450 Pound Monobloc Amplifier

"Man, a 1500 watt Class-A amp must be one HELL of a home heating device!! Not to mention being able to cook yer bacon and eggs while listening to your system..."

Not to mention the power utilization even when not playing?

I guess Boulder is not a "green" company. No moss growing there!

If it catches on, world peace might be threatened. Where is 007? Tell him to withdraw from whatever he may be doing. Evil audio threatens!

Any mags or other "trusted" sources done any shootouts between the biggest monster amps and best of the much smaller Class Ds in recent years? Lots of good reviews for both camps, but how do they really compare sound-wise on various systems that can truly benefit from a lot of juice?

Mapman, there is still less than a handful of manufacturers that are shipping amps built around the new class D technologies.... Merrill Audio, D-Sonics, Acoustic Imagery, and Mola-Mola. And reviews are still fewer than that.

Guido,

How about the current generation Class Ds that have been out there for a while, Icepower-based, Spectral, others? That would be a good baseline for such a comparison to see if/how the latest gen has upped the ante.

I've probably read such things in bits and pieces from various sources in recent years, especially when I was researching my own hi power amp purchase a few years back (yes I considered big monster amps from Pass, Krell, and others at the time but had no desire to go that way if avoidable), but I do not recall any comprehensive "shootouts" from a single source.

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Mark Levinson makes a switching monobloc, 500 wpc (8 ohms), but it weighs 150 pounds. Jeff Rowland, as mentioned above makes a 325 wpc (8 ohms) monobloc that weighs 54 lbs, probably 30 lbs of it is its heavy chassis.

I would really like to see where the other big names like Krell, Pass Labs, Bryston and the others could take the Class D or switching technology in the future. Even Audio Research has a switching amplifier. I'm sure if the brains of those companies pushed that technology forward, really high end sound would get more affordable.
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