Thanks for starting the thread. Two of my three home setups are now Class D, the third being a much-loved Marantz 2230. My listening room is the newest, a Rogue Sphinx driving Magnepan .7s, with a Musical Fidelity V90 DAC, Marantz 5004 CD player and Pro-Ject Debut Carbon with Ortofon 2M Red. I just think it all plays together very nicely. Auditioning the Sphinx I also listened to an NAD C368, but thought it had just a bit more sibilance and an amplified character with solo voice, which I'll assume is the effect of the Sphinx's tube preamp section. I listen to mostly classical, jazz and acoustic.
My other Class D is -- please don't laugh -- a Teac A-H01 driving Magnepan MMGWs. It's in the living room, and I wanted to keep the music system as small as possible. When I was shopping a few years ago for this setup, the Teac was one of the few small integrated amps that had a good mix of digital and analog inputs and a subwoofer out. It's got ICE amp modules and a Burr-Brown DAC (I didn't need a phono, which it lacks), so I was willing to give it a go for $330. It puts 43 watts into 4 ohms, which isn't supposed to be enough for Maggies, but they sound great. They seem to love being spread far apart - about 15 feet on opposite walls. They don't go very loud, but they don't need to in this location.
Here's the deal: Like I'm sure a lot of people here, I listen to a lot of live music, meaning symphonic or chamber or opera/musical -- unamplified sound, in other words.As far as I'm concerned, if an amp makes a violin sound like a live violin, and a piano sound like a live piano, etc., it's doing it's job - Class A, A/B, D or whatever. That's what both these Class D amps do, and what the Marantz still does as well. I first heard the MMGWs at a friend's home with a very nice, all-tube amp/pre combo with quite a bit more juice than the Teac. But I've never been disappointed in how they sound with my setup.
Cheers.
