Who mods class D/digital amps?

Try reducing the analog input sensitivity and see if that helps. Also, are you sure the IC's you have are balanced? If you can't tell, list them.

This problem doesn't sound like the type of thing you can fix with a mod.

I don't know how to reduce the analog input sensitivity. It may or may not be accessible through the onboard controller, but I would have to access the configuration via a PC. I haven't ventured into that yet. The distortion only occurs on certain CD's. There is no correlation between the loudness of the recording and the distortion, as far as I know thus far.
I assume you mean interconnects when you mention ICs? My preamp is not balanced. I have RCAs on one end of the cables and XLRs on the other. The Air20s have in input impedance of 3000 ohms for unbalanced and 10,000 for balanced. I have no idea what the output impedance on my preamp is (Tube Audio Design DAC/pre). I cannot find the specs on it. But you may be on to something, the impedance may be mismatched.

Thanks for your input.

You may want to check in the owners manual because there's no standard way to deal with this. Balanced components are usually designed in such a way that allows them to switch back and forth between balanced and single ended operation. So if your preamp is SE, you want to make sure your amp is set to run SE also. If not, you can have all kinds of problems. What you need to do will definitely be listed somewhere in the manual.

Here's a few things that may prove useful.

-Sometimes amps that are not balanced still have xlr connections. So you want to make sure that your amps are fully balanced.

-Same thing with cables. They need to be fully balanced and not just an SE cable with xlr connectors.

- Also make sure the CD's themselves are not the problem. Try them on a different player just to be sure.

woofer72,
when i read your input impedance numbers of 10K balanced & 3K unbalanced I was sure you made a typo but i checked at the webpage you gave us a link to in your other post. you stated these numbers correctly.
the 3K unbalanced input impedance sure looks rather low & low enough to create an issue.
A source of 100 ohms output impedance driving a 3K unbalanced input does have the rule-of-thumb 10:1 but still 3K unbal seems to be rather low. I don't think I've seen this low an impedance spec in a long time.
yes, there might be an impedance mismatch here hence the distortion.

you say you hear the distortion on certain CDs & it has nothing to do with the loudness of the recording.
So, when do you hear the distortion on those certain CDs? And, what's happening to the sound when its distorting? (yeah, i know its distorting but a verbal description of what it sounds like might be useful).

It's a pretty drastic sort of distortion, effective throughout the full audible range (to my ears). Think of a clock radio with the volume turned up to the full level (this is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea). It is only evident on certain CDs/tracks.

I spoke to Dynaudio, they really recommend a balanced preamp. When I use the digital AES/EBU input the distortion issue is nonexistent.

By the way, in response to the other thread, I'm not very technical, however, I'm not new to audio or Audiogon by any means. Joel at Dyaudio referred to the Air20 amps as digital amps, if you care to debate the semantics with him, feel free to do so.
Also to clarify, my goal with audio gear is accuracy. I neglected to mention this in my other post, and perhaps due to this omission, there was some lack of focus. For this reason, I generally believe that newer gear is "better", in the sense it's more accurate. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a pair of old JBLs with McIntosh tube amps driving them. They sound lovely, just not what I'm looking for. I realize that the gear that comes out every year is not necessarily an improvement over the past year's, however, if one were to plot the overall progress of audio over the past 50 years, it would be hard to deny the general progress in accuracy in reproducing the audio signal.
By the way, thank you for commenting on the specs of the Air20s. That is really all I was looking for; to know if the specs were up to date. I was just curious. It's not like I was about to trash them if they were not. They sound amazing. I trust my ears.