LSA Voyager GAN Amplifier

As I noted here - https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=179033.msg1882290#msg1882290   "There are all kinds of skill levels when using a tool of any kind.  It is always better when the people with the most skills use the same tool.  Pros always make it look easy and that's why in many cases even when I have tools for something I can do, I call a real pro."  Knowing how something sounds requires listening.  I've owned a bunch of amps (Class A/AB as well as Class D) and it's easy knowing what something really sounds like when one has lived with them long term and listened to the same music (and I've posted about my speakers many times and their impedance measurements, which also can be found as measured by real pros from major audio magazines and no need to post it again here in response to a worthless audio website - I also will not be waiting up on an upcoming holiday for a visit from Santa and don't need to re-post about that either - whatever one enjoys - go ahead and enjoy).

Andypandy,

Look closely at the graph.......these divisions are one half db.  At 10K....where MAYBE you could hear a difference......at 8 ohms it is .2db high........at 4 ohms it is .3db down.  You can hear that?  Can anyone hear that?.....don't think so.  Usually it takes a half a db for someone to notice a gain change.  The Oppo volume control on the 205 player had one half db steps......and you could barely hear it.......and that was changineg the gain of all the music.....not just at 10K.

The particular amp that was reviewed was obviously not functioning properly.  All of us who have listened to this amp via balanced inputs would have noticed the difference in gain (10 db.....and the distortion difference).

So, you have a broken amp and a test that tells nothing about how the amp sounds. .....and of course, ASR does no listening tests.  If someone else sent him another Voyager amp it would not have that gain/distortion issue.  The Voyager amps I have had here work perfectly....same gain on both channels....measured and listening wise.  A seriously good sounding amplifier.

Longtime A'goner here, and I generally just lurk, but I feel compelled to defend the LSA 350 GaN amp. I've only had it for a few days and it is far from broken in, but it is a spectacular unit. I purchased it after considering a wide range of amps to replace my Parasound Halo A21 which bit the dust after 15 years of service. the GaN sent my otherwise awesome Wyred4Sound SX-1000R's to my HT room. ASR has its uses, but it is far from Holy Writ. They clearly received a faulty unit. I can only comment on mine, and it sounds superb. 

Ric - it (your modded Voyager) sure does sound great.  I've been swapping in RCAs (vs. the XLRs and as I've noted to you my main system is bigger pain vs. what most people deal with) for movies from the HT receiver and I might even go back to RCAs (I just re-calibrated the HT levels a couple of days back and watched a couple of movies - if I use the RCAs my Modwright preamp defaults to HT Bypass when off I won't have to swap a thing).

I own two of the products measured by ASR (Voyager and Class D Audio mini GaN amplifier) and my friend owns the Apollon Audio IcePower in the shallow depth case.  So I have hands on experience with those products.  Before the Voyager, I was using the EVS 1200 for music and the mini GaN for HT (I've since moved that amp to a system with GR Research N3 speakers to drive the left and right channel fed via a Marantz 5010 receiver - it is a guest bedroom system).

I can tell anyone that while I've not measured the mini GaN amp, it has plenty of power.  It drove my Thiel 3.7s (not an easy load - just Google Thiel CS 3.7 impedance) in a large room with ease.  In fact, I one point I had a Bryston 14BSST (which is rated at 900W into 4 ohms) and it (the mini GaN drove them better for HT (did not try it for music in the main system but did in a secondary system (B&W P6s) vs. the Bryston.  As a side note, the 14BSST I had was the 15 amp version (I got that version as I did not have a 20 amp circuit in the old house) vs. the 20 amp 14BSST (which they made for low impedance speakers).  When Brystom went to the squared and cubed series, they just made 15 amp versions of those amps (as with the change in circuitry they must have found it drove speakers the former version had diffuculty with).

Ric when an amp changes it’s rolloff to peaking up like because of load difference, there’s more than just FR involved, it’s a large distortion devatition as well which is not very good, as stated

Quote:

"Lots of money is left on the table here in many areas from frequency response load dependency to high amount of distortion."

Thanks Andy