As far as I can tell high end audio is more of a rat race than ever as there are many more manufacturers looking for a piece of the pie. The marketing is getting progressively more obnoxious. Kids appreciate good sound like the rest of us. They go to concerts and are quite capable of discriminating between great and not so great sound. But, life in general is more expensive than ever and megabuck HiFi systems are not on their priority list. Later in life they are sure to join in as finances allow. They are also more likely to include theater in the equation as well as vinyl which I find very interesting. I think we are analog creatures at heart. There is nothing like the warm glow of tubes. That is an instinctive attraction.
As far as class D amps are concerned I think TACT was on the right path with an amp that encoded in pulse width modulation and sampled at 90 meg. They were very clean sounding amps with solid bass but they did not like reactive loads at all. I have never heard a Rowland amp but obviously someone is paying close attention to build quality. I have no doubt that Class D amps will become very competitive with other amps in regards to sound quality. Back in the late 60s we all thought that SS amps were garbage because they were. A decade or two later and they came into their own and many of us think they are superior. The efficiency of class D is what I find so attractive. Turning money into heat is counter productive especially when you spend more money air conditioning it out of the house.
After all it is all about enjoying the music right? Silly. We all love music or we would not be doing this. HiFi is all about reproducing the music but to what standard? There really is not one or rather we all have our own standard which evolves over time. But I can say that in the presence of a truly great system jaws drop and there is very little criticism. I love it when my jaw drops.
As far as class D amps are concerned I think TACT was on the right path with an amp that encoded in pulse width modulation and sampled at 90 meg. They were very clean sounding amps with solid bass but they did not like reactive loads at all. I have never heard a Rowland amp but obviously someone is paying close attention to build quality. I have no doubt that Class D amps will become very competitive with other amps in regards to sound quality. Back in the late 60s we all thought that SS amps were garbage because they were. A decade or two later and they came into their own and many of us think they are superior. The efficiency of class D is what I find so attractive. Turning money into heat is counter productive especially when you spend more money air conditioning it out of the house.
After all it is all about enjoying the music right? Silly. We all love music or we would not be doing this. HiFi is all about reproducing the music but to what standard? There really is not one or rather we all have our own standard which evolves over time. But I can say that in the presence of a truly great system jaws drop and there is very little criticism. I love it when my jaw drops.