High End Amp Price Collapse musings


If Class D amplification becomes accepted by audiophiles there should be a glut of high end amps (Krell, Levinson, Pass etc) becoming available on the used market at prices a fraction of what they are now.

Think CRT TV when the flat panels began emerging.I think Ill hold off on a new/used amp purchase for a little while. Maybe I will bet a Boulder.

Has any one else considered this?

energeezer
It seems that the people critical of Class D amps haven’t given them a fair shake/listen
I can only speak to my specific experiences, as can any of us. However, as I have posted previously, I did give the Acoustic Imagery Atsah, Ncore, NC1200 monoblock amplifiers a fair shake, since I purchased them, owned them, played them in my system for over a year, and during that time period compared them head-to-head with three other really good amps, two of which I still own. It was amplifier roulette for awhile and I surprisingly learned that, sort of like Dorothy, I had actually started with my ideal amplifier several years earlier but just didn’t realize it. Since I had sold those original amps (to a buyer who enjoys them to this day) I was fortunate to find another pair and even more fortunate that Wilson Shen with Clayton Audio was still around to fully upgrade them so they sound awesome. Any of us who post here are speaking to our own experiences, systems, rooms, biases, etc., which is why anybody trying to find universal truth on these forums will eventually be disappointed.
Clayton M300, 300/600 wpc into 8/4 ohms in Class A.  Yes, they get hot but they have high/low bias, which helps.  I quit sweating the small stuff, like warm-up time because it is all relative, since they sound so good from the time I turn them on...they just sound better after 30 minutes.
Others in the rotation were Lamm M1.2 Reference, the NC1200 Atsahs, and a McCormack DNA-2 LAE designed by David Reich, with full upgrades by Steve McCormack at SMc Audio in 2014.  I still own the DNA-2 and the Claytons.
@uberwaltz

I can't keep Pink Floyd records in stock, especially DSOTM - in nice condition they generally fetch between $30 and $75.  
@mitch2 

I meant the more recent incarnations of Class D - in my post I mentioned that I think they have come a long ways in past few years, especially with the NAD I am now using.  

On another subject I was recently reading an article about Bob Carver and the Stereophile amp challenge.  He was able to exactly reproduce the sound of $7,000.00+ tube amplifiers in a modified $700.00 SS amp without knowing the amp he was cloning - it was a pair Conrad-Johnson Premier Twelves (I am simplifying things - google as it's a good read).  I picked up one of his production models recently (M-1.0t) and have yet to listen to it (I have low expectations...but)