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The NAD M33 will cancel your complaints about Class D

There are many reasons to like one type of sound over another. Even among what are considered very good amplifiers there’s a broad range of tastes and preferences among audiophiles. Just ask a SET aficionado!

However, no class is more maligned, inappropriately, than Class D. To hear some regulars tell it, Class D sound will thin your blood, make your teeth fall out and ruin your enjoyment of just about everything because it sounds so (fill in a lot of tropes from the 1980’s here).

I’ve been listening to NAD’s prior collaboration with Bruno Putzy and I can tell with some confidence that none of those tired old tropes apply. For reasons related much more to tonal balance than anything else, I’m sticking with Class A/B in my main system, but with the introduction of the next gen Anthem AVR receivers and the NAD M33 I may be making the switch back to class D.

You don’t have to like the M33 or the Anthem’s but can we at least agree that it’s time to retire the old guard of reasons not to buy Class D? Lets lay those poor phantoms to rest.
erik_squires
kinross
28 posts
 
I auditioned both the Gryphon Diablo and Aavik U-300 when looking for a top class all in one solution. In the end I went with the Aavik. It was close and had I just been looking for amplification alone it would have been even closer. The DAC and Phono stage in the Aavik were better however to my ears.

Both are fabulous products.
craig1512
12 posts
 
Lets lay those poor phantoms to rest. But Phantom, the Devialet ones are class D, well Analog Digital Hybrid (ADH) amplification. My Kii Threes are class D designed by Bruno, digital is the future and the future is here now.
pygpyg
24 posts
 
Happy Thanks giving,the music will tell the story,get what sounds good to you,and do the research!
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,179 posts
 
Dsonic has a lot of measurements for their Class D amps posted on their website.  I was impressed!


teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
The map is not the territory.

The measurements are not the sound quality.


I think, from expensive experience, that the NAD M33 will not convince me that Class D amplification is better than or equal to the better class A/b amplifiers.

If forced at gunpoint to put my life on it (for some strange reason), I would stake my life on it as being the outcome.

We all hear differently., we all see differently. We all have different physical skills. we all think differently.

Your chess game skills or skill tests or skill sets, and pshycial aspects as related to the intangible aspects of mind, and bodily capacities, are not mine.

One given person’s assessment of Class D or comparisons of any kind..(in reality, not human projection)... will stand little to no chance of satisfying all persons, or even a majority. That is a logical outcome of the points at hand in the given equation.

Humans are not a number on a sheet of paper. They are a steaming living writhing heap of variables within themselves, never mind when trying to compare them to one another.
Over time, commonalities may emerge. Believing in those commonalities is a general good thing but in the specific, factualizing them as a universal truth, is a not just a mistake but a logical fallacy that humans tend to take on. Instinct and emotions manipulating the formation of logic. the kind of mistake that humans tend to make. the herd part of the mind, it is.

eg, most people get their understanding of consciousness quite wrong and understand it in rather simplistic and incomplete terms. that their idea on/of human awareness are.. well, their awareness itself. Which is, in many cases, horrifyingly incomplete but...100% perfect to them ( Gödel’s incompleteness theorem as a mind set).

Logically, when analyzing humans and how they work or how the gears turn..it can be no other way. Everyone tends to think or pattern their thought formation on being a complete person with 100% skill sets of mind. Not true. It’s just a thing that human minds do. We work with the tools we’ve got to the point that we project them as all of reality - both inner and outer. That sort of thing is unconscious instinct, not logic, or is it representative of actual reality. It’s tied to the ego loop of the voice in the head. Part of the wiring of the fleshy box, it is. Our complex ’integrated with others’ norm, is outward looking, never inward.

Then the aspect of how the mind suffers Pareidolia on not just the visual front but it is known to exist as a hardcore hardwired norm in the world of human hearing.

Where we preload sound shapes into the mind and tack them on to the beginnings of sounds heard, so we can process sound in real time. Eg, when we dance to the beat, it is an act of anticipation, like throwing a rock at a moving target.

We (individual humans), as a norm, don’t hear a timed cymbal, what we get.. is our norm of a cymbal recording, that overwrites the incoming sound with the impression of a norm that is stored in our minds. this is how we process speech and words in real time.

Defeating that system, is a core point in realizing where fidelity in audio - begins and ends. To stop processing our own inner soundscapes, and open our minds and ears to hear the new, in detail and micro detail.

Added to that, is varied levels of intelligence, varied levels of sound libraries, varied levels of processing power, varied levels of native levels of hearing quality and capacity..and more. Just to describe one human vs another.

Next it is suspected that hearing capacity,being tied as a fundamental in the mind, has a variance, between individuals, that is akin to that of intelligence. Where a variation of 5 IQ points means either half the cognitive speed, or twice the cognitive speed, depending on the direction of the differential.

Nor is the idea of human intelligence and a given associated hearing package as being the same, in a given person vs the other. Some might be considered to be mentally less capable in numerical calculation or whatnot, but have superb hearing skills, or vice versa.

Variation in humans, in all ways and directions and combinations of sensory skills, is the norm. Eg, one might be terrible at articulating their disagreement with Eric, but also be hearing the differences clearly.

In other words, the quality of the argument for Class D, by a group or individual, does not in any way mean that it is sonically superior. Or vice versa.

The argumentative map is not the argumentative territory.

So no, Eric, this NAD amplifier, historically speaking and in just the human points of analysis..never mind the science... and..overarchingly, in all possible logic that is real --it is very unlikely that it is going to change my mind.

I reserve the right to be wrong (logic dictates that this has to be in place), but be advised, it is a very very tiny corner or window. So tiny that it is very unlikely that the NAD amp will fit through it.

Eg, if you sit here and call the M33 perfect, or the pinnacle, or better than all of the amplifiers that have come before (which you are stepping into doing).... then I’ll be forced to counter and balance such missives out...and explicitly cut NAD and Bruno - to the bone. Which I have no desire to do. I wish Bruno the best, and to have him continue onward and upward.
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