2. digital
  3. 181448-1574

The revolution has begun!

Digital amps along with digital xovers are the future.....and you can have it NOW. I am not going to say that a $1400 Peachtree GaN1 amp will sound better than a $120K MSB Select, $145K Boulder Preamp and Bouder $250K mono blocks with $20K worth of cables in between (over half a million plus power cords and amp stands)......but it did beat the Holo May KTE with the Holo Serene Pre and Kinki B7 mono blocks with $1000 worth of interconnects ($13k). So what will it take to beat this $200 digital board from Elegant Audio Solutions powered from a $100 switching power supply? With a digital amp you do not need a DAC or a preamp or regular amp with feedback, tubes, or transistors. With digital amps you can bi or triamp your speaker drivers directly without the distortion of passive components. In fact, I would bet that if you bought two GaN 1 amps, bought the $600 digital xover from minisdp (with great linear supply and great coax cables) and biamped some drivers directly that it would sound better than most $50K systems. You could get 2 12 inch woofs and mount them on an open baffle and put a beryllium tweenter on top and set the xover to 1K or less (48db per octave). You hardwire your speaker cable to the woofers voice coil wires and use Music Purifiers and Ground Enhancers on each driver.....Bybee Clarifiers on the back of the woofer magnets.......speaker wires hardwired via plastic clamps into the amps (no binding posts or spades allowed here!). Of course, you can triamp.....and manufacturers will soon have powered digital speaker so all you will need is a source.

There will be other manufacturers designing and building digital amps that will (no doubt) be better than the EAS boards.....but they will come at a price. These, yet to be made digital amps will blow the industry wide open....as no more big heavy expensive boxes will ever need to be purchased......but what EAS has not is fantastic. When I do some mods to the Peachtree amp next month it should get a step or two better. Have fun!

http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/The_Audio_Revolution_has_begun.html

I have started a webpage about all this and more and will be updating it continuously.

ricevs
ricevs OP
1,453 posts
 

Don’t think Bruno has ever mentioned digital based Class D. He uses normal class D with TONS of feedback. The digital amps have NO feedback. Regular class D needs a DAC in front of it......the digital amps do not. Very different. What is interesting is that Purifi has most of the founders of TACT (Tocatta Tech) that made the first digital amp back in the 90s. It would be very easy for them to design a digital amp......but I guess they are hung up on measurements. A digital amp (because it has no feedback) will not measure anything like a Purifi or Hypex or Orchard. We are talking .05 distortion versus .0002. Do you listen to numbers or do you listen to music? So far, everyone (very few ) who has heard the Peachtree has preferred it to other amps (including the latest high power Purifi).

There is no perfect sound forever.  Digital amps will evolve just like everything.  We have only just begun.....but please keep firing away.....he he.

jerryg123's avatar
jerryg123
3,429 posts
 

@ricevs no he has touched on about everything in your post at some point. Google his interviews in trade rags. 

dz13
199 posts
 

I just got a MiniGaN 5 amp and just started breaking it in. Today's the first day and it sounds great already. I have my KEF LS50 Metas doing break in duty and they have never sounded better. (I've only tried a couple of other amps with them though). Viva la revolution!

audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
1,991 posts
 

To your ears you beat it, but to someone else, it may sound like crap....very subjective hobby....a lot of tail chasing with very little improvement in sound equals a lot of mula wasted....I'm done...

lalitk's avatar
lalitk
5,057 posts
 

SOTA digital at a bargain price of $1698.00 (while supplies last)!

https://www.peachtreeaudio.com/products/gan-1-pre-purchase?variant=42215471218838

 

What @ricevs hasn’t said….we all can guess the fate of a device limited to only one digital input, driven by digital volume in Node 2 or similar….that’s hardly revolutionary,  far from it.

Why wouldn’t I use the GaN 1?

Well, if you NEED to connect more sources than your streamer provides, the GaN 1 is probably not for you. It literally has a single coaxial digital audio input and you can connect ANY device that has a variable coaxial digital audio output: a streamer, a CD player, a TV, a cable box, and so forth.

Have a turntable? Sorry, it won’t connect to the GaN 1 unless you use a streamer.

Want to connect your computer to the GaN 1 via USB? Sorry again, unless it also has a coaxial digital audio output it won’t connect either.

Note: While the GaN 1 only has one coaxial digital audio input, your overall input options may be expanded depending on the connected device you use. For example, the Bluesound NODE streamer also includes an HDMI eARC, optical digital audio, and analog input. These can all be accessed via the BluOS app, greatly expanding the capabilities of a GaN 1-based system.

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