Digital, Low Mass, ClassD, Less expensive, Let it happen!

MG... On the wrong side of the know as usual. 

There's no shortage of boat anchors. Nobody building heavy class A is feeling any pinch or worry about class D. Nelson Pass cited adding mass to his amps with bigger heat sinks and beefier power supplies was the secret to getting better sound from his designs. Stereophile agrees they sound better. Their amp of the year last year wasn't class D amp. It was a single ended class A amp. 

@stevecham 

Everybody though big class AB amps would just own the whole world in the 60's and 70's. And there are plenty of them to be sure. And if you try really hard and employ enough tricks you can get a class AB amp to sound as good as a simple class A amp, but even high bias class AB amps make more low level distortion than a good old fashioned class A amp. And class D has really only proven itself as good as a typical class AB amp. 

Hi Mikey!

Not really sure what Pass amps have to do with the general behavior of amps in general. Care to explain that? It's a widely accepted reality that if you want the lowest distortion at low power levels, you want class A. A well designed class AB amp gets you close, but when the output devices transition out of their bias region there's always a rise in distortion, and for most AB amps that a fraction of a watt. Distortion then tapers a little, flattens, then rises near clipping.

Class D amps do nothing of the sort. Because their constantly switching they generate the most distortion at low power levels. Go look at the measurements. And beyond that, the distortion is almost entirely higher order garbage. 

It's widely observed and understood that dynamics and high order distortion are virtually indistinguishable to the human ear. Amplifiers that are making .02% distortion at half a watt aren't intrinsically bad unless that distortion is high order. The ear is going to perceive that as a false sense of dynamics. It's unavoidable. That's the kind of distortion class D amps make at those low power levels and the measurements make it obvious. 

Let's contrast that with any single ended amp. Instead of this distortion peak at half a watt it's way out near the power limit. At half a watt it's as low as it gets and it's 2nd order. It stays low even order across the power band. It only gets ugly, odd, and higher order at clipping. And sonically that makes sense to do since dynamics should be pronounced at high volume. I can't think of any reason why you'd want exaggerated dynamics at low power levels. It's like using a loudness control. 

Hi Mikey! 

Pretty much nothing I said had anything to do with any particular amp or manufacturer. It's very easy to speak in broad generalities about these things because the characteristics of class A, class AB, and class D are universal to some extent. Anybody with eyes can look at the measurements and arrive at the conclusions I made. I guess since you don't have any argument you're going to resort to jamming words in my mouth I never said so you can weakly assassinate my character. That's not very nice, Mikey. 

Doubtful since gigantic panels of glass pretty much demolish anything resembling good imaging. 

@erik_squires 

Then it would be a very good idea for audiophilia to aschew the snake oil reputation that it's earned by people making insanely exaggerated claims about the importance of cables, fuses, footers, platforms, and the value crazy-expensive gear represents. The culture has changed. People don't just sit and listen to music anymore and people don't expect much of audio gear. 

Oh.... Like my obscenely simple F5? Or the First Watt J2 that won Amplifier of the Year from Stereophile? Or the SIT-3 that just got a glowing review? How about the myriad tube amps out there? Those over-built amps? The ones using simple, linear power supplies and simple topologies with a minimum of components? Those are the "expensive over built" amps you're talking about that get great reviews and sell so well for fairly modest money? 

I guess if you consider the handful of threads with a feeble number of responses on this forum alone a groundswell.... Practically nobody is talking about class D over at AudioKarma. DIYaudio has 172,000 posts in it's class D section compared to 727,000 in the solid state section and 350,000 in the Pass section. So.... over a million posts to 172k. The DIY crowd seems to be a bunch with a much more refined listening skill than most. Given that they are VERY focused on circuits instead of face plates, and they overwhelmingly prefer linear circuits, I'm going to say that class D is pretty much for those who just don't know better. 

I have no idea where you get these wacky ideas. They don't reflect any kind of reality. I think you're stuck in an echo chamber of your own obtuse ideas. Look around at the larger world. Class D isn't taken all that seriously and I doubt it ever will be. 

@erik_squires 

Contrived? Do you know what that word means? That silly boy up there is banging on about some swell of forum talk that doesn't even exist to justify the ridiculous assertion that class D is some wave of the future. Well, it's had about 10 years to be taken seriously and it's still not there judging by the volume of people talking about it. The stuff MG says is completely nonsensical when you look at the larger body of interest and conversations going on out there in audio. Class D fans really do seem to live in an echo chamber of their own confirmation bias among each other. 

@erik_squires 

The VAST majority of music listeners aren't audiophiles, and most haven't heard a stereo purpose built for listening to music. So really, who cares what they think or buy? Most people listen to MP3 files. Are you going to tell me that's the new audiophile standard too?