Oh how I wish Class D amps ...

"Continuos power rating doesn't make much sense anyway since average music power delivered is only few percent of the peak."

I think that is the essence of how a switching amp is able to achieve the performance levels it does in such a small and energy efficient package.

Regardless of design, in the end, its all in the execution. How well does a product do its thing. The better Class D amps these days would seem to indicate that the answer is "really good", even if not to everyone's particular taste.

"No signs of stress or distortion"

- that might be due to line and load regulated power supply in your REF1000. 99% of the other amps have completely unregulated supplies - that is why class AB amps have monstrous size toroidal transformers and a lot of capacitors (to minimize voltage drops).

"No signs of stress or distortion"

- that might be due to line and load regulated power supply in your REF1000."

I'm thinking that is a part of it. At least I'm hoping so because I know that is the main reason I opted to pay a hefty premium for the BC ref1000ms rather than go with other similar designs for a lot less.

Mapman - second generation of REF1000 not only have huge bank of additional capacitors but also converts huge narrow spikes of current to more of resistive load. Was it worth extra price? I'm sure it was. Any small improvement at this point costs a lot and is worth any money if you know that it works in your system. I might upgrade to this amp in future. I understand that "m" stands for mk II (new generation) but am not sure about "s" suffix?

" ...the bar that has to be met by class D is not how they compare to traditional transistor designs but (especially on SoundLabs) how well they compare to tube amplification. "

Hello Athmaspere. I don't like to put all amps together into single group as "class D" and even more tube amps.

I mentioned in my post Spectrons and Wayne Donnelly, reviewer from Enjoy The Music, sent back his $50k VTL Zigfrieds (spl) when he got his Spectron. I also much prefer Spectron over my former amp, McIntosh 2202 etc

On other hand, I truly love OTLs - your and that of Jud Barber of Joule-Electra but I can't stand their heat and high maintanence. Moreover, only you know how well your amps can drive Soundlab (I suspect very well) but 100% they cannot drive my Sasha by Wilson and provide the same dynamic range as Spectron does - Sashas are the most power hungry speakers in entire David Wilson line.

Mike