Measurements by Hi-Fi News.
Very good distortion figures, better SNR than 2500NE... while clearly less powerful.
I would like to make some remarks regarding the output power, sound, distortion.
I own the 2500NE with JBLL 4312SE listening Tidal all the time through Onkyo NS6170. The sound is great.
I have a 36 m2 room, and i find myself listening below 9 a clock most of the time. I use 11 a clock for no more than 4-5 minutes it is very loud and bass is like my chest will cave in.
Even if 110 is less powerfull than 2500, most of the time, people will use no more than 10 watts for normal listening. I am sorry to say this, but if the power of 110 or 2500 appears to be insufficient for some, they chose the "wrong speakers". These two amps are "enough of a powehouse". You may never need those 80 watts.
Looking at the black 8 ohm power vs distortion, the 110 behaviour at 1 watt is exceptional, and also great beyond 10 watts. I would trade my 2500NE for the 110 results from 1 to 10 watts.
If one has patience to check most Hi fi News distortion graphs of other amps they will surprisingly find amps you can count on one hand which have the 110 distortion figures. Moreover i don't think they will find any amp which produces such low distortion from a single Mosfet pair !!!!!! Even my once favourite M Levinson doesn't cut it !! Even Accuphase and Luxman use multiple mosfets or BJT per channel, go google and see inside.
Almost all amps have multiple bipolar or mosfets per channel, in order to reach great power and low distortion, but look what happens when you have multiple output BJT or mosfets per channel, Mr Arai says it,
see marked in red below, "two steps" refers to two stages power amplifier, "elements" refers to BJT or mosfets:
Arai: Yes. Ever since the first UHC-MOS was adopted in 1990 for the POA-S1 project celebrating the 80th anniversary of Denon, we have consistently used this circuit system that can transmit large currents despite differences in type. The advantage is that a large current can be controlled with one circuit.
There is also a method of arranging a lot of elements as other companies are doing, but if there is a distance between each element, even if it is a short distance, there will be a time difference between the signals. Our idea is that if amplification can be done with a small area of one element, it is best.
- The base 2500NE had a differential 3-stage, but this time it is 2-stage. What are the sound quality benefits?
Arai:When the circuit has three stages, the number of places where phase rotation occurs increases accordingly, and the amount of phase compensation to stabilize it also increases.
There is no effect of phase compensation within the audible band, but even outside the audible band, if the phase rotation amount is large, peaks and dips (unevenness of frequency characteristics) are generated, and the human ear perceives them as distortion and dissonance. In order to make it sound straightforward, it is better to reduce phase rotation and reduce compensation, so this time I made it two steps.
For example in the PMA SX11 the two UHC MOS are so close to each other, that i suspect phase anomalies are reduced to minimum, maybe we could say the amp speaks with let's say two voices per channel (the two MOS copper-plated). By contrast other amps speak with multiple BJT or mosfets per channel. I am inclined to believe Denon sound is more pure, more uncolored:
All other six devices on each side of the copper plated UHC MOS are there to keep the optimum electrical parameters for the UHC MOS. Audio signal goes just through the two copper plated MOS.
Kind regards,
Paul,