High end Class D amps?

Hello douglas_schroeder,

   I've been reading your professional published audio reviews and your occasional posts here for years.  I've always respected your knowledge, experience and opinions as well as your abilities to articulate sound quality and performance characteristics and differences.
     So the above is all true and I respect your judgment.  Now, would you please not keep us in suspense any longer and spill the beans on the identity of your newly discovered class D high quality performer?

Thanks,
  Tim

Hey Douglas..does this class d amp you speak of sound better than the Pass Labs XA200.8 you recently reviewed? 

10K class d is paying for a name, and aesthetics.

 800$ class D amp is smart buy.

 Don’t let the sheep make a line you can’t help but follow. 
 Happy hunting. 

Now you go find a Class-D that will keep pushing even more current into that kind of loading like a good bi-polar amp can.

You mean like, *most* class D amps?? Because its most of them.

@jaytor  I've found that dealing with George means you have to accept that Dunning-Kruger is at play.

10K class d is paying for a name, and aesthetics.

 800$ class D amp is smart buy.

 Don’t let the sheep make a line you can’t help but follow.
 Happy hunting.

As with any audio component these days, it's possible to get pretty good quality for a modest sum (say, under $1K for most component types). Clear improvements beyond this quality require considerably higher investment. 

Consider a simple component like a film cap. A cheap no-name 1uF cap will cost about $0.30 qty 1 at retail. Stepping up to a better quality WIMA will increase the price to $0.50. Moving up to a SoniCap will increase the price to close to $10. A Miflex KPCU copper foil cap will increase the price to close to $75. 

Multiply this by the hundred+ components in a given product and you can see how the build cost for high end products can quickly escalate. 

Whether these "upgrades" result in sound quality improvements that are worth the incremental cost is up to the customer, but since there is a fairly robust market in high-priced gear, many people believe it is. 

But saying that you are just paying for name and aesthetics is just not true. Class D amplifiers can benefit from judicious use of higher quality components and more sophisticated design approaches as much as any other product.