Merrill VERITAS monoblock amplifiers

Hi Paul,
Looking at the modules, I'm not sure that the NC400's are really inferior to the NC1200. The 400 has cheap plastic input and output jacks and terminals, the film caps on the board are mylar... I believe that replacing a few parts and soldering directly to the board would make an audible improvement in the NC400. I contacted Pascal, Not being a current amp or speaker manufacture, they would not cell to me. The Abletec Modules were less than half the price of the Ncores by the time you bought a switching supply.

Tim, I know several very competent OEM who have done many mods to the NC400 and even though it made it sound better they all felt it still was not as good as an NC1200. There is more to it then you think. I have heard both and it is easy to hear the difference in a very good system.

Sorry to hear about Pascal. I think they could give the Ncore real competition.

The Albetec being less then half the price of the Ncore is meaningless if they do not sound as good or better then the Ncore.

Hi Paul,
Just reading your response,
"Tim, I know several very competent OEM who have done many mods to the NC400 and even though it made it sound better they all felt it still was not as good as an NC1200. There is more to it then you think. I have heard both and it is easy to hear the difference in a very good system"
Good to know others have already tried this, it saves others a lot of time... as far as there is more to it than I think, nope, circuit design is key, parts transform a good amp to a great amp, but you can't mod a poor design into much better than a poor design.
As far as "the Abletec's being half the price is meaningless if their not better" Meaningless is strong. Very high quality and inexpensive mono blocks at this price won't be found out there, I guarantee most people on this forum don't have unlimited funds to go out and buy or try
the best, much less as you suggested, to buy all 3. Someone forced into a 20 year old amp or could only afford something like a new Parasound or equivalent can obtain a true option at a great price. Of course many can't build their own but none the less a viable argument why competitive with the best means a lot without necessarily squeaking out that last bit of performance.
With that, I can only say that the Abletec modules are very
good, can't really say how they compete with the best. Although I am very anxious to hear how the Coda 15 compares with Merrill. The Coda is a great amplifier.

Theo, there seems to exist an old wives' tale that class D amp suffer from some arcane form of pernicious system dependencies... The answer is both yes and no....

In olden days, a number of entry level class D amps suffered of relatively high amounts of the shrillies, as they seemed to leak persistent hash from everywhere... They did need some kindly filtering somewhere in the system, lest they could drive you batty. Furthermore, some class D amps had relatively low input impedance, limiting successful coupling to preamplifiers.

With newer generation power conversion modules, such as NCore technology for example, the above is definitely no longer a problem. The Veritas in particular, have an input impedance of 90K Ohms... You will have a hard time finding a preamp that is not compatible. On the output side, unless you try to drive absurdly sensitive speakers, the 1K damping factor will serve you well.

Merrill Veritas are extremely sweet sounding, and do not appear to be feeding perceivable hash into the AC line. having said that, while the amps are shipped with fine power cords, you may want to experiment with PC alternatives. I have experienced excellent results with Aural Symphonics on Veritas, as explained in my scribbling. In older days, with ICEpower class D amps like Rowland M312, Bel Canto Ref1000M Mk.2, and REF500M, I had the opportunity of testing with the Shunyata Z-tron series, which controlled treble intermodulation artifacts to a superior degree... I have it from reliable sources that the Cardas Clear family may also be consistent with this behavior.

Best, Guido