"D" amps, general discussion who's 1 and why?

Muralman1:

I think that applying quantum mechanics to digital reproduction is quite a stretch. Please share the proofs you mention with us.

BTW, the DSD encoding scheme used on SACD does not use a digital filter on playback. That's one of its advantages.

Also note that almost every digital recording made in the last 15 or so years was made with a delta sigma oversampling A/D converter, so your digital sources (CD and SACD) have already seen one round of oversampling and digital filtering before they get to you. Since you're hearing something musical from your DAC, it would seem that oversampling and digital filtering are not per se robbing digital of musicality.

I think that comparisons using "every", "always", and "never" are suspect. The world is more complex than that.

My $.02

steidguitars, your point is interesting. I wish that our statements were followed by links to reliable sources on regular basis.
But the problem here is that you are assuming that class d is not able to play overtones and that has no basis on real facts.
It's possible also that class d is so faithfull that plays back recordings without artifacts that where not intented in the first place or you are confusing overtones with distortion - class d is known for lack of distortion introduced in the signal. this is pure speculation.

As a relative latecomer to these conversations, it appears that this discussion of oversampling has some history to it. I run a Cary 303/200 into the Spectron. The Cary has an oversampling button, and after playing around with it for a while, I cannot believe how spot on is the language used by Muralman: "the sound closes up, harmonics are lost, proper gradual decay becomes severely truncated." It is as if every instrument has been put through heavy handed gated compression in the studio. All the "natural-ness", for lack of a better word, is removed from the instruments.

However, this being my first experience with oversampling, I attributed it to the CD processor, and not to the amp. Does Class D exaggerate this effect in a way that other amp topologies would not? Whatever the cause, I listen exclusively in non-over-sampled mode now.

I auditioned the Bel Canto Ref 1000 mk2 mono-blocks recently and was absolutely astonished with their performance. Use a product like this with a tube amp of your choice and i think widespread appeal will be found.

Speaking with the dealer i asked him how sales we going. He was very pleased with his sales noting that most customers were trading in their LARGE class A power amplifiers from the likes of Krell, Boulder, Mark Levinson etc for the Bel Cantos. When i asked him why - he said its simple, 1. Class D takes it less real estate, 2. Class D is more efficient and 3. When compared one one one with their existing amps the owners could not discern much difference.

Interesting, and perhaps pause for thought for those that rubbish this class of amplifier.