Mytek slams Hypex in Stereophile Amp Review

Class D will continue to evolve and eventually overtake SS and tube ... but this is years down the road ... until everyone over 50 yo has died off ... lol.

Seriously, the Class D are amazing these days compared to even 3 years ago.
I dont understand how anyone can just write off Class D altogether? The dude quoted above ... hasn’t heard high end Class D, eg Merrill amps.

But Eric, I have never heard anyone c/o the Hypex NCORE modules. Never. And they only get better, with better power supplies and support circuit.

And also, to offer an example, I do have a Hypex UCD 400w module that drives a 12" woofer in my Zu Audio Undertone sub. Its a monster. I live in CA and it makes me think I'm undergoing a earthquake.

Last, The Red Dragons have found homes, e.g Clayton Shaw of Spatial speakers used them at trade shows. And the other ICE module mentioned above, I currently own a Bel Canto Ref500s Class D amp. And it still drives my Dynaudios very well (Dyns are known to need and sound best with high power)

Seriously, the Class D are amazing these days compared to even 3 years ago.

This is quite possibly true, however it is hilarious that people have been saying this about Class D for the last 20 years. 

I have read the Stereophile review.
Apparently Mytek built those amps specifically to power their Duntechs.
Those speakers are a 25 years old technology with passive first order crossovers. A strange choice for a pro studio. The JA measurements of the Mytek amps give "respectable" figures. But the amps cannot be measured properly at 2 ohm, as they go into protection modes. So, low impedance performance is not an issue here. The Pascals strong side is their potential brute force, hence the 300wpc (continuous hopefully) metric. They perform nicely with subs, not so in the mids and highs. Ncores can reliably deliver 100 wpc continuous and 700 wpc peak. The heat dissipation becomes a problem. But when used in active architecture, n-cores are unbeatable on all counts. All in all, Mytek is a peculiar amp for peculiar speakers.

Nugat,

That is weird. 1st order crossovers tend to create relatively benign loads as well.

I’m not sure where you got 100 watts for which Ncore though. The modules are available for OEM’s in the 400 to 1200 watt per channel range.

Best,

E

N-core   continuous power output is thermally limited (like any other amp's). You get those figures in the OEM manuals. Currently the top OEM  n-core is nc500OEM. When you pair it with SMPS 1200/700 you might get the PEAK performance of 700wpc.  N-cores assume that 100wpc continuous  is deadly enough for anybody's ears in  a typical residential room . And rightly so. The assumed crest factor of 5-7x gives peaks of 700wpc which is sufficient for most transients.  Hypex is one of the very few companies which are  open about what the real amp power output is . The continuous power output (RMS power is a misnomer) should be tested with standards at least like IEC 60268-5.