Why do I like Class AB better than Class A?

"I don't hear the holy grail from Class A. Thanks in advance for the input guys."

You should be if all is functioning fine, Class A should have a 3D quality instead of 2d like the A/B would have in comparision.

"the A is warm but a little fuzzy and bloated"

This could happen if the power supply is not up to task, as Class A mode will tax the power supply much more and bring it closer to satuartion point than A/B will, this satuation results in restricted dynamics, soft (bloated) bass loss of transparency. Remeber the power supply is the engine room of the amp.

Cheers George

Hey, thanks for all the feedback. I have Snell type AIII's, now I know there not very efficient but this amp certainly has brought more bottom end slam than my BAT. The rest, AIFF,Pure music, MacMini, Wyred4sound DAC 2, Aesthetix Calypso Pre with Nos Tubes, oh and dedicated 20 amp outlets plugged straight in. I was hoping someone would tell me I would need to get used to the class A sound. I will let her warm up more than the hour I usually give it and see what happens.

Most transistor gear I have seen really have long warm-up times- 24 hours or more.

Theoretically class A gives you lower distortion. When you remove distortion, the amp should sound smoother and more detailed as distortion can result in harshness and obscures detail due to the ear's masking rule.

Now when you get more detail, one of the things that happens is that there is more room ambiance that shows up. There is more of the acoustic signature around each instrument. This can make the amp seem to have less image specificity, until you realize that the image is being presented with more of the ambiance around it intact.

I'm sorry, maybe I'm slow or missing something. but your initial post said that you compared both with a toggle switch. Compared both what? I only saw one amp. So, my initial reaction without benefit of knowing which two amps you are talking about is that you compared apples to oranges. The amps were either not rated the same or they were in totally different price points. Like comparing a $10,000 amp with a $400 Yamaha 100wpc amp. I don't know what you compared.

Enjoy

Minorl,

you can flick a switch on the Plinius and change it between class A or class A/B, one amp offers both functions