Class D Technology

The black background many listeners can hear with Class D indeed suggests the heavy filtering is in some way affecting the audible sound.

Myself I would not describe it as a "black background".
But rather a "harmonic black hole".

Cheers George

I will state just the opposite.  Violin sounds like violin without scratchy glazed harmonics of class AB amp.  Same goes for the cymbals that sound brassy and meaty instead of bright and splashy.  Cello sounds deep and resonant.  Transients are incredible while amps keep composure under heavy current demands (orchestra forte), most likely due to regulated power supply.  The other thing I noticed is low level performance.  When I listen soft at night - highs and lows are still there.  Imaging is even better, but it might be due to reduced reflections.

Somebody described sound of Hypex as a sound of very good class AB amp while  Icepower was described as more of a tube amp sound (half bridge vs full bridge output).  Icepower is very good in spite of some negative opinions here.  Now we have more choices, Pascal being one of them.  

Speed of Mosfets improves every single year, but now new switching devices are coming - like Enhanced Mode Gallium Nitride Fets (eGaN Fet) that switches many times faster without overshoot or ringing due to ultra low capacitance and inductance.  The best days of class D are ahead of us, but I enjoy it immensely already.  

So if its not obvious by now the question has been answered repeatedly in some cases.

Some like it already and some not so much.

I’m on the like it side with Kijanki.

So its pretty much on par with everything else audio these days. Some like it and some not so much.

its nice to have choices.

The difference is Class D will only continue to get even better.

Someday soon everyone may agree.

Or not.....

Cheers!

So its pretty much on par with everything else audio these days. Some like it and some not so much.

its nice to have choices.

The difference is Class D will only continue to get even better.

Someday soon everyone may agree.

Mapman - I would say Class D is similar to tubes as far as opinion goes. People either like the sound or they don't. I am not saying that tubes sound like Class D (far from it), just that they are both controversial. Very rarely will you hear someone say something bad about Class A solid state relating to sound quality/accuracy.  

This statement is false. 

It is not false at all! 

"It used to be a sign of superior good taste to diss class D. Today it's become a surefire tell of sad ignorance."

Anyone who degrades class D as a whole is clearly ignorant about the technology or has comercial interests against it. As with any other topology, making a generalization about sound performance is an error.

Just because you heard a class D amp sound better than a tube amp in a particular situation does not mean that all class D amps sound better than all tube amps, or even that the particular class D amp sounds better than all tube amps. It just means that in that situation you heard something better that you liked between the two involved. 

Who said that? That statement is completely erroneous, in fact is the complete oposite of what I clearly stated above:

I said: "I have experience with many amplifying topologies (meaning class A, A/B, D, H), and I have found good and bad examples in each".

Who makes the latest generation of Class-D? The best class-d I heard, Hypex has been on the market for a long time. I wonder how good the latest generation class-D is compared to Hypex.

Hypex latest generation is Ncore which has several years in the market. Anaview and Pascal also have very good designs, that when correctly implemented provide similar or in some cases even better performance than Ncore.

And as I said, not everything is the class D module in the design. The input buffer, for example, is a critical part that can completely alter the character of the amplifier. There's been greater progress in this matter, than in the output modules themselves.