Tekton Double Impacts

It will be a few weeks before I make any changes, so no rush. I'm looking at some of Merrill's offerings. They seem to get universal praise.

@333jeffery, two things:

1.) How are your Ulfs doing? Have they they settled in yet? You think they’re still that much of a difference between the DIs, say, the DIs are about 70% of the Ulfs?

2.) It might sound like I’m biased, but I swear I’m not. The D-Sonic amps from Houston, Texas kick the hell out of the NAD gear, for a much lower price. Even if, let’s say, both amps were sonically on par, you’re still looking at a much lower cost with an incredible build from the D-Sonics, to boot. I matched up my AHB2 with the D-Sonic amp, and there wasn’t much of a difference in instrument separation, bass-grip, and headroom up to about 100 watts. The only supposed knock on Class D amps, to me, is that they are switching amps, and they just don’t switch fast enough to not futz with the incoming signal. That is to say, if one buys into the science of upsampling to reconstruct the original wav, like I do, then you’re defeating a little bit of the sonic purpose. I liken it to not quite letting the full flow of a water out of your garden hose, though that’s what you require to water the lawn.

On the other hand, it’s highly suspect that the human ear can hear the difference with a switching amp disallowing small trickles of water at a time. Then again, if water was missing but one molecule, it would no longer be water, and the same could be said for accurate reproduction of sound.

You have a Schitt Yggy, right?

@evolvist  I mentioned bringing the  M27 in as a check, in case it was beneficial for @333jeffery to get a baseline for Class D. I believe @333jeffery is playing at a level far above the M27. : )  : )  : )

Okay, so...I made another trip over to Bullitt's house to hear his new Schitt DAC, as well as his new speaker placement. His system is really starting to come into its own for two-channel. When I put my ABH2 in again, the sound just bloomed once more. This will be a good indicator of what his rig will sound like when he gets his new tube-pre and amp in. What's more, he's also getting the Double Impact Special Editions (SE), so I would expect big things from his system.

It was at Bullitt's house that I realized that I had never been unconvinced of the DI's sound, only that with the thought of the mini-Ulfs floating around my gourd. So,do I go for broke with a $7500 slightly ugly pair of speakers that I've never heard, or do I get some DIs and possibly always wonder what I'm missing? 

Not only that, but I wonder how much of a compromise the mini-Ulfs will be against their bigger brother. I just don't have the space for the full-sized Ulfs. I'm thinking, there's no way Eric gets the 12" woofers into the minis. From my understanding, the mini-Ulfs will be 5'3" tall, depth 15" and a width of...damn, I forgot the number and it's written on a piece of paper somewhere. I'm tempted to say that Eric said 10.5". That would be the width of the Electrons.

At any rate, if I don't make up my damn mind soon, that will be even more time without speakers, as these assuredly take a long time to come in. Lord know I would have to order the mini-Ulfs with grills. :-)

@david_ten , well, I hope I don’t raise any hackles here. :-) Heh. But Merrill can put all of the fancy wire they want in their amps, all of the bling, hyperbole and superlatives into their amps, but it’s still a switching amp no matter how you slice it. It’s still a gate of sorts to the signal you’re sending it.

To be fair, though (as if there is really such a concept), I’m over here thinking about tube amps for the first time in my life which obviously adds distortion to the signal that I’ve spent so many dollars to protect. Even beyond that, in the probably futile search of "a wire with gain," my current AHB2, even with a distortion profile way below human hearing, still uses tons of negative feedback to get it done, thus it doesn’t have an optimal dampening factor. We can go even further and say that many, of not most, SS amps adds crazy even order harmonics that is simply not natural to most instruments.

So, yeah, there are trade-offs everywhere. Nobody has a bead on perfection.

That said, can I hear a gated effect in a Class D amp? The answer is no, I cannot. It's all academic. :-)