The Hifi Trajectory Of Class D Amplifiers


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I bought my first digital SLR camera back in 2005. Film SLR cameras were still king back then. Longtime film camera hobbyists and pros thumbed their noses at digital. Ten years later, film cameras have been surpassed by digital cameras and are nearly extinct. Millions of people use cameras. The market was already in place for anyone that would advance the technology of digital photography.

With Class D amps, you don't have a marketplace the size of the camera marketplace. There doesn't seem to be enough economic incentive to spend the necessary research dollars to advance the technology to get the same sort of improvement trajectory that digital photography has enjoyed.

Anyone care to speculate how long it will take for Class D amps to consistently rival the best tube, Class A and Class A/B across the board....and do it without resorting to the stratospheric prices that current non-Class D amps are priced at.
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128x128mitch4t
Cleeds, please sir don't take that particular statement literally, no one is being threatened. Just to draw attention to Class D's formidable sound quality and it's getting better as time goes on.
Atmasphere.

"Has Class D arrived? Sure. But do they beat tube amps? That's an entirely different question!

So I am sticking to my position, which is not based on a personal bias or some need to 'defend my business' that it is possible for class D to surpass not only traditional solid state but also tubes, **but the latter day has yet to arrive**."
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I understand your position of necessity on the matter but,to my ears, class D has and does surpass tube amplification,for many,many reasons... Key being,it just sounds like a real music... in real time... in a more believable way. Of course,horses for courses...
I'm a class D guy. Tube amps are fine but have not lured me to the dark side. 🌚
Ten years later, film cameras have been surpassed by digital cameras and are nearly extinct.
Mitch4t, I'm not sure I agree with your on this statement. Yes, digital cameras are everywhere & millions of people have gotten into "photography" as a result but IMO the film vs. digital camera is the same argument as .WAV vs .MP3 music files. The high compression of music files has made the file size smaller, totally wrecked the sonic quality but has afforded great convenience to the public to the point that 100s of songs can be stored on your portable device & played back at will. Digital photography too has made it very convenient to take photos without thinking much about the photograph to be taken because it's so convenient to delete the bad photos & keep the better ones. People are mindlessly taking photos because they can & the quality of photos (in terms of composition, lighting, artistic content), in general, has gone down just as fast. It's a great stride forward in convenience but many steps back in art of photography.

Take a look at these photos - they are all take by a FILM camera (no digital). In fact, it is my understanding that Arizona Highways magazine does not accept any digital photos as their resolution is not good enough for even an 18X10 print! The photo quality is superb & very much like what the human eye sees - all boundaries are gradual; not stark/abrupt as in a digital camera....

http://www.arizonahighways.com/photography/photo-archive