Tekton Double Impacts

Okay, so...I made another trip over to Bullitt's house to hear his new Schitt DAC, as well as his new speaker placement. His system is really starting to come into its own for two-channel. When I put my ABH2 in again, the sound just bloomed once more. This will be a good indicator of what his rig will sound like when he gets his new tube-pre and amp in. What's more, he's also getting the Double Impact Special Editions (SE), so I would expect big things from his system.

It was at Bullitt's house that I realized that I had never been unconvinced of the DI's sound, only that with the thought of the mini-Ulfs floating around my gourd. So,do I go for broke with a $7500 slightly ugly pair of speakers that I've never heard, or do I get some DIs and possibly always wonder what I'm missing? 

Not only that, but I wonder how much of a compromise the mini-Ulfs will be against their bigger brother. I just don't have the space for the full-sized Ulfs. I'm thinking, there's no way Eric gets the 12" woofers into the minis. From my understanding, the mini-Ulfs will be 5'3" tall, depth 15" and a width of...damn, I forgot the number and it's written on a piece of paper somewhere. I'm tempted to say that Eric said 10.5". That would be the width of the Electrons.

At any rate, if I don't make up my damn mind soon, that will be even more time without speakers, as these assuredly take a long time to come in. Lord know I would have to order the mini-Ulfs with grills. :-)

@david_ten , well, I hope I don’t raise any hackles here. :-) Heh. But Merrill can put all of the fancy wire they want in their amps, all of the bling, hyperbole and superlatives into their amps, but it’s still a switching amp no matter how you slice it. It’s still a gate of sorts to the signal you’re sending it.

To be fair, though (as if there is really such a concept), I’m over here thinking about tube amps for the first time in my life which obviously adds distortion to the signal that I’ve spent so many dollars to protect. Even beyond that, in the probably futile search of "a wire with gain," my current AHB2, even with a distortion profile way below human hearing, still uses tons of negative feedback to get it done, thus it doesn’t have an optimal dampening factor. We can go even further and say that many, of not most, SS amps adds crazy even order harmonics that is simply not natural to most instruments.

So, yeah, there are trade-offs everywhere. Nobody has a bead on perfection.

That said, can I hear a gated effect in a Class D amp? The answer is no, I cannot. It's all academic. :-)

My decision was always going to be a SS amp, but my decision to go with a clad D amp, did not come easily. Truth be told, I am (was) a class D bigot. And I don't mean a bigot for class D. I didn't want anything to do with it.
As I mentioned, my primary use will be HT. I am working with a person that has professionally worked making commercials, so he knows about the HT sound and how the sound steering should work. Quite interesting actually. He is the one that steered me to the Anthem processor because he said he thought it did the best job of moving the sound around seamlessly between where it was supposed to go. He also recommended the M27 to me. I respect what he told me, but I thought to myself "you can't be serious, with all that is out there."

I started reading as much about class D amps as I could and the M27 specifically. I could not find anything bad on the M27, and some comparisons were to some pretty expensive amps. I also did speak to Dennis at D-Sonic since he is local. His amps put out much more power. Most of the people I spoke to about his amps had good things to say. In the end, with myself finally convinced that I could not only live with but like a good class D amp, my friend promised me that the dynamics of HT would be superb and that the musicality of the M27 was excellent. So that is going to be my amp.

I just googled M27 review and this came up http://www.soundstagexperience.com/index.php/equipment-menu/636-nad-masters-series-m27-seven-channel...
I've actually read better, but this review is pretty typical. Yeah.... it surprises me too...

Evolvist,
You are most certainly right, all amplifiers regardless of topology present some degree of tradeoffs, this is unavoidable. Super low distortion as a result of utilizing NFB then introduces the unwanted higher odd order distortion (5th,7th and 9th) that Ralph (Atmasphere) has described often on this forum. It’s always going to be some form of compromise/tradeoff to content with. Best solution is to choose what sounds right/better to your ears and accept the fact that it is not perfect in every sonic parameter,  nothing is. 
Charles

@evolvist and @bullitt5094  Great to hear Bullitt's system is coming together. Looking forward to hearing more about the SEs once they are fully run-in.

@vitop  I'm pleased with the NAD M27. And it is frustrating that it is sitting idle while I wait for my HT system to take shape. Like you, I've been impressed with it's reviews and performance in my system. And like you, I will probably have the Anthem AVM 60 in front of it. But I wouldn't choose it as my go to amp for 2ch, as long as I had choices. For that, I have a very clear lean towards Class A/B and now finally a Class A amp in the Pass XA30.8.  Your response to 333Jeffery made me think it would be good to get it back in system and see how it does, now that my system is more 'mature' and better dialed in than it was when I had just received the Double Impacts.