Class D = Trash?

@atmasphere

Hah!

A recent phrase has made it into the news, I'd like to co-opt as a statement I never want to make:

I am being dominated by my loudspeakers

Speakers, like friends and family, should be easy to get along with for me. Not the secret Mistress whose every whim should be catered to. That's what secret mistresses are for.

About headphones and power supplies:  True, I also think it's a way of checking for checking the effectiveness of power supply filtering. For instance, if you get a lot more HF in your supply, may mean you need less inductive filter/shunt caps. It is also a way of knowing when you have done enough, so if I ever worked in the field again, it is a technique I'd try to apply to see if I could learn about any power supplies I worked on.

Best,


E

I guess what I'm saying is:

When I worked in circuit design we just threw a bunch of bypass caps of different types into the power supply without ever measuring their effectiveness or cost/benefits.

If I did this again, I'd take a more rigorous approach to every single power supply bypass cap. Spend money where needed as opposed to a shotgun approach.

Ahhhh, good times back then. :)

Best,


E

Laugh if you want.  You can Spend $10,000 or you can spend a few thousand.  The Crown International Drive core 2 amps are cheap and have many turning in their esoteric amps. Lexicon uses Crown Drive Core technology.   Was compared against Emotiva and it did not come close to the power and sound.  These are going in home theaters. Google it yourself.  
I still run a Crown D150 Series II and it still sounds great.  Over 40 yrs old.   No, Not like a Levinson, but close to a MAC. which is good.  The Drive Core II are supposed to be better.

Was compared against Emotiva and it did not come close to the power and sound.

Emotiva is a brand I had really high hopes for.

Best,

E

Hi Henry, 

     Thank you for clarifying your findings: "from what I have implemented and heard is that an unregulated analog power supply seem to always sound better than those with SMPS. And this is strictly in the context of class D Icepower."  I understand you're in the midst of experimenting to determine if the same holds true for Hypex NCore 400 modules.

     I'm not really surprised that Hypex didn't allow you access to their top NCore 1200 module. I've read that Hypex had a predetermined sales strategy to  reserve the NCore 1200 module for the larger OEM market while offering the NCore 400 module for sale to the DIY market and amp assembly market.  I believe Hypex is considering H2O a segment of the amp assembly market even though we, and likely many others, realize H2O  actually more closely resembles an OEM than an amp assembler.   
     
     I assume you're aware of the newest Hypex module, the NCore 500, which supposedly is very similar to the sound quality of the NCore 1200 but not quite as powerful.  There is even a U.K. company somewhat similar to H2O, Nord, that offers stereo and mono-block amps based on the NCore 500 module that use Hypex smps but have discrete class A input buffer boards that allow a choice of op amps (Sparkos SS3602 or Sonic Imagery 994).  Maybe this will be the future of class D, with op amp rolling rather than tube rolling.

     There are also many very good alternative class D power modules such as the Anaview/Abletech ALC-1000-1300 (used in the D-Sonic M3-600-M mono-blocks) that utilize Phase Shifting Modulation (PSM) rather than the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) that Hypex NCore modules utilize and the Pascal modules (used in the D-Sonic M3-1500-M and M3-800-S, Red Dragon S500, Jeff Rowland Continuum S2 integrated and 525 stereo amps) that feature their proprietary and patented UMAC  technology.  I believe these modules would be available to you and could possibly be enhanced with your custom analog power supplies.

Thanks,
  Tim