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
You really do not have to defend your business every time someone speaks about liking SS kit better than tube kit.

I may be going out on a limb here... but I would presume that you never sat down and gave a serious listen to the likes, of say, a Merrill Audio Veritas mono block amp. If you can ever get the opportunity to hear them,I think you will be picking your jaw up off the floor...

Your presumption is incorrect- believe it or not what is actually " defending my business" is actually done by auditioning products like these and then assessing the threat. If you think about you will see that no business in high end can really exist in a vacuum (if you will pardon the expression...). We assess a lot of technologies to try to understand how that might affect us in the future- I would think anyone in it for the long haul would do just that!

Further, its my opinion that you didn't read my posts all that carefully. No worries- but read this one, because it explains in greater depth what I am actually thinking.

First- Its not like we can't make class D amps; we've been looking into it for over 10 years.

But more to the point I've not seen Class D threatening conventional tube amps let alone ours (which are less conventional)- **so far**. What I **do** see (or hear, as the case may be) is that class D has effectively supplanted the traditional solid state design in all but the very best of the traditional designs (which might be a misnomer, as the best solid state amps I am thinking of are leading edge and really are not that traditional). Otherwise what it still boils down to is still just about the same old tube vs transistor argument which has been there all along, although the goal posts have moved about somewhat.

Those of you who are familiar with price performance curves will understand why this is so, and thus is likely to be so for quite some time. What the question really becomes is what part of the price performance curve (for more understanding, google 'technology S curve') class D is on right now.

Its my surmise that class D is nearing or at the top of the most vertical part of the curve. This suggests that the technology is reaching maturity. This is certainly what its advocates would like us to believe! If this is so, then what follows are incremental improvements.

FWIW, transformer-coupled tube amps are a very mature technology so improvements over the last few decades have been fairly slight.

Now if you have been following along, if my surmise is correct than this debate will be on-going possibly for decades. If my surmise is incorrect, then class D is a bit lower on its ascendancy of the technology S curve. IOW, breakthroughs are still possible, causing the technology to achieve much greater performance than is available right now.

So which is it? The answer is we don't know. But its been around for a while and its clear that class D is much much better now than it was even just 10 years ago.

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**. But I'm not ruling that out as one can see from my prior posts.
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. 🌚