I went from Class D to Luxman A/AB - And most of what you think is wrong


Hi everyone,

As most of you know, I’m a fan of Class D. I have lived with ICEPower 250AS based amps for a couple of years. Before that I lived with a pair of Parasound A21s (for HT) and now I’m listening to a Luxman 507ux.


I have some thoughts after long term listening:
  • The tropes of Class D having particularly bad, noticeable Class D qualities are all wrong and have been for years.
  • No one has ever heard my Class D amps and gone: "Oh, wow, Class D, that’s why I hate it."
  • The Luxman is a better amp than my ICEPower modules, which are already pretty old.

I found the Class D a touch warm, powerful, noise free. Blindfolded I cannot tell them apart from the Parasound A21s which are completely linear, and run a touch warm due to high Class A operation, and VERY similar in power output.


The Luxman 507 beats them both, but no amp stands out as nasty sounding or lacking in the ability to be musical and involving.


What the Luxman 507 does better is in the midrange and ends of the spectrum. It is less dark, sweeter in the midrange, and sounds more powerful, almost "louder" in the sense of having more treble and bass. It IS a better amplifier than I had before. Imaging is about the same.


There was one significant operational difference, which others have confirmed. I don't know why this is true, but the Class D amps needed 2-4 days to warm up. The Luxman needs no time at all. I have no rational, engineering explanation for this. After leaving the ICEPower amps off for a weekend, they sounded pretty low fi. Took 2 days to come back. I can come home after work and turn the Luxman on and it sounds great from the first moment.


Please keep this in mind when evaluating.


Best,

E
erik_squires
I emailed him good luck with that. Why he responded, I have no idea, but, he responded thusly " already have $800000 worth of OEM orders on the go. Along with $200000 of orders from my members. So not going too bad".
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/84065033-987d-4a53-ac9f-172bca865101/dcmrb...
ricevs,
Many interesting topics for discussion.  As you know, specs don't tell the full story of how an amp sounds in a system.  While I am not as technically knowledgeable as you or other manufacturers, I have learned that most of those specs are static measurements.  But music is all about dynamic transient responses, so static specs may be of little use.  Maybe square wave response is more relevant.  The rise and fall of the step requires an infinite bandwidth for perfect reproduction.  Slew rate, or any other transient impulse related measures?  Maybe designers know things which they keep proprietary, and confuse the public with these static specs.  The Merrills have distortion of as much as 0.08%, much worse than the D'ag Relentless, but I would bet the $15,000 price of the 114 that the 114 has better transient clarity than the Relentless.  Dan D'ag personally likes rounded full, bass heavy loud sound, whereas Merrill's goal is fast, clear, immediate sound in the 5th row of the concert hall.  In the end, the designer has a general sound preference which is expressed in all of his products, despite his specs which confuse the public.  The brass binding posts are a softer metal which contributes to warm, loose sound.  I used to listen to steel vs brass screws in the head shell of my tonearm.  I liked the tighter, clearer sound of steel.  So I would guess that the Relentless is still a softer sound than it could be with your tweaks.  Finally, when someone says that something is better, you have to know his values to decipher what that means.  If he likes warm, fuzzy tube sound, I know to go for the opposite of what he likes.
ricevs,
Also, very high power amps are large and heavy, with long circuit paths and lots of circuitry with plenty of opportunity for mismatch of transistors, etc.  As you say, remove what isn't necessary.  So the D'ag Relentless is probably not pure SOTA sound.  Why can't a $2200 amp with short signal paths and circuitry be SOTA?
Your
[sic]
twisting things to suite your self, I never ever said that you can hear these frequencies, I’ve always stated they have an effect and the "output filters used" in all Class-D amp to remove them have an audible effect, because they cause problems!!, and if the "output filters" are shifted up higher because the switching frequency is higher, then problems become minimized.
Hm. Your prior statements do not agree with the statement above. Here's an example- take a look:
GaN technology will finally get rid of these flaws of dead time and **switching noise**.
(emphasis added)
-what then, is 'switching noise', if not the residual??

In addition, as I pointed out before, most class D amplifiers use a 12dB slope in the filter. Now if you're up on your filter theory, you know that the phase shift artifact of a 12dB filter does not extend down to a 10th the cutoff frequency- that is a 6dB/octave filter that does that.

As for you getting abusive
I don't recall doing that and can't find any example of such in my prior posts. As you know, being abusive to another member violates forum rules. So I am quite careful in all my posts to avoid that! If you are referring to my prior post wherein this text occurs:
if you are saying you can hear 250KHz or 1.2MHz sine wave good luck trying convince anyone that you aren't a nutbag.
-that text is not abusive since I'm pretty sure that you are not in fact trying to convince anyone that you can hear to 250KHz or higher. If such is not the case, please let me know as that will be a bit of a surprise!