Don’t think so. His market is for people who REALLY listen and value how an amp SOUNDS and value his take on harmonic structure of the distortion versus super low standard measurements of distortion. All versions of Purifi and Hypex sound different from each other yet most measure the same. I have no doubt his amp will "sound better" than anyones Purifi....including my modded ones....of course, at a different price point. Some believe the measurements at ASR really mean something.....they do mean something....just not much in the way of how something sounds. Those guys do not listen so they have no idea if their measurements correlate to sound. Ralph has made state of the art tranformerless tube amps for years and his amps have been compared to other amps over and over....so he has a great reference for sound. ASR guys have no reference for sound....they just have some measuring tools. I am pretty sure Ralph won’t send his amps to ASR to be measured. Maybe in a few years someone will send them their own pair and then you can whine about the fact that it does not measure as good in some ways as something.else. Meanwhile, those that have the amps will be grinning because of the beautiful sounds it makes.
So he is adding distortion to please a certain group of people? And those who don’t prefer his particular distortion preference, not so much. Sad when marketing takes the place of producing an amplifier that does what an amplifier is by definition: something that outputs a larger version of the input, nothing more, nothing less.
Sure all hypex and purifi amps sounds different, but not because the amps are different, because people all have different tastes and preferences. No doubt there will be fans and detractors for each and every amp on the market.
I can see you are a big fan but have yet to hear these amps. Confirmation bias alert. No doubt the mods to take it to 11 are forthcoming.
I wish the designer the best of luck. Everyone has different tastes, and surely there will be those who like his flavor of ice cream. As a starting point, I and many others however chose to evaluate the performance of an amp based on objective criteria and without measured performance no doubt a large segment of the market will pass. It’s a very competitive market, especially in class d. The performance standard has been set via Hypex and Purifi and each has been very successful, no doubt because a large segment of the market likes state of the art design, excellent objective performance, as well as a neutral and transparent sound.
GaN is the flavor of the day though to date no one has actually implemented the devices in a way that actually exploits their advantages. One can’t help but wonder if these devices have been implemented in this design in such a way as to actually use them to their potential. Without additional info, we have no idea. For those who bite on all the snake oil fraud, I’m sure they don’t care. Others, who are a little more discerning, surely won't take the word of a snake oil salesman.