D-SONIC SOA Class-D Core Amps. The best Class-D ?

How are the good old and seemingly still quite popular Wyred Class D amps faring sound wise these days against the newer breeds?

I heard a newer Audio Research Class D amp at Lyric in NYC recently running a pair of mid sized Nola speakers.

The audition was too brief to draw any final conclusions but the sound was quite promising. Not sure I heard anything that uniquely distinguished it from others, but it seemed a solid performer. The Nola's were perhaps not quite my cup of tea in that I generally tend to prefer simpler designs with fewer drivers, so the overall coherency was not quite top notch IMHO based on the brief audition, but in lieu of more facts I would tend to not attribute that to the amp as much as the speakers.

Thanks for correcting me Guido...my mistake..I'm aware of the 525 being bridgeable since
last winter and was thinking of it as a mono amp. Also, I was incorrect on the 125, just spoke to Brandon at Rowland and the 125 is using the latest generation of ICE from B&O and not Pascal as in the other two models.

Audiozen,

You seem to do a lot of research related to CLass D amps. Are you involved in teh industry in some way, or just a motivated consumer? Just wondering. Thanks.

Mapman..just a motivated consumer. I have always been intriqued by the 90% efficiency of Class D amps compared to 50% efficiency of a/ab amps that send a lot of wasted energy to the heat sinks. In 1958 there was testing done with pulse switching devices with poor results with current stability problems causing the test amps to blow up. When John Ulrick of Spectron owned Infinity speakers back in the late sixties with Arnie Nudell, he installed his first Class D amp into a Infinity sub-woofer in 1968. The rest is history. Regarding Wyred4Sound, EJ informed me back in 2011 that he was working on a new four piece Class D amp that would be part of the new Wyred4Sound Reference Line but unfortunately that project has been cancelled.

Class D trivia..the world's first commercial manufactured Class D amp was from Sinclair Radionics in England in 1964. It was rated at 10 watts per channel but put out a lower number than the specs indicated. British magazine Wireless World had a article written to print on the amp but there was no many complaints from consumer's with reliability problem's that the article was withdrawn and the amp went out of production.