I have the Peachtree GaN 400...400 watt GaNfet amp. For $2500 there is no amp near it...a/b or Gan that is as smooth and musical. More so than my famed 845 tube amp. Must be paired with tube preamp ( Audio-gd). My LSR+ Maggies sing like a 5K-10K speaker. Sorry class A/ B fans. This is the way to get more of a Musical...pure sound and not at all etched. A/B is more etched and bright than a good quality GanFet. The AGD at 10 K is the best GAN amp but the GaN 400 isn’t far behind for 1/4 the cost. Try to find one used. Impossible.
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.
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bigtwin, You don't understand. How many times do I have to state this: This is not a normal Class D amp like the Orchard in the review you posted. The reviewer has never heard this "digital" amp so he has no reference to this amp nor do you. Peachtree 400.....AGD.....these are all normal class D that require a Dac in front of it and analog stages in the class D amp.......THIS IS DIFFERENT. This thread is not about normal class D........but this a DIGITAL AMP!!!!! |
@ricevs Another digital Class D amp (power DAC) is the Exogal Comet/Ion from the folks who developed one of the first power DACs, ex-Wadia engineers. The Comet/Ion is very transparent, dead neutral, and dynamically expressive. Active speakers have many advantages including no passive xover components and amps chosen to match the needs of their drivers, plus they can also add digital room equalization, listen to speakers from Eikon, Dutch & Dutch, and the KEF LS60s. Digital Class D has the potential to push active speaker systems closer to the goal while keeping costs in check, simplifying circuitry, and easily integrating streaming, active xovers and EQ, I hope many manufacturers take note and develop speaker systems incorporating these ideas. |
Yes, I know about the Exogal......very esoteric, and you have to use it with its own pre/DAC and the cost is high and the power is not great......and you cannot do room correction, bi amp, eq and do whatever. You have to realize that the inexpensive EAS boards are 4 channel boards.....for instance the 400 watt stereo boards are 4 100 watt single ended channels. So, if you wanted to use one board for mono tri-amping....then no problem. Two channels get bridged for 400 watts for your woofs and 100 watts for your mid and highs.....built in to the board is a fully progammable processor (software comes from the manufacturer to set it up any way you want.....xover, eq....whatever....all on the same board). You could mount one board inside a 3 way speaker and program it to do everything and just drive the board digitally......this is way cool. Of course there are already boards made like that that people use but they are using conventional DAC chips and op amps on the output of their digtital processor and then using conventional class D or A/B afterwords. This will be simpler and sonically purer and can be done very fast. Imagine the fully digital integrated amp with at least 4 inputs, LEEDH lossless volume control, full dsp and 8 channels of amplifier output. You could mount some drivers on an open baffle and just run wires to the drivers and do all the xover points and eq and time aligning yourself in an hour......sit back and have the best sound you have even heard......this is coming. ONE FRICKIN box and drivers on a board.......you will play with different drivers instead of saving up for the next 100lb class A amp that costs $100K (that won't give you anything you don't already have)......this is the future......of course, powered speakers will be cool....but who wants to listen to the same drivers all the time.......got to have something to do. We will all be on forums talking about the latest drivers we have listened to.....amps and preamps and DACs will be dead......for the old fogys. |
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