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Competitive class D amp suggestions

I have been Class D fun since a few years ago when i bought my first class D amp. I like the concept, in general, and all the attractive features of this class of amplifiers. I tried 4 different ones, currently i  stayed with one of them that i consider to be the best among all four amps. I do enjoy and like it. At the same time,  my 5 watts SET amplifier (with more than 100 times higher distortion according to the specs) gives more natural and (surprisingly) notably cleaner sound (THD of the class D amp is 0.001). The soundstage  of the class D amp is not so bad but that of the tube one is still better.   

I remain attracted by class D amps though. 

Any fresh suggestions on reasonably priced class D amps (i mean excluding  non-reasonably priced class D amps, e.g., Merrill amplifiers)?

Any comments on non-reasonably priced class D amps are also welcome (so far i was not able to audition many class D amps and am curious if there are some which could really compete with Class A). 

128x128niodari
rolox
181 posts
 

I’m very fond of the heavily modded Trends TA10.1 I use in my main system. With a nice linear power supply, it sounds marvelous driving the 500 to 20KHz range in my trip-amped, very high sensitivity system. If you don’t need much power, that TA2024 chip has something magical, somewhat closer to SET sound than the vast majority of other class D amps. Swap a few passive components inside, by-pass the volume control (there's a switch inside on the pcb), use it with a nice preamp and feed it some clean 12V, it really is lovely.

I have zero experience with the higher end, more modern offerings but have a few small class D with various chips, some of them using great components, but they fall flat on their face compared to the old Trends amp.

niodari's avatar
niodari OP
301 posts
 

@rolox Thanks for your post. Looks and sounds interesting. Would be nice to try it. 

veerossi
169 posts
 

I went from a SET 42wpc (Line Magnetic LM-805ia) to Atma-Sphere Class D monoblocks and an Atma-sphere MP-3.3 Preamp. Life is good- no regrets. I don't think I'll be going back to tube amps anytime soon. 

tweak1
3,671 posts
 

My 2 class Ds are EVS 1200; dual mono, IcePower AS1200 modules (no longer made) and a LSA Voyager 350 GaN fet amp from Underwood HiFi, which occasionally come up on the used market. Great deal of you're patient, then send it to Tweak Audio for big improvement over OEM, or Underwood has a cool amp based on IcePower AS2 1200, module. Retro design with cool looking meters: On sale now

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