Class D is just Dandy!

Glad to have been helpful, Dan.  Enjoy!

Best regards,
-- Al
 

Jump on 2 amps  ASAP if they are so great(not).

     Very nice to see almarg and atmasphere team-up, step up and use their knowledge/experience to solve islandmandan's noise problem. Nice job guys!

     What I've consistently noticed from listening to good class D amps in my system, from my initial Class D Audio SDS-440-CS stereo amp to my Emerald Physics 100.2 to my most recently purchased D-Sonic M-600 mono-block amps, is their exceptional quietness;  music seems to emerge with more impact due to the dead quiet background.
     I believe this silent quality is also a primary contributor to the other obvious characteristic of good class D amps: a very detailed presentation..

      I'm almost certain these class D attributes will now be very evident to  islandman  now that his amps are operating in their typically silent manner.

Enjoy,
 Tim

My goal was a little desktop integrated or pre/amp combo.

After hemming and hawing and fretting I purchased an NAD D 3020. My local dealer had one $100 off.

I ruled out all of the Parasound Z series just because they are too big. at 9" wide they wouldn't fit on top of a speaker, like I need.

Plenty of digital and a couple of analog inputs make the input selection pretty good. There is also a bass boost which is perfect for my little desktop speakers.

So far so good. The one negative is really the volume display is hokey as hell, and it takes a lot of turns to adjust it.

The display has a series of numbers: -20, 40, -60, -80 and -100. As you turn the volume down the numbers dim, or go off. The physically larger sibling the 7050 has a graphical display with direct volume readings in dB. It was only a little more expensive, but seemed to lack analog inputs and was twice the physical size.

They call this a hybrid digital, but I could not find much information on what makes it a hybrid.

My only source right now is the PC, via analog, but I'm always careful to get motherboards with S/PDIF outputs so I'll try that eventually.

Oversimplifying, 'Hybrid' means that the digital source is upsampled to the scan frequency of the amp.