Are future improvements in Amp/PreAmps slowing to a crawl?

Want to give a shout out to Carver, the concept for his magnetic field amplifier continues to be used by Yamaha, NuForce and possibly even NAD (D 3020).

Carver's design used a linear amplifier of relatively small power handling and hooked it up to a power supply of varying rail voltages. This minimized the power dissipation required in the output stage. Carver sued (and won) against Yamaha, but the Yamaha Pro line is using the EEEngine which seems derived. NuForce is using the idea in their hybrid amps, Class-D providing the voltage rails, with a linear amp sandwich, and maybe... the NAD D 3020.

Still, how old is this tech? We can definitely argue against calling it all that revolutionary.

Is any of it better sounding? Not sure, but Yamaha and Nuforce are free to send me samples.... :)

Best,


E

I once had a Carver TFM-45 become unstable and dump DC to a brand new pair of Apogee Stages I had just bought. Big brilliant blue-white arcs shot from the ribbon tweeters two minutes after power up. A revolutionary product to be sure.

Dave

Regardless of the topology one chooses, the basic problem of building an amp that measures well and sounds good has been solved. Class D isn't going to bring about entirely new levels of fidelity. We already have amps that will drive any load with vanishing levels of noise and distortion. And a lot of people don't much like them. I think Nelson's point is that the challenge of building a well performing amp has been mastered and pretty much everything you see today is just someone's opinion of how to best implement a hand full of basic topologies in a manner that suits someone's tastes. In that, amp design is art. That doesn't take away from the technical challenge. 

^^Yup.

Eric

I built the low TIM Leach amp from Audio magazine, and followed through with the next year of 100+ circuit changes in the following issues. I also owned Leach’s L S R&D amps from his company.

He did not believe in matching transistors, and his amps were "average" sounding for their time!

His article just re-hashed what was known in amplifier circuits at the time. No breakthroughs IMO.

TIM was just "frequency overload" in fancy talk.