Classdaudio vs Channel Islands amps

Izora..I worked in retail for several years back in the 80's and in 2005 started a high end retail business that had a short life since my silent JV partner in Oregon was hit hard with his wife coming down with Cancer. She never recovered and he pulled out providing investment capital so I went out of business. The discount range in high end audio retail varies between 40% and 55% based on bracket buying. Iy you buy one to three amps wholesale its a 40% discount. If you buy five amps its 50% discount. Buy ten amps and you get 55% off. This is why I get pissed off at some companies selling factory direct at very high rip off prices to consumers at no discount who do not have to sell to retailers resulting in doubling their profit margins and screwing consumer's. Class D Companies such as Class D Audio, D-Sonic, DAC, Wyred4Sound, Arion, and a few other's recognize this and keep their prices low for the consumer. The highest profit margin's for manufacturer's and retailer's are cable's.

Izora..if you buy the Class D Audio SDS-470C and like to drive an amp hard, Tom recommends a power supply upgrade for $60.00 which would take you from 28K microfarads to 60K microfarads. The larger power supply upgrade consists of six caps at 10K microfarads each and each cap has an 80 volt output.

Well...heck..exploring further on Class D Audio comes up more negative than positive. On one forum I read that a customer purchased a Class D amp and the packaging was terrible. The amp was thrown in a carton with nothing more than styrofoam chips poured around the amp instead of solid foam bars with cutouts holding the amp in the center of the carton. One of the circuit boards broke away from the mount screws and moved back and forth. Had to send back. There is no phone number anywhere on the Class D Audio website.
I came across photos of the D-Sonic M2 and M3 amps and more impressed than ever. The M2 and M3 top models use the same amps. The M2/M3 600M mono blocks uses Abletec amps and their M3 1500M uses Pascal amps. A review by a consumer on the Polk Audio forum who bought the M2 600M mono blocks had them burned in for a month running them through a pair of KEF Q speakers and found them to be warm, very organic, presenting the music with a very powerful flowing ease with no strain whatsoever. D-Sonic is still at the top of my list for best value for Class D amps.

Audiozen,
That's very disconcerting to hear about Class D Audio. I noticed that there was no phone number anywhere on the website. I actually found the number on the internet when I called.

I'm still trying to find a good class D amp. I think I crossed off D-Sonic from my list because it's made in China. I prefer to buy American made. Do you have any other suggestions?

Hi Izora, have you confirmed with the manufacturer that D-Sonic amps are assembled in China? Even if they were, the underlying Pascal or AbleTech power conversion modules come from Northern European companies.

There are a number of manufacturers of new generation class D amps.... Prices range from below $1K to over $50K... So giving an open ended suggestion is a little difficult.

Regards, G.