Digital amps overhyped ?

samski,
the only 'digital' amp that know that is really worth the hype is the Red Wine Audio 30.2 - http://www.redwineaudio.com/Signature_30.2.html
i've tried ice amps, UcD, nuforce and even other tripath amps but none come even remotely close to the RWA, which i own and love and dont even consider it class-d or whatever. it is a musical component that approaches the tonal qualities of tubes but is better than tubes in quite a few aspects. the only thing is if you need high power it might not be enough but it is surprisingly powerful for its power rating.

-Nate

A friend who has tried a lot of different amps and has a lot of money tied up in his equipment has been using two Acoustic REality eAR 502's bridged. He has had these a couple of years and has had no desire to change them. He says they are the best he has heard.

I was about to buy the Acoustic Reality eAR 202 Ref when I found the NHT Power2 based on the same B&O IcePower modules (same modules Wired for Sound uses) for about a third of the price. I am no expert, but I think this amp sounds great. Much better than the NAD it replaced.

I paid $699 for the Power2 and I just checked and they have dropped the price to $499. Although I'm a bit peeved as I have only had this amp a little over a month, I still think $700 was a good buy. $500 is a steal!

My bad Tan43, I was calculating by approx. days but I posted weeks.My apologies.For me generally, when I buy a new component, I let it run for basically a week 24/7 or at least pretty close to that to get around 100 hours to make sure I am OK with it. I mean you can generally get 250 hours or so burn in on a component within a month. I have never really noticed any additional improvements in any component I have had past that time frame.
I just made some assumptions.

If shipping to return a product from a trial period is too much of a hassle then a class D amp could easily be too much of a hassle to integrate into your system.

There can be some issues regarding the quality of your AC and the physical placement of the component that could require some effort to enjoy the full potential of some of these amps.

Don't get me wrong I'm a very satisfied NuForce user yet some people expecting a plug and play devise have been disappointed by some easily remedied issues.

I have found the H2O amps to be very pricise and warm sounding.
Certainly worth a trial, and yes, they require a few hundred hours
of burn-in.