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LSA Voyager GAN Amplifier

Just got mine last week.  After 24 hours of play all I can say is that this is not your father's class D amplifier.  There is not one thing about its sound that reminds me of the class D gremlins that I do not like.  The low end filled in and now has deep impact, the midrange is the love child of a beautiful tube and clean hybrid amp - just gorgeous.  Highs are very clean and extended. Spatial cues are top notch. My system has had some damn good tube and solid state amps in it before and it has never sounded this good.  I am blown away with the quality of sound coming from class D amplification at this price point.

This 300 wpc amplifier is a real winner.....
jaymark
ricevs
1,543 posts
 
I assume you are using the Conductor speaker wire on both the Coda and Voyager when driving the Thiel's?
yyzsantabarbara
5,123 posts
 
@ricevs Yes the Conductor SE speaker cable. The FrontRow is on the sidelines until next week. I did try the FrontRow for 1 album and it is at another level of goodness. However, I reluctantly took it off and put in the Conductor cable for the past few hours.

I will be burning in the Voyager on the RAAL interface box (I have 2 of these now) until Monday. After a few more hours the weekend starts and I will let the Voyager burn in non-stop. I won't be listening this weekend on this system. That should get me very close to 200 hours.
pinwa
307 posts
 
The chassis of the GAN 5 is steel.  The GaN 400 is non-magnetic.  Since the GAN 5 is probably going to be returned I'm not going to open it up so see if removing the top makes any sonic difference.

The GaN 400 is organized quite differently internally compared to the picture of the Voyager but there is a sort of screen on the top of the GaN 400 that lets you peer inside to a limited extent and the layout of the components seems identical to the Voyager.  Now I could be wrong about them having identical modules because the view is so restricted and I can't see the totality of the board.
ricevs
1,543 posts
 
This is good news that the chassis is steel on the GaN 5.   This means my mods will make even more difference.
arafiq's avatar
arafiq
1,730 posts
 
One trend I’ve noticed is that every time there is a so-called ’breakthrough’ in class D technology, folks are going gaga over it initially. It is proclaimed with much fanfare that ’class D technology is finally here,’ and how much better it is than class A and tubes and everything else under the sun. After a few months, the same posters have moved on to something different. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade here, but this ’second coming of class D’ story has been repeated ad nauseam on this site and many others. I hope you can see why some of us are skeptical. There’s a reason that valves and class A, despite being heavy and inefficient, have stood the test of time.

As Mark Twain once said, ’the stories of my death are greatly exaggerated’ ... I will check back in 6 months again.
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