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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Are there folks here who own GaN based amps that drive difficult loads? A couple of years ago a certain character who used to post here used to complain that Class D amps cannot drive 2 ohm speakers. What are your experiences? Care to share?

I have tried the Voyager 350 GAN and the Peachtree GAN400 with Thiel CS3.7 and Magnepan LRS+. Another poster on this thread has successfully tried the GAN400 with the LRS+ and other Maggies.

In my case, the GAN amps were able to delivery very good sound on these difficult to drive speakers. 

 

Like re soldering makes a difference.

When I owned Thiel speakers, a support guy at Thiel sent me the solder Thiel uses for my driver replacement because he said they thought it sounded better. It definitely was nicer to apply over other solder I had.

I’ve had no problem with various Class D amps driving speakers on recent years.   I even have a $90 chip based Class D integrated amp driving original KEF ls50s amazingly well where I have seen other way more expensive amps fail at that miserably.  As always YMMV.  Like anything else all CLass D amps are different.  So yes they can drive difficult loads well but you have to do your homework.  The info needed to make a smart choice is out there. 

Are there folks here who own GaN based amps that drive difficult loads? A couple of years ago a certain character who used to post here used to complain that Class D amps cannot drive 2 ohm speakers. What are your experiences? Care to share?

I asked Ralph this recently regarding his Atmasphere GaN amp and he said it has no problem driving a 2 Ohm load.