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Class D is affordable and sounds as good or better the SS/Valve why buy anything else ?

I have spent a fair amount of my hard earned money on big ticket brand new SS and VT/Valve amplifiers over the years without hesitation, with state of the art 2019 class D amplifiers becoming cheaper and sounding better, i wouldn't join in again.

For older technology amplifiers SS VT/Valve to compete with State of the art class D, Their prices are going up and up.

One example is Pilium Audio from Greece or Bulgaria their Divine Line the prices are all over £100,000 for their pre amps and power amps, I know the UK importer he said they sound OK,

Another example FM Acoustics again up to and over £100,000 for pre and power amps. i have owned FM Acoustics pre and power again their OK,

I am not saying they do not sound good, i am saying why spend this much when state of the art class D probably sounds as good now and can only improve with the GaN capacitors and is nearly up to 100 times cheaper.

Is there still a market for multi thousand £$s SS or VT/Valve amplifiers ?

When class D finally overtakes SS VT/Valves what will people do with their multi thousand £$ amplifiers, keep them knowing there is something better ? Or will we see the market flood with exotic used amplifiers ?

Digital technology is rapidly growing pace and becoming cheaper, with GaN capacitors being introduced the sound is going to get better and better and will slowly or quickly become even more affordable.

If you had 50,000 to spend on an Amplifier, would you buy a high ticket SS amplifier and hope for the best ?

Would you stay safe and go with high ticket valve amp, class D can never match good valves right ?

Or would you sit tight and see how the GaN capacitors can further improve the performance of state of the art class D ?

Please feel free to join in, everybody is welcome, i think its a very delicate/touchy discussion for some people with big bucks invested in older type amplifiers.
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Showing 5 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
With any amplifier its all about the distortion: what it makes and what it doesn't make.

The ear converts all forms of distortion into tonality unless the amp is outright clipping.

A THD of 0.002% won't do you a lot of good if its all higher ordered harmonics. The reason is that the ear uses the higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure; if the amp is making higher ordered harmonics it will sound brighter and harsher than real life.


Negative feedback is well-known to generate higher ordered harmonics while otherwise suppressing distortion. The process is known as bifurcation. See Norman Crowhurst; this fact has been known for well over 60 years.


Class D amps are fundamentally different from regular analog amps (even though they too are analog) in that they rely on switching. This means that the amp has propagation delay instead of the usual phase shift. under such conditions if feedback is applied, there will be distortion added.


IMO/IME, you are better off not using feedback on a class D amp. They already have a low output impedance so even inexpensive output transistors will allow the amp to behave as a voltage source. Without feedback, the main sources of distortion are the encoding scheme and dead time; if proper care is applied in this department the amp may not have particularly low distortion, but it can sound relaxed and detailed similar to a good quality tube amp because the distortion present isn't of a kind to which the ear is particularly sensitive.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
Icepower put millions of $ and 13 years into their new Iceedge class D ASIC’s. With a team of the best of the best engineers in the business. So unless you have experience with this technology, you are not in a position to judge whether or not today’s class D is mature. It takes a lot of arrogance to assume that a company as large as B&O, with that many top engineers, over a 13 year span doesn’t know what they’re doing.
That's pretty funny! ... uh... I never stated B&O doesn't know what they are doing. Didn't mention anything about B&O.

Now, think about this for a moment. I filed for a patent in the area of class D technology. The patent is based on a functioning amp. Now since that is the case, is it thus possible that I in fact do 'have experience with this technology'?? I went to engineering school and while I make tube amps, when I went to school tubes got exactly one day of mention... this isn't that hard to sort out.


Engineering FWIW is all about applying the math and the principles to solve a problem. The question often becomes 'are you solving the right problem?' Personally I'm of the opinion that quite often for many designers the correct answer is actually 'no' and the reason being that if you want an amplifier to sound right to the human ear, it has to be very short on the distortions that the ear is designed to pick up on. IOW, an understanding of how the human hearing perceptual rules work, rather than how to get the specs to look good on paper. The two are different and have been for many decades.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
Class D has now matured.
Its obvious that this statement is false. '2018 amps are so last week; only 2019 amps can be considered.' is the message I'm seeing here. I can point out the exact post if needed.

We have a patent pending on how to eliminate the need for dead time in class D amplifiers. Now if a little guy like us, previously unknown for even a solid state product, can make an important contribution like that (dead time is one of the major sources of distortion in a class D amp) then its pretty clear that class D is not a mature technology.


Innovation S-curves start with lots of time and money poured into the tech with little to show for it; as it gets sorted out the tech improves dramatically with far less time and money invested. When the tech is mature large amounts of time and money are needed to incrementally advance the technology. So its very obvious that class D is not matured.


Class D isn't there yet, but its obvious that if the designers can get their collective heads around what is important to the human ear and what is not, then we will see something that really is an improvement and by that I mean something that may well be better than tubes.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
My class D sounds incredible to my ears and cost me 2k,

How much is the entry level amplifier you make please ?

How much is your reference amplifiers please ?
I'm glad that works for you! High end audio should be fun and musically satisfying.  But high end audio though is not about cost, its about getting the music to sound real, IOW intention. I find that on these forums, audiophiles often use the same words to describe what they hear, but there isn't any standard to allow them to express the degree of their experience. So its all relative.

Because high end audio is about intention, the idea of a 'reference' amplifier strikes me as a bit odd. Shouldn't all the amps one makes be capable of 'reference' performance?

But to say that today’s class D isn’t mature, without any experience with today’s class D, doesn’t hold much weight. Especially for me since I do have experience with today’s class D.
To imply that I don't have any experience with class D doesn't hold much weight either, does it :)     I'm pretty sure you've not met me. You've not been to our shop, not been to my house... pretty bold, don't you think, to make an assumption like that??


atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
You have no idea how real music sounds with Iceedge based amplifiers.
LOL  this too is really funny. Are you saying that music doesn't sound the same through Iceedge products?? Don't let ICEpower hear you saying that :)   Overall any amplifier should be neutral and Iceedge is no exception.

FWIW I have recordings I made myself on both CD and LP. I was there so I know how the recording is supposed to sound. I have the masters. I don't care how **any** amplifier **sounds**; but I care a lot about how those *recordings* sound when I play them on a system. Most class D amps fall well short of the mark but many tube amps don't. There are a few class D amps that do rather well though (as there are also some traditional solid state amps, in particular some of the SIT amps by Nelson Pass).


A *real* reference is a nice thing to have.
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