What are the best GaN Amplifiers available today?


There have been a number of threads discussing the wonder of GaN and some of the individual amplifiers that have caught peoples attention, including those from AGD, Atma-Sphere, Peachtree, LSA, etc. Has anyone done a shootout against two or more GaN amps? If so, which did you prefer, and why? And on what speakers?

Also, of the one you preferred, do you prefer it over every other amplifier you’ve ever heard? If not, what non-GaN amp do you enjoy more?

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"Many audiophiles still live their lives according to the myth that we can hear things we can’t measure (which was true in the 1980s) as if somehow measurement technology had not marched into the present the same way that every other tech has improved over the last 35 years!"

The above statement is the real MYTH....it cannot be proven. The TRUTH is that you cannot measure wire, jacks, resistors, solder, removing unneeded parts, upgrading most parts, etc.......but these things all make a sonic differentce that you can hear. In audio...it is the sound that is real.....not some pretend myth measurement dance.

If Ralph wants to believe that everything you hear can be measured....well let him live in that realiy....nothing wroing with that. But, for those with ears.....we know....we know all cables sound different.....and we know there is no measurement tool that can tell us how they measure (because wires do not measure.....other than capacitance, resistance and inductance......which by themselves do little to tell us how something sounds).

The "more feedback equals less differences in parts" thang that Ralph stated is totally untrue (poppycock!). I mod the Purifi amps that have tons of feedback....way more than Ralphs amps.....and everything I do makes the same sonic difference when done on the ZERO feedack digital amps I mod.  I havae worked on several high feedback solid state class A/B amps over the years.......everything I do can be heard just like any other less feedback amp.

Those with Ralph's amp can do a quick test.....just remove the covers and remove all the hardware on the toroidal transformer.....lift it off the chassis and place a quarter inch thick piece of wood underneath.....put the transformer back down and listen.  This CANNOT be measured.....but it can be heard....by YOU!

The Iconoclast wires by Belden were designed by a very scientific guy. However, they make them in three grades.....regular copper, OFC copper and PCOCC copper........do they sound the same?....(same exact construction, just different pruity of wire)....NO, the more pure wire ones sounds better......Can they measure the difference?.....NADA.

Have a great every moment!

Many believe you can hear things that you can measure, yet it is proven to be out of the ranges of human hearing.

like what you like, to hell with what others say. Like re soldering makes a difference. Only those that benefit monetarily act like they believe it makes a diff. 

Proposing a "tweak" is not the same as designing an amplifier..

For example i had a better experiment to propose about for sure what cannot be measured BUT could be heard :

Put a 250 gram of quartz on your amplifier...

Put a 250 gram of shungite on your amplifier...

Put the two together now...

You will hear a difference...

I fine tune my S. S. amplifier with these minerals tweaks... Really for the best...

But tweaking is not designing... No more than walking with better crutches are like installing an up to date prosthetic legs or growing a new one ..

And an improvement by design is always better than tweaking a design... So good the tweaks will be ... And they will if you know what you do with your ears...😊

But all of what we can learn from a component  and hearing if  we learn how to modify or tweaks it  are not all  measurable...If we tweak...

But if we design , all that we made MUST BE measurable, by defintion of a good design... And it is better if the designer as atamasphere know about harmonics for sure... And i will trust him precisely because of that...

And he knows that objectivist as subjectivist are deluded focussing on the gear but forgetting about psycho-acoustic basic ...

 

Just buy a certified good quality amp to start with and no need to take chances on tweaks.