Atma-Sphere Class D… Amazing


Today I picked up my Atma-Sphere Class D Amps. These aren’t broken in yet. And they are simply amazing. I’ve listen to a lot of High End Class D. Some that cost many times what Atma-Sphere Class D costs. I wasn’t a fan of any of them. But these amps are amazing. I really expected to hate them. So my expectations were low. The Details are of what I’ve never heard from any other amps. They are extremely neutral. To say the realism is is extremely good is a gross understatement. They are so transparent it’s scary. These amps just grab you and suck you into the music. After I live with them some and get them broken in. And do some comparisons to some other high end Amps Solid State, Tubes and Class D’s, also in other systems I’ll do a more comprehensive review. But for now, these are simply amazing amps.. Congrats to Ralph and his team. You guys nailed on these.

 

 

128x128pstores

oops, looks like only 1/2 of it….. lol
 
williamdc

46 posts

 

pstores,

You deleted my smiley face in your response. :

Great to see the insides......

So, one thing that would make it sound more open sounding is to remove the steel plate over the transformer and removed the steel bolt. Then you raise the transformer off the chassis and place it on a one half inch thick piece of wood.....you can lightly glue the wood to the chassis and also glue (Amazing Goop) the transformer to the wood......just so it does not move around. When shipping the unit then put the steel stuff back in place to make it more secure. By removing the steel and getting the transformer off the chassis the sound will open up mucho. You can try this simply without the glue and it will take just a few minutes to remove both covers and remove the steel hardware and stick a piece of wood underneath......WHO will be first to try this?

The Cardas binding posts are good but even better is to get rid of the posts, put slightly longer wire on the output and clamp that wire directly to your speaker cables using nylon bolts, washers and nuts sitting right outside the binding post holes....If you remove the spade or whatever on your speaker wire and clamp to the wire coming out of the amp.....your jaw will drop on the floor.

Of course, you would want to put a Furutech super IEC inlet on the amp and get rid of the stock inlet. Get a fuse holder from Acme and wire it off the Furutech inlet and get one of those new yeller fuses from Quantum Science......

If these were my amps I would do all these things within a couple of hours of them being here......When you know what makes better sound.....well, you have to do it!

Of course, there is more.....always more.....including better feet.....adding mass, etc. etc. etc. into infinity.

How about changing the op amp on the input to a discrete one? Discrete op amps are generally more real and open sounding.

This will be fun, reading the responses.....he he.

@ricevs I wouldn’t be surprised if @atmasphere agrees with some of your suggestions (or some variation thereof), but in retail world they’d also likely up the price by hundreds if not thousands of $$$. Gotta draw the line somewhere to reach a price point the market will bear, and from the impressions of current owners it appears Ralph made very good choices to reach his target price point. Then again, this is why mods in our world are popular and why manufacturers introduce “SE” versions that use higher-quality parts and design techniques.

The one thing I’d ask Ralph is if there’s a stereo version in the future that saves a box, decreases the price, and hopefully preserves most of the magic of the mono blocks (kinda like the AGD Tempo di GaN)? Just hoping 🤞🤞🤞, and congrats on what by all accounts is a ground-breaking new amp!

@ricrevs

 

I’m certain Ralph just slapped his forehead that his five decade journey in audio design is now complete. Congratulations Ralph!

@soix 

+1

I believe that @ricevs means well with his suggested modifications, but it's easy to be an armchair quarterback and critique the hard efforts of others. Ric have you given thought to bringing an amplifier to market loaded with all of your ideas to compete in this sector? 

Charles