Old Amp vs. New Amp

I do plan on using balanced cables.  I have heard a lot of good things about those, and my preamp supports them.

" Thanks for your input.  Honestly I am a little skeptical about class D.  I don't really have a reason to be though."  

   
   petrela,

     Very normal and healthy to be skeptical.  I was initially skeptical, too.  

      About 3 yrs ago, my older class A/B Aragon 4004 MKII died of old age due to leaking caps in the power supply.  I didn't want to spend $1,000 to repair an almost 20 yr old amp so I bought a classDaudio SDS-440CS amp for $630.   I thought this would be a temporary solution until I bought another good quality class A/B amp for considerably more money.  I figured there was little risk since it came with a money back guarantee for 3 weeks.

     I was still skeptical when I was inserting this little amp into my system.  I thought: How could an amp that was 1/3rd the size, weight and price of my former Aragon match its performance? But this amp outperformed my old amp in every quality most of us care about; better bass control and response, much lower noise floor, better dynamics,more detailed while having a similar sound staging and smooth mid-range and treble response that never approached harshness.  It was the best amp I ever used in my system up to that point.

     I've noticed frequent skeptical posts from audio forum members about class D amps but rarely are they from actual users and it's typically fairly obvious from their comments that they've never even auditioned a good class D amp in their own system or any other system.

      Regardless,  I definitely think you'd be happy with an older tube or class A amp and possibly even with one that predominately operated in class A if you're willing to pay a steep price.
                    
Hope this helped you,
     Tim

Interesting!  Thanks Tim.  

I had never heard of Classdaudio.  I just looked at their website.

Certainly something to consider.

petrela just curious you mention tubes a few times and your speakers are certainly tube friendly but you're not interested in a  tubed power amp? To me a lot of tubed circuits are timeless and well designed point to point wired tubed stuff is relatively easy and cheap to fix. Just a thought.

Since the OP has an NAD BEE amp I will say this--I used an NAD BEE integrated amp for years and then switched to a tube pre-amp/class D power amp integrated (made by Rogue).  To my ear it's definitely an upgrade from the NAD solid-state integrated.   As much the Rogue pleases me I expect that many higher-priced rigs will sound even better--I'm just not operating with that kind of budget right now.  At any rate, in this zone I think class D is a fine alternative.