Class D amplifiers. What's the future look like?

Speaking of bass and guitar players, with tubes you can tune and fine tune the sound by tube rolling. And with SS, any class ?

@inna Many guitar and bass players rely on their effects 'pedals' to sculpt their sound. So a lot of the time they just need an amp that sounds clean and is easy to play loud. Its less common to rely on the sound of the amp when it overdriven (clipping); those that do that though are more likely to have a tube amp. Just saying that since that latter practice is becoming less common (because effects pedals provide the distortion/fuzz instead), tubes will be on the wane in the musical instrument world. It makes a big difference at 3:AM if you have to move equipment out of a gig and the amp weighs 85 pounds or 15 pounds...

I find that in these forum threats it is helpful for someone to provide feedback on a technology or a particular sound that they have actual experience with.

Although there's some real nonsense happening here as people arguing back and forth about technologies in the pros and cons end of the day all I care about is the sound.

I have auditioned the arcam sa series and they have a technology which is apparently based on class d but they call it cost g.  I thought it was really good sound really really good sound.  And I know that it's meant for mass market audiences so the sound was a bit warm a little bit tube like but not fuzzy.

I did find it it locked just a little bit of detail and dimension or depth but this is a mass market class g

 Be very interesting to see this technology go upscale for example what about an actual audio file grade class g amp from arcam.  It may already exist but I haven't heard it.

So class d and g I think are really promising and really stinking powerful too.  The arcam SA20 I auditioned powered by full cal 936s to whatever the heck volume you wanted to Man that had some juice.

Now I personally own the PS audio stellar strata integrated amp and that is a class d integrated app that retails for around $3,500.  I love it.  It's powerful it's detailed it's a bit on the warm side of sound so it warms up those f o c a l s .  And month after month I raised my opinion of it.  The dac  cables. Speakers interconnects etc all make a difference at that level of sound quality.  So yeah it's a class d.  Is it the best?  Who knows?  Is there a color that's the best?  But whatever it's very good very good.  

So you can see we didn’t go into this blindly. We knew the class D R&D would be a bust if it didn’t sound every bit as good or better than our OTLs (which, in the tube world, rule the roost when it comes to transparency and bandwidth...).

@atmasphere , From what i’ve experienced thus far, the type of stuff you do could work for guys who mostly roll with midfi (they may think it’s hifi) or don’t have a high enough "point of reference". But, that shouldn’t worry you. You could still make enough money selling to those guys. IMO, what you won’t be able to do is convince guys who roll with any higher level of gear that your stuff should be sufficient for them as well.

For what its worth, I do have a "digital" amp (noted above), the Technics SU-R1000. It would sound pristine for a lot of guys for sure. It works for me in some cases. I am contemplating pairing it with a tube pre or something else for it to be agreeable to me in more cases/more types of music. One could open its chassis and immediately note that it is a innovative engineering masterpiece. You could get it yourself, compare your stuff side by side and let me know where you think you stand....Or let me know when you can beat the Technics and i’ll take a look at your amp.

On the same note, Schiit did something unique and innovative with the Tyr...You could try it as well (it is a very affordable amp) and see how your stuff measures up next to it.

Create "Virtual System" has not worked in months (Error = User can’t be blank).

In my third system I own the following gear, which I know most people would be jealous about:

Gryphon APEX Monos

CH  Precision L1 dual Line Stage

dCS Vivaldi APEX DAC stack

Wilson Audio WAMM Master Chronosonic

All cabling is Nordost Odin 2

This system sounds so alive that I have stopped attending to concerts. But you are correct - Class D sounds so lousy. Forget about it.