Digital Amps? Marketing Hype?

Eldragon,

I think its only fair that we "drop some names" here?

Mine isnt fot sale and the only tube amps i will be
buying in the next couple years are tube guitar amp heads
and believe me they are not doing "exactly" what i
want... I would prefer a much "stronger", "faster"
response than im getting. But its the best we have now.
We are getting close to a better solution.

Steve

I think you can find that ANY widely selling audio device will be strongly represented on the used market pretty quickly. It is not a reflection on quality but on the nature of audiophiles.

Kr4, I agree... Its inevitable.

I do like to see people put disclaimers in their posts though. It just makes more ethical sense to me when someone is talking favorably about a piece of gear and they have it up for sale.

Thanks for the links Voodoochile! The Spectron site in particular has a good desription of the basic theory underlying their design. In short, the input signal is converted to the digital domain, then amplified; hence the moniker digital amplifier. Both digital and analog input signals are converted to PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) format and then modulate a carrier. The resulting signal is then amplified to output levels, and filtered to remove the carrier. Note that the output signal is in fact a square wave.
There are of course merits to this design because class D amplifiers are efficiency champs. Die hard 'analog' audiophiles may have issues with so much DSP (Digital Siganl Processing), however DSP chips have advanced strides in the last few decades. Indeed, audiophiles routinely talk about 'analog' sounding CD players which actually benefit from advanced DAC and DSP chips. Personally, I love my 'analog' sounding CD player and would love to hear these new digital amps. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has compared the sound of the analog vs digital inputs on the Spectron.

Jlamb- FYI- the digital input on the Spectron amp isn't avaialble yet. Should be soon.

Performance using the balanced analog input is outstanding.