High end Class D amps?

Thank you for sharing your experience. And thank you for realizing that you are just guessing. You actually have no idea.....that your theory about damping factor and class D has any meaning. You would have to get every class A amp that exists and every class d amp that exists and drive your subs and also your main speakers and see what you hear. Then you MIGHT have some actual real information. Every class D amp sounds different....including in the bass (my direct experience). Maybe adding great subs to any system will always get you better decay.....everywhere. Just as adding a supertweeter can make the bass better. So, what are you hearing? Without doing extensive experiments we are just a bunch of guessers. There is very little real information shared anywhere about how audio actually works. It is basically every man for himself. There are SOOOOOOOOOOOO many things that change the sound. Unless you account for every variable.....you know very little. I have spent over 40 years doing listening tests......and I know some things.....but really what I know....is that I know NOTHING! It is infinite. In drag racing there are only 5 things that make for performance......horsepower, weight, drag, traction and gearing. And all this can be measured by the clock. This is why dragsters all look the same......like the same person built them all. Everything is known in drag racing. Audio is the opposite. Nothing is known. All brands of solder sound different.....you cannot measure it....you have to listen....every wire, every resistor brand, on and on into infinity. Most things that make a sonic difference cannot be measured.

I brought a proto of an amp I sold last year to someones house and A/Bed the amp versus his. Both his and my amps used IceEdge 1200as modules in mono blocks. Mine was modded....his was not. Both had the same damping factor and power as I did not change the feedback or output stage. His amp sounded "tubey" in the bass.....my amp sounded way faster, and cleaner and preferable by him and me. Damping factor is just one of tons of things that can affect bass performance.

I am not saying that we should not share our guesses.....it is fun. The trouble is, that most state things like what you said but leave out the part that you have limited knowledge and its a guess. So, it is stated as "class d amps have zero decay in the bass....they are overdamped".......Then the rest of us just repeat this on other forums till everyone thinks the same thing. The blind leading the blind. Words are very powerful. Thank you for your intelligent use of words.

The best words are those that uplift us. For we all want to be happy. Share uplifting words and deeds with everyone....we all win that way. May you all be happy and joyful this season and always.

I’ve noticed that they do tend to truncate the natural decay times on bass notes, which I believe is due to their very high damping factors.

For those that want to know, I believe "that experience" is more likely because many speakers have there lowest impedance in the bass and also their highest -phase angle.
Combined, these two give’s you what’s called EPDR, (Equivalent Peak Dissipation Resistance) and that can give the amp a very nasty load impedance to look at.
Good big current bi-polar amps don’t mind seeing this
.
Class-D tends to quickly drop off it’s current starting under 4ohms down to 2ohms, look at any Class-D "independently measured" spec and you will see that, they never come close to doubling wattage from 4 to 2 to 1ohm, many even go backwards, showing severe current limitations into low EPDR impedances, this is limiting bass performance and becoming like a tone control, rolling off the bass instead of staying flat to 20hz.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/stereophile-has-started-calculating-epdr....

This link also on EPDR on the second page:
https://www.stereophile.com/reference/707heavy/index.html


Cheers George

Combined, these two give’s you what’s called EPDR, (Equivalent Peak Dissipation Resistance) and that can give the amp a very nasty load impedance to look at.
Good big current bi-polar amps don’t mind seeing this
.
Class-D tends to quickly drop off it’s current starting under 4ohms down to 2ohms, look at any Class-D "independently measured" spec and you will see that, they never come close to doubling wattage from 4 to 2 to 1ohm, many even go backwards, showing severe current limitations into low EPDR impedances, this is limiting bass performance and becoming like a tone control, rolling off the bass instead of staying flat to 20hz.

This statement is blatantly false. Class D amps are limited in their ability to play low impedance (and severe phase angles) in the same manner as traditional solid state, although in practice a class D amp usually has a much lower output impedance than most traditional solid state amps.


Be-it class D or traditional solid state, if the output power is dropping into lower impedances, this is entirely due to the power supply and not the topology of the amp. At anything less than full power, any class D amp made in the last 5 years will act as a nearly perfect voltage source with any conventional speaker, with loads as low as 0.5 ohms no worries (since their output impedance is likely less than 100th of that). 

This statement is blatantly false. Class D amps are limited in their ability to play low impedance (and severe phase angles) in the same manner as traditional solid state,

No it’s not, and you know it and are in denial, your just once again in "product protection mode for your yet to be released Class-D".
 Just try to get any Class-D to perform as well as an amp with bi-polar output like a big Gryphon's into a pair of Wilson Alexia’s, the Class-D will be shamed.

Well this is an excellent example of how George has no idea what he's talking about. Sheesh.

George, perhaps you could come up with some evidence of your preposterous claim?? You know what they say- photos or it didn't happen.