Spectron Musician III MK.2 or Audio Research DS450

Gregm..LOL..No..I do not market or sell any Audio products
at all. I'm not in the retail business. My "ad copy" style
of writing is a habit I'll never shake resulting from being in the publishing business for fifteen years. I'm just an older dude that has an intense passion for music as everyone else on Gon. Having been a hard core Audiophile
since 1975, I get excited when I see a high end company moving forward with an innovative approach to conventional
amp designs and I'm very impressed that Audio Research is the first to come out with a class D amp with the largest power supply on the market. It has been over due for quite some time and I have been hoping for many years that someone would eventually produce this kind of Class D amp.

FYI..I spoke to Eric at Audio Perfection store in Minneapolis, fifteen minutes from Audio Research in Plymouth. Audio Perfection is a Bell Canto and Audio Research Dealer. Eric's take on the Bel Canto REF1000M
and the Audio Research DS450M is this.." Both amps have outstanding sound but the DS450M has much more body and weight with individual instruments"...

I got to audition an ARC DS225 over the weekend running a pair of Nola Baby Grand Reference speakers. The Nola's were not quite my cup of tea, but the ARC seemed to do a good job, though I did not hear enough to make any comparisons. Definitely a nice product.

Thr ongoing Sea of evolving Class D technology is hard to keep up with since new products keep popping up several times a year. Regarding the ARC DS450M, I discovered in threads during the past week a problem with the amp that could be a deal breaker. Buzzing transformers. I spoke to Stereo Design in San Diego last week informing me they have experienced this as well with the larger ARC tube amps in recent months. The DS450M uses a block transformer which are much harder to shield than a toroidal transformer. I decided to go back and check out a Class D company I forgot about, D-Sonic in Houston and discovered on their site a new Class D technology their using. I can't believe that the owner, Dennis Deacon, called me on Sunday afternoon. Dennis explained that he has done away with using the B&O Ice Amps, and is using the most adavanced Class D amps on the market, the new SOA Class D core Amps. These amps are far superior to B&O, Hypex, or Spectron. No more dry sound, much better deeper bass, a more fluid, fuller and richer mid-range, and very smooth high frequencies. Read the recent review in 6Moons on the D-Sonic M2-1500M amp using this new technology. Very good photos of the interior. The SOA amp completely eliminates all RFI/EMI problems, so your Magnum Dynalab FM tuner is good to go. Dennis states these new amps are currently the very best that Class D has too offer.

Neglected to mention that the term SOA in the D-Sonic amps means Safe-Operating-Area, a technical term that Bob Carver used back in the 90's with his Sunfire amps. The other term for SOA is Semiconductor-Optical-Amplifier which is not the type in the D-Sonic amps.