Merrill Audio VERITAS Amps: Any other experiances?

The following is from an earlier post and an update on the Veritas amps by Merrill Audio.

*** I have no financial interest or benefit of any kind of Merrill Audio or Hypex who make the Ncore NC1200 and NC400.***

I am just a big fan of how great the Ncore based amps sound.

Update:
An Audiophile friend got a pair of Sanders Sound speakers with a Roger Sanders Magtech amp ($11,000 mono) for the top end and a Sanders sound ESL amp ($9,000 mono) for the bottom end as the speakers need to be bi-amped per channel.
They had a wonderful sound and I was impressed but I thought the sound could be "smoother". I felt that I could hear a very slight sound of "noise". So when I mentioned this to the others in the room it was "really?". Well I insisted and suggested a challenge. The Merrill Audio Veritas to replace the Sanders amps. Well we had to come up with four of them. I had my pair and I got Merrill to bring a pair. It was some sight. We first listened to the Sanders amps and then put in the Veritas amps.
After awhile of listening I made no comments as I did not want to be the first. To a man (4) they all thought the Veritas had a better sound from top to bottom, was smoother, dead quite, more dimensional, better tonality and control. The difference was enough that the owner of the Sanders decided to buy the Veritas amps.

Well the above post "could hear the cellos and violas breath" could be experienced when the Veritas was being used in place of the Sanders amps.

Now, do not get me wrong, the Sanders amps are very fine indeed. It is just that the Veritas are that good.

Repost;
I was lucky enough to know Merrill from one of the local NJ/NY area Audio Clubs we both belong and had the opportunity to assist Merrill in listening tests of his prototypes. Besides myself there were a few other Club and Rave Audiophiles that gave their input from time to time. This was in my system as well as several of the others.

My system is: B&W 802D speakers; PS Audio Perfectwave DAC MKII with Bridge by Ethernet and PW Transport by I2S/HDMI; Synergistic Research Galileo Universal Bi-wire Speaker Cells and Balanced Interconnect Cells; Power Conditioning is Synergistic Tesla PowerCell 10 SE MKII; Power cords to the amps and DAC and Transport are Triode Wire Labs Ten Plus (Very impressed with Pete's power cords. You owe it to your self to try them. Money back Guarantee).

I have tried MANY amps but could not find the RIGHT one with the BEST sound with also the following: Mono Blocks; True Differential Balanced Inputs; Not to weigh a TON but also to have quality chases; Cool running, for an amp; Quality parts, and no throw away power cords; Sound that is Pure, life like, true to tone, fast with total control of the speakers, real sounding rise and decay of the sound of instruments, deep, wide holographic sound-stage, not sterile but not warm, even sounding from top to bottom, able to reach well into the highs and dig deep into the lows, easy to maintain, no added noise of its' own (I can not believe how quite they are) and also musical/toe taping. And the price is NOT an arm and a leg. Yes, Merrill's amps are not inexpensive but to even come close to the sound, let alone everything else Merrill is including, someone would have spend a HELL of a lot more. I quit after hearing $16,000 to $30,000+/- amps and while some were really great sounding amps, NOT one can give me the sound that Merrill's Veritas amps do.

Now, every person, who I know of, who heard Merrill Audio Veritas in their system (who has a system that can really take advantage of it) have all been surprised and impressed. ONE CAVEAT!! They are very sensitive to power cords and power conditioning. We found out that you can not just assume that a well regarded power cord will work well with the amps. They did not like a pair of Synergistic Basik cords but their active type were fine. Also there were other well known brands that had some issues. They LOVE Pete's Triode Wire Labs Cables, both Ten Plus and Seven Plus. So make sure you try several types if you upgrade from what Merrill Audio already gives you(but I think you would have to spend a lot more before you "might" get an improvement over the TWL cables). And 9 out of 10 times they will sound better NOT plugged into a power conditioner.

If you have the source and speakers that can take advantage of what this amp can do you will be AMAZED!! My B&W 802Ds never sounded this good. I hear things, from top to bottom, that I never heard or as well. And base, who needs a woofer?!

As with food we all have different tastes and this my not be yours and that is fine, more power to you, but if you have no ax to grind and really hear them set up properly you are in for a treat.

Now these are my opinions and observations and YMMV but if you take the time and set it up properly you will be amazed. It REALLY takes A LOT to impress me enough to make me spend my money and I rarely post. That is how impressed I am. Call me a FAN BOY.

I have no financial interest in Merrill Audio. Yes I have bought a pair. Are they perfect, no, nothing is but they come pretty close to it, and at this price for new, I have not heard anything else like it and as good.

PS These amps need to be left ON, not standby, and seeing that they use like 8-9 watts when not in use it is like leaving on a night light. They need several hundred hours of play four the amps, fuses, power cords to sound their best so take your time and you will be rewarded. If you do shut them off it will take a couple of hours to sound good but after a day or two you are back to great.

HYPEX..HYPEX..HYPEX..Seems to be a swooning love affair with Bruno Putzeys and one needs to get beyond putting him on a demigod pedestal..Hypex/Ncore is owned by Philips which of course has more than enough R&D funds for Bruno to tap into. However, the biggest flaw with all class D amps is that they are wall dependent, using the a.c. outlet as the capacitor bank rather than having a large power supply and large transformers built in to make them far less wall dependent. The one company in the States that has addressed the flaws in Class D more than any other, and currently makes the worlds finest Class D amplifier, is Audio Research. The Marten M amps from Sweden are right behind AR. Each Audio Research DS450M Class D mono amp has a power reserve of 1368 joules of energy, way beyond the power reserve in the Merrill Veritas or the new upcoming M1 amps from Hypex coming out in June. The DS450M has over 176,000 microfards of capacitor storage. The large block transformer, choke regulator, and the Class D switching device in each DS450M amp are in house custom designs exclusive only to Audio Research. The amps are far more powerful than Merrill or Hypex, run cool, and are meant to left on at all times. A pair is only $10K.

Audiozen, I have had the opportunity of listening to ARC D450M mono amps at RMAF for a few hours, and I found them to be wonderfully sounding amps indeed, so much so that I visited their suite thrice during the show. Unfortunately, I have not had the chance yet to listen to them in my own system, nor to compare their musical performance directly against any other amps, so while I would concur that D450M probably occupy a position somewhere near the current class-D pinnacle, I am not yet in a position of grading their performance relative to other new entries in the general top of the category. Have you listened to MB450M in your system, and have you had the opportunity to contrast their sound with Merrill Veritas, or other NCore NC1200 implementations? Please do share your findings.

On your assertion that Hypex may be owned by Philips, I have searched on the internet, but have not been able to confirm your statement. Could you point me to the source?

Regards, G.

Several points Audiozen.

1) Bruno at one time worked for Philips and was one of the driving forces behind their class D. Hypex is not owned by Philips. Hypex is one of the largest suppliers of Class D OEM amps to the world market.

2) All you ever do is Praise the "tech" without ever hearing it or the other equipment that you put down, for whatever agenda you have. It seems that for you it must always fit what YOU THINK it should be built and what it should have to be considered WORTHY of consideration.

3) Again, have you ever heard the Veritas? No, then why do you have an opinion. Because you "think" you know what the Tech in it is and from that you "Know how it will sound".

4) Have you heard the ARC D450M? Why is it I think I know that answer.
Well I have. I like ARC equipment very much but when I heard the D450M at my dealer (on my model speakers) I was disappointed in the sound. I went in expecting to walk out with them. Now it is possible that since then ARC made some adjustments so I may have to take another listen.

5)Why is it that you could not give the Veritas amps and Hypex some consideration from the above comparisons to the ARC Tube amps and the Sanders Sound Magtech amps (that you praised so much in one of your posts).

By the way, after my post I said to a friend that I expected you to be on here dumping on Hypex and the Veritas.

PS The Veritas and Ncore NC1200, with the lack of what you consider the need of power reserves has is one of the most dynamic sounding amps and with speed that not only that I have heard but also the others who HAVE HEARD it. You know there is more then one way to get to the moon. All are high tech but the old way is not necessarily the best.

Hifial..the article I read out of Europe was inaccurate portraying Hypex/Ncore being owned by Philips.
Upon further investigation, heres the accurate truth. When Bruno worked for Philips before working for Hypex in 1996, he designed for Philips the Ncore UcD power modules, in which the patents and the Ncore trademark are owned by Philips outright which they have on file in Geneva which covers all the European countries. Bruno today pays Philips an annual licensing rights fee to use the design and the Ncore name in Europe which he originally developed. Bruno beat Philips filing the Ncore patents in the patent office in Washington, D.C. to corner the U.S. market. Bruno's designs are still pulse width modulation. Hypex/Ncore uses a feedback application that Bruno took from John Ulrick of Spectron that was used in the first Spectron amp back in 1974. What Ulrick designed that Bruno utilize's, is an application putting the feedback in the circuit after the output filter rather than before, which eliminates phase shifting in the upper frequencies. Patrik Bostrom, currently the most advanced Class D engineer in Europe and CTO Of Abletec, went beyond Bruno's capability with further advanced Class D engineering and developed recently, a linear loop technology known as AMS, (Adaptive modulation Servo), which is phase shift modulation, eliminating all feedback in the circuits, rather than pulse width modulation, which has been around for forty years. D-Sonic uses power modules from Abletec. The new in house switching module designed by Audio Research, achieves the same results as Abletec.