Suggestions for Class D amplifiers with Marantz AV7704 and B&W cdm9nt combo for HT.

@caphill  

lacking body, volume, air, midrange bloom, full mid-bass & bass power and overall musicality in comparison to very high quality analog or class A & AB designs IMO. Class D can usually sound leaner thinner lacking body and volume and somewhat analytical and lacking that lush analog sound and don’t sound liquid and fluid as good class A & AB designs.  

 
Ladking power in the mid-bass/bass is just untrue, they amplify linearly, maybe compared to tube amps. Body, volume, air, and musically are all non-descript terms, stuff like poor channel separation, high noise floor, slow transient response, high distortion, etc. are all more useful. Describing a sound as dry or wet is just nonsense talk, like describing a television’s picture as feminine, it doesn’t mean anything.

lacking body, volume, air, midrange bloom, full mid-bass & bass power and overall musicality in comparison to very high quality analog or class A & AB designs

This is a true thing and most of today's Class D amps will suffer from this lack of bass/midbass and midrange bloom because of their small switching power supplies.  It doesn't matter if the switching power supply can provide 2000 watts of power.  It just will not have the full strong bass/midbass and midrange bloom because of it's small amount of capacitance bank storage.  They just will not be able to compete with large size transformers and large capacitor banks for bloom, power and punch.

That is also why I bring up the ATI Hypex solution.  Because it does use a standard linear power supply with good size transformers and decent capacitance.

In addition, some of these comments were describing older Class D circuits.  The frequency response of these circuits were dictated by the impedance curve of the speaker (where the impedance drops down very low in the bass/midbass area).  Result can be weak bass/midbass and also rolled-off highs.

@erik:
"Class D amps are binary, but not digital. Weird, right?

They are not "digital" because they lack an Analog to Digital conversion stage, however, the output stage switches between on and off. The rate at which that switching happens is controlled entirely in the analog stage."

This is not correct, you cited several misconceptions. The rate of switching by the modulator is fixed, often at 400+kHz. And they are not binary no more than any class AB amp is, they are purely analog. And the output stage does not switch between on and off.

To the OP: please also consider PS Audio’ Stellar line of amplifiers. I have their M700s and they do everything and more that I want. And I have owned Class A, Class AB, in both tubed and solid state formats.

Marantz PM10