Fun conversation about a specific part of the audio reproduction chain, and informative to hear the different points of view. What many have said it’s one part of the experience. Perhaps not near the most important parts, but one we have shared understanding and opinions on. My fun take? Look at the forums on music makers, producers, engineers! That stuff that puts the music in your chain, heck you could spend forever just debating microphones! Oh, and they do! Gee, the way you hear them talk about different pianos, guitars. I wish I could hear any differences. I did hear that the Koln concert piano Keith Jarrett played was a piece of junk, so he played differently to compensate. Best performance ever. Lesson learned? It’s all in making the best of what you have. For those that want a holiday treat - listen to the expanded Charlie Brown Christmas. Loving the alternate takes on such well remembered performances.
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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@tweak1 I am expecting the GAN1 to be better than the LSA Voyager 350 GAN. If so, that would be quite an accomplishment, especially at the price. |
A serious advantage of a digital amp system is that you can add....or use alone the $500 Minidsp flex.....for tweaking your system or bi-amping. If you have a CD player and that is your only source then you can buy the Flex and use it as your volume control (it has coax digital in and out)......and also use it to completely eliminate room nodes and equalize your speaker.......a big deal....way cleaner sound. Then, if you want to bi-amp your speakers, you can.....either keeping the passive xover in your two way.....or making your own two way speaker......So, that is CD transport to $500 flex to $1500 digital amp and then to your speakers (now totally equalized) or add another $1500 amp and biamp with eq. If you need to stream and use other sources, then you can use the IFI Zenstream or other streamer ahead of the Minidsp and still either equalize or biamp. All rooms have bass nodes....when eliminated....you have much cleaner sound and better imaging.......So, great digital amp sound plus MORE.....much more. How about 2 12 inch woofers on an open baffle and above it an AMT or Beryllium tweeter.......biamped.......or a slim box with 2 6.5 inch Purfii woofs and a super tweeter on top of the box.....for dipole highs above 1K......so easy.....so pure sounding to biamp using digital amps and the flex. Lot’s of incredible possibilities......imagination is key. |
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