Bandwidth Limitations Of Class D Amps??

"Which means "A personal stake or involvement" in that amp."

So by this logic, we can only discuss things we have no involvement with? That sounds like fun!

By this logic, nobody would discuss anything anywhere because they have a "personal stake". That would include George and his favorite amps as well.

Crickets.....

My only personal stake in CLass D is I tried one, liked it and have not had any need to look further.

I look forward to buying even better ones possibly even for less down the road if needed as the technology continues to improve.

I have lots of years of experience and have heard a lot of gear at all price points and of many designs over the years. That is how I get my frame of reference for what sounds good or not. I also look at specs and bench measures and choose my poison.

ANyone who can read can determine for themselves if they think Class D is competitive in the high end already these days. I am willing to bet that as time goes on, more and more people will continue to chose to go that route and be very happy they did.

George,

Maybe I missed it in your posts, but have you actually sat down with a Class D in your system? I assume that you do have an extremely high-end system that you allude to as one in which you can discern the difference between the Class D amps and linear amps.

Have you read any reviews by Wayne Donnelly, Senior Reviewer and Classical Music Editor for "Enjoy The Music"? His reference amps, and they have been for quite some time, are the Spectron Musician III Mk2 Class D amps. http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/reviewers/waynedonnelly.htm

I chose my Spectron amp to replace, to name a few, my Krell, Pass, Karan and Burmester amps. But to be honest, I only have about $65k-$70k in my system, I don't have a high-end system.

Chuck

" But to be honest, I only have about $65k-$70k in my system, I don't have a high-end system."

That's funny!

If Class D amps are even in the discussion for a system in this price range, high end or not, I would say that's another good indicator that they have arrived.

FWIW I have ~$10K invested in my main system, and slightly less in other gear I use concurrently in various rooms. Most people I know would probably label it "high end" if they cared. That is what I payed, not retail, but I am very value conscience and have bought a lot but not all of my current stuff used or discounted via vendor trade-in programs, etc. I will say I think I know and like quality sound when I hear it and leave it at that without getting into details of what that means to me. My Class D amps list for $6K new, FWIW and represent my single biggest monetary investment in my system, though my speakers would list for about the same amount..

At the NY Audio show recently, a few rooms had very high end class D amps that were superb. Other than a no-limit budget and ability to use a crane to move class A amps, my experience has been where top class D amps are just as good as some very expensive class a/b amps i have used.

they also work better if you want to go "digital" straight from DAC to amp with passive pre-amp

To echo Lapentas comments, I have reasons to believe that the stereotypical artifacts at the outer ends of the audible bandwitdh that were frequently associated with a number of older class D amps may not be necessarily reflected in recent designs based on much evolved power conversion modules, like the Ncore NC1200 by Hypex.

Case in point is the Merrill Veritas monoblock that I have just reviewed for Positive Feedback on issue No. 68:

http://positive-feedback.com/Issue68/merrill_audio.htm

Once the amps were properly broken in with 1,000 hours of active operations, I did not detect any musical bandwidth limitations, nor any stereotypical class D artifacts with Veritas.

Of course, there are other amps based on Ncore technology (such as Mola-mola Kaluga and ATSAH by Acoustic Imagery) , and other new class D modules other than the Ncore family (such as the Pascal modules). The examination of more examples of new class D amps should confirm or disprove my hypothesis of class D designs having now grown up into general musical adulthood.

G.