Class D for a Tube Lover

audiodwebe
You bought what you wanted and that is great.

Class D has made great advances in the last couple of years and GaN output devices has made the greatest impact.

If your looking for great sound vs good it will cost more money i know i have been on the class D merry go round for over a decade and i have finally found a class D amp worthy of sitting next to my class A and SET amps.

My advice is to enjoy what you just bought and save for a good GaN class D amp.

linndrum8086 posts Try this https://6moons.com/audioreviews/acousticimagery/1.html
Not in business any longer. Their class D amps are great. I owned them. Used them with Wilsons sounded great. Also use VAC amps as well .
They sound just as warm

Near the bottom you can see a photo of "Bruno Putzeys with circular NC400 board tethered to SMPS600 supply".

Now that's a nice amp that's still available.

From my experience with ricevs' EVS1200, he knows what he's doing/talking about

I'm quite surprised there's been no mention of Jeff Rowland amps. They don't suck. Maybe the sub$2k price target is a bit off-putting, however a pair of 201 mono's could be had for that, and honestly you should be able to get the 501's for that price. I will state that they need to be run with the 'PC1' or your own assembly (easy to do) of the Power Correction modules-they are actually DC power supplies and make a huge positive difference, however the amps can be enjoyed without them. What I can say (I run the 501 mono's with PC-1 supplies) is they are very smooth, no sense of harshness at all and hold their own against fine AB amps (I've never directly compared to Class A). JRDG uses Lundahl transformers in the circuit, and who-knows-what-else in modifying the ICEpowerASP1000 (the 201's use the ASP500?). I haven't priced JRDG integrated amps lately - maybe something is of interest. Everything I've heard of Jeff Rowland's has held to his 'house sound' quite well, and I'd suggest it shouldn't offend a tube-lover.

According to my personal experience, it makes not much sense to mix class D with tube preamplification. While class D may give a clear very low distortion sound, tubes would always add a notable (for me) distortion that ruins class D clean sound. I prefer to use either pure tube setting or pure SS setting as I enjoy both kinds of sounds. Mixing tubes with class D gives some extra warmth but also a notable distortion which, for me, they are not compatible. 

And one more vote of PS audio Stellar S300. I use it in my third system with PS audio Gain Cell pre. I use this system not very often. Each time I return to it, it sounds better. They took quite a while, far above 400 hours, to come to the sound of that quality, which is clean alive and presential, live recordings sound especially good, the base it tight, mid and high frequencies,  dynamics are fine, there is nothing to complain about, especially for the price.  The difference as they sounded at the beginning and now is just drastic and the sound is still getting better. My initial confusion was also caused by the DAC incorporated into the pre, which is not indeed good I use now an external one. It is a rear case when one gets completely satisfied with what he has.