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
asctim
495 posts
 

I like the objective versus subjective chart. It gets complicated though since almost everything is biased, colored by personal feelings, equivalent to opinions, and non-factual & non-verifiable. I prefer to use the terms objective and subjective to define types of statements. "The cat is on the mat" is an objective statement whether it is true or not. Ultimately it can never be truly verified so at some point a subjective opinion about the evidence available has come to play. It’s considered proven when the vast consensus of stakeholders agree with the evidence available. "The cat should be on the mat" is a subjective statement by its very nature, no matter the consensus. This whole audio debate is not really about subjectivity and objectivity. It’s about objective explanations that are given for why we have a particular subjective feeling about the way something sounds. It’s really an entirely objective argument. You really can’t argue in any logical sense about subjective issues. So if someone says they love such and such audio component - that can’t be argued with. If they say they love it purely because of the way it produces sound waves and not because of any visual aesthetics, back story, lore of the guru who made it, etc. influencing their sonic perception - they could be wrong! They’re making an objective statement that can be tested when they say things like that. They usually won’t be tested so I consider their explanations as unverified and just accept the fact that they are enjoying their gear for whatever reasons.

dolfan
109 posts
 

I got the Gan 1 a couple days ago. Can only compare it to my Classe Sigma integrated. The difference is night and day. I like it. So simple yet so good. Using the Node with it. 2.1 setup for TV and streaming.

jerryg123's avatar
jerryg123
3,429 posts
 

Good for you, glad you are happy. Recall this type of excitement that faded fast with the LSA Voyger. 

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chopandchange
44 posts
 

This all looks very good on paper if you are an audiophile looking for the best sound from a digital source - all things being equal this concept should be better - surely? You are eliminating so many unneeded parts in the audio chain - it has to sound better - logic dictates this as a fact (Mr. Spock)!

But, and one but bothers me - all the digital "processing" that goes on inside a powerdac (or whatever you call them) can create a lot of RFI self-noise which can pollute the sound despite how pure this all seems to be.

You could say that purer is using a TDA1543 DAC (which does not do any computational processing of the signal at all due to its 80s simplicity - and why many hi-end audio designers use these simple DAC chips now). And then use a simple Tube amplification stage which again tends to be the simplest form of amplification without the need for many transistors in the path - also the amplification via a Tube goes through a vacuum and not silicon.

So maybe you could argue that a simple setup like the above could also be an excellent solution for different reasons.

 

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