What are the best GaN Amplifiers available today?

@blisshifi My friend Andy Miles is an Aavik and Borreson dealer. I heard Aavik gear against Mola Mola and I also heard all the Audionet stuff. He uses Mola Mola Kalugas and Makua on his Borreson O5’s with a Lampizator Horizon DAC and an Aurender W20SE. He uses an Aavik I 280 integrated on his YG Carmel 2. The Aavik DAC is decent but
I never heard the T+A stuff since no dealers really are carrying them much. My Audionet dealer has hear T+A over in Germany and the Audionet gear he said has just more control over the drivers and is cleaner.
I also heard the Gryphon Distributor basically say T+A

is huge in Germany and good until you get to the REALLY high end stuff Gryphon does and the Apex and Commander crushes the T+A in the very high end. He is also biased and I never heard the Gryphon too stuff just their cheaper older

muddy mosfet gear before they switched to bipolar transistors.
I also was unimpressed with AGD stuff. My favorite amp is the new Krell 400 watt class A amp. Nothing is a better package for 35k until you get to the Audionet Heisenburg.

My other friend who is a reviewer for the Absolute Sound also has a Pilium Stack. That stuff is between Aavik and Audionet. It’s very good but quirky…there is no soft start to turn it on. 

@pennfootball71 All good stuff there.

I can see where Andy Miles may get good synergy using Lampizator Horizon and the Kalugas. I prefer not to introduce tubes to a source any longer and will either only have them in a preamp or power amp, for consistency’s sake across sources. The Kalugas, in my opinion, need tubes somewhere in their chain to sound their best. I think an all Aavik top level system sounds better, but it just gets subjective at that level.

I’ve had a few Audionet pieces in house, though none of the reference gear they make. In my experience, from hearing reference Audionet gear in other people’s homes and at shows, while the higher end models like Humboldt, Stern, and Heisenberg may have more control, they are also more refined / have a softer delivery. The price differences are significant, as well. The Humboldt monoblocks are $120K. The T+A A 3000 HV in stereo is $22,500. What many people don’t realize is the modularity of the T+A HV amplification stack. First, the $15K PS 3000 HV can be added to the power amp to enable a dedicated power supply for the output stage with 120,000uF capacitance, leaving the power supply in the A 3000 HV amplifier with its 120,000uF to handle the input stage. You could also set the amplifier to mono and as a result have two amplifiers each with the optional PS 3000 HV power supply. This then allows for 380wpc into 8 Ohm and 650wpc into 4 Ohm with 1/4 Farad of capacitance per channel. This configuration delivers significantly better control and soundstaging than a single stereo stack can, and its combined retail is still 60% of the cost of the Audionet Humboldt mono blocks. I’m not certain that your Audionet dealer has heard the T+A electronics in this configuration. At this level, again, I think it falls into subjective preference. I LOVE Audionet equipment with a passion, but I also know through experience that they are more tonally rich, a bit more colored than T+A.

You are right that the Gryphon Apex and Commander “crush” the T+A stack, but at truly diminishing returns. That combo is one I have heard that bests the T+A fairly well in just about everything in my opinion, but again, some people may not prefer the tonal richness of the Gryphon stack - it all comes down to pairing to get system synergy. That said, I am a Vivid Audio dealer and have a close friend just a few towns over who has the Gryphon Apex and Commander stack hooked up to a pair of Vivid Giya G1 Spirit, and it is honestly in the top three systems I’ve ever heard in my life - the combination of live presence, tonal richness, control and holographic richness is intoxicating - but also consider the Apex amp on its own is $100K, and the preamp is $63K, DAC is extra… the pricing is also significantly higher than T+A.

I’ve been less impressed with Pilium electronics but it could have just been the rooms and pairings I’ve heard from them in shows.

This weekend heard the HiFi Rose integrated amps at an audio show and they were pretty spectacular. Using Gallium Nitride FETs. Is this the same as GaN?

Using Gallium Nitride FETs. Is this the same as GaN?

@mjcmt Yes.

@pennfootball71 My favorite amp is the new Krell 400 watt class A amp. Nothing is a better package for 35k until you get to the Audionet Heisenburg.

Can you tell us more about the sound of the KRELL. I am a huge Duo XD fan and had 2 of those items recently. I actually bought a heavy-duty amp stand just for the Krell K400i amp. I am thinking of pivoting away from the KRELL because the speakers I have now may not match with the buttery smoothness of the KRELL XD. I was expecting to pair KEF Blade 2 Meta with the 400i but changed my mind on the speakers. Do you have experience with the lower model Duo XD and how it compares with the new 400i?

The fact that it weighs 160 lbs is also something I am debating on.

@arafiq Only thing I have heard about the Aavrik is what you posted. I am starting to think that Class D is a little lacking on the low end. I never had anything in Class D in the Aavrik price range so I may be wrong.

However, compared to the CODA #16 and KRELL Duo 175XD that I recently had in the house all my Class D amps were not as dynamic on the bottom. I finally put the CODA #16 together with the Schitt Yggi+ Less is More DAC (amazing DAC do not let the price fool you, like it more than the Lumin X1). What synergy, now my problem is that I also want that level of amp for my office system. The PeachTree GAN400 is not cutting it with my Magnepan LRS+. It is really good but in comparison to the CODA #16 it is far behind. The Maggie’s seem to be very responsive to better quality gear.