Anybody else waiting for GaN and Purify to have a baby?

@soix

short answer yes... it is crystal clear now... very nice... just trying to judge its various subtler characteristics in comparison to my references

@rh67

i think we who have spent much time with tube amps, and in particular super sweet single ended low powered ones, have ears that to some degree have been conditioned to tube-borne 2nd order harmonic distortion, which gives a special sense of warmth, fleshiness and body to the music... super clean solid state, even the really top stuff that is not hampered by odd order harmonic and im distortion (heard as hardness, harshness and stridency) amplify the music with the ’sweetening’ even order distortions to varying degrees... so i understand what you are saying as you term ’the missing link’ -- to some degree when we get really top ss amps, we may need to relearn how to listen and appreciate well recorded music is presented with almost no distortion at all...

+1.

have ears that to some degree have been conditioned to tube-borne 2nd order harmonic distortion, which gives a special sense of warmth, fleshiness and body to the music... super clean solid state, even the really top stuff that is not hampered by odd order harmonic and im distortion (heard as hardness, harshness and stridency)

Been down that path with massive Amprex 805 SET monoblocks, and yes it was very novel for a couple of years, but music seem to loose itself of sense, immediacy, slam, and startle factor.
To me nothing beats out Linear SS Pure Class-A to at least >50w then you have your "warmth" and "fleshiness" but also with hyper detail and sense, immediacy, slam, and startle factor.
The rest can be A/B out to 200w.
Like a Gryphon Antillion switched to 50w-A or even better 100w-A Class-A mode, (10w-A was a little bit artificial but good for non serious listening dinner music), mind you this is on Wilson Alexia’s

Cheers George

Alberto PURPOSEFULLY used 400kHz in the first version because he noticed no improvement in sq beyond that. His amps were considered awesome with that frequency. The newer tubes now use 800kHz, purportedly offering increased resolution across the frequency board.By the way, the use of these frequencies certainly disproves George’s position of go 1.5MHz or don’t go at all.

As you increase the switching frequency you run into an issue with deadtime. I'm not going to go into what's actually going on here but I'll just say that the output filter plays an enormous role in the switching. So you may find that if you increase the switching frequency you may have more need for deadtime, not less! If you increase the filter frequency you get on a different part of its discharge curve and this will have a direct effect on the deadtime required. But the overarching issue is controlling noise and ringing as you increase the switching frequency!


@georgehifi  You might consider that because you heard one particular tube amplifier, that does not mean you've heard them all! I'm not a particular fan of SETs either, although I'm very aware of some of their strengths. I think their weaknesses outweigh their strengths and like you, I want more detail and impact than they seem capable.