The Future of Audio Amplification

Our experience with class D includes Nord’s and Mola Mola.

While Nord’s are good at their price point there is absolutely no comparison with the Mola Mola Kaluga’s sound quality. There’s an audiophile on YouTube that has a wonderful high end set up that sold his very high end Swiss class A amplifier (£50k) and moved over to Mola Mola Kaluga’s. Lansche, Manger and Vivid speaker manufacturers use Mola Mola amplification at the Munich High End Audio Show, not without good reason. The designer, Bruno Putzeys, has been at the forefront of class D design. While Nord’s and Mola Mola Kaluga’s both use Bruno’s Hypex class D modules, the sonic results are quite different.

You sound like your either a dealer or in the manufacturing chain for Class-D, if so which one do you sell, make or affiliated to?

Cheers George

toetap

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that Nord, or most sub $4K class Ds compare to some of the super expensive class Ds, BUT

* we all don't have trust fund accounts

* it seems no matter the tech (Ill use racing engines) getting that extra 10% performance increase usually doubles... triples, and more the price

Having owned 4 different W4S + PS Audio, Emerald Physics and now the older Audio Alchemy DPA 1 stereo amp, it is by far the most natural sounding (MUCH better than my Parasound A23 A/B amp), and speaking personally, $2K MSRP isn't chump change, and neither is the used price < $1000 to many of us

I was going to upgrade to the AA monos, but this thread has me doubting any future value on the used market. In just 3 short years these $4k MSRP the pair can be purchased for < $2k and have stellar reviews from 2016

It would, since feedback is how the switching is controlled, without feedback, there can be no switching.

There are three main types of encoding. One is 'self oscillating' which requires feedback and the feedback sets the switching frequency. So for that type the above statement is true but for Pulse Width Modulation and Pulse Density Modulation the statement is false; the latter two can be operated without feedback.

The Technics model is different though. It uses digital signal processing to compensate for the speaker load, and then is a pure digital amp with no feedback ( I believe )

Its a class D (switching analog amp) with digital control. Bruno Putzeys, one of the top class D designers, has a nice article on why class D is analog and digital isn't:
https://www.hypex.nl/img/upload/doc/an_wp/WP_All_amps_are_analogue.pdf

Saying Class D is as good as Class A is like those hyping Digital is a good as Vinyl. Are your ears truly that bad? Does a digital piano sound as good as an acoustic? No. End of story.