sound” of gear.

@frogman The purpose of doing comparisons is really twofold — it provides the reviewer a check on what he/she thinks they are hearing, and it gives the readers a relative comparison for context. Humans are notoriously bad at absolutes and very good at judging relative differences, and it really matters not if the reader has heard the comparison product as the relative comparison in and of itself provides very useful information. Example — Review speaker X sound brighter and more detailed than speaker Y. While a reader may not have heard speaker Y they may know the house sound of the brand or other speakers that sound similar to speaker Y, which makes this comparison extremely useful. Also, if the reader knows they like more a laid back/warm speaker presentation it gives them an area to key in on if/when they look into speaker X further.

As to your second point, the live music thing alway struck me as kinda silly. What if a recording was made in the studio and made to sound like it was made in the studio (i.e. Donald Fagan’s solo work)? Are we to use live music as a benchmark for whether a system is performing well with those recordings? I think not. To me, a good system strives to reproduce what the artist/recording engineer intended and if it does it well it almost always sounds good unless the recording is crap. To judge everything through the lens of live music when a lot of music is not recorded live seems misplaced to me.

All that said, I don’t want anyone to mistake the passion for my opinions for me thinking I’m right because that’s not the case at all. I make my points and other people make theirs and that’s what keeps things interesting and also how we learn from others’ points of view. To me there’s always room for more than one opinion because people see/hear things differently so there can’t be one right answer — it’s impossible with the myriad of variables present. Anyway, that’s my take on it. Peace.