My NAD 3020 D proves your Class D tropes are wrong

For a serious 'home' listener on a budget this discussion becomes a little prissy.  The ranges of difference make very little in a normal home's rooms and rooms under 16' x 16'.  The higher ranges of my amplifiers have never even gotten close to max, whatever the 'Class'.  They would blow ear drums and windows out first!  
One of my daily amps today is the Peachtree Grand X-1 hybrid integrated with valves in the pre-amp stage and 440 watts into 8 ohms.  The big watts are from a Class D amplifier.  The parameters I look for in an amp are more than ample with superb all-around performance.  Especially the onboard ESS Sabre DAC and the tubed pre-amp's handling of all forms of digital source material.  I run only a coax from my CD unit and even that sounds really good being processed in an integrated amp.  Sorry, no mono-blocks or ICE power.  
I have seen the reviews and gone off ready to 'move up' with a Mac MA252 valve pre-amp and solid state Mac A/B power too. and then the Prima Luna all tube designs which are awesome indeed.  And then I sit down in my listening place and listen to a lot of vinyl, CDs and FM radio with great Public Radio stations (shout out to WCMU on line and the 8 PM EST Sunday evening with the Duke of Juke blues show and the later turn to  blues).  Oh, oh.  I think some of this group may have passed out when I said 'FM radio'.  I hope they enjoy their monster systems as much as I enjoy this Class D that is made very well, even if not driving noise at a fraternity party.  But this 440 per channel would blow the place up without distortion and lots of play.  
I believe the entire Peachtree amplifier NOVA series that run up to 500 watts per are loved by their owners and all Class D.  And as many others have rightly noted:  I do not believe you can hear any difference in normal home listening from equivelant models with A/B power.  

I do not believe you can hear any difference in normal home listening from equivelant models with A/B power.  

The class of operation isn't important. How much feedback the amp uses *is*. This can have an enormous effect on how much and what kind of distortion is present. Distortion is a good deal of the reason we hear differences between amplifiers- that old trope about 'distortion is negligible and therefore inaudible' so often seen in reviews of the last 50 years is false.

All musical instruments can be defined by their unique spectrum of harmonic overtones.  Harmonics are what enable you to distinguish between a viola and a clarinet playing the same note, e.g. A at 440hz.

Amplifiers running in any class, e.g. AB, will not have the same amounts and combination of second, third, fourth, etc. harmonic distortion.

And that is the difference between a technician and a scientist. With the exception of Floyd Toole who hangs out there and I have the deepest admiration for, they are technicians pretending they know a thing about science when they don't.

Nelson Pass, Revel, Bose, JBL, Meyer Sound. That's where t he actual scientists are. I don't necessarily like the result of all of them, but their science and business practices are rock solid as a result.

Na, you just have to know who exactly you are dealing with. There are a ton of tire kickers there, but also some people really strong, especially on amplifiers and electronics, and digital.  Acoustics is pretty weak, but that is pretty true for most forums.


I don't see Nelson at all as a scientist. Tinkerer and artist perhaps, but not scientist. Bruno Putzey is far more of scientist, as is Dr. Bose, and not just because of the Doctor, but the company overall. Certainly some scientists at Harmon (Samsung) and I would put Meyer far ahead of Pass too.

The class of operation isn't important. How much feedback the amp uses *is*. This can have an enormous effect on how much and what kind of distortion is present.

Class D feedback works so differently than linear amps that I have trouble believing the amount of feedback behaves the same way, but what do I know?