Premium Audio Mini GaN 5 Review (Stereo Amplifier)

[Kachda]

The floating heatsink thread can now die in peace . The manufacturers emails made no sense, and now we know why.

 

[3125b]

GaN? More like GaN't ... I'll see myself out.

 

[DanielT]

SINAD 1kHz means nothing or not much to me. This is the measurement I care about, and I would also appreciate IMD measurements - both based on decades of experience with amplifier design. I do not agree that this is "very clean". I find it as a nonlinearity with high frequency dependence and poor predictability - see 19+20kHz plots.

View attachment 157345

Unfortunately this measurement was not provided for the Audio Mini GaN, so the reviews are inconsistent.

Let me add my own measurement of A07
View attachment 157350

Interesting. I know another another designer of amplifiers who does not have much left over for class D. Every time class D amplifiers come up he says:
1. How is it measured? What was the bandwidth at the measurement?
2. What does the data, measurement regarding the higher frequencies at higher output power look like?

Edit:
Class D as a pure subwoffer amplifier seems in any case to be a superb alternative.

PMA do you think there are any really good full register class D amplifiers?

 

[ModDIY]

The floating heatsink thread can now die in peace . The manufacturers emails made no sense, and now we know why.

Too bad because it seemed too good to be true!

Thank you Amir for these measurements.

 

[ROOSKIE]

This or the Monoprice 605030?

 

[boXem]

Interesting. I know another another designer of amplifiers who does not have much left over for class D. Every time class D amplifiers come up he says:
1. How is it measured? What was the bandwidth at the measurement?
2. What does the data, measurement regarding the higher frequencies at higher output power look like?

Edit:
Class D as a pure subwoffer amplifier seems in any case to be a superb alternative.

PMA do you think there are any really good full register class D amplifiers?

And here we go

 

[mocenigo]

Manufacturer spec is 0.005% THD+N at 5W 1kHz, but the result is 0.02%, and the distortion spray is nasty. GaN supposedly allows the switching frequency to be made higher for better efficiency and smaller filter components but I'm not sure this even beats an AIYIMA A07 for performance.

I think they have configured the module to be open loop instead of closed loop. This has more distortion and less stability wrt load. Also, the case is made of magnetic steel which is absolutely a disaster in this case. Since they probably buy the modules and smps in bulk, the whole even with duties and customs would cost shipped in Europe less than a single amplification module bought locally. I would be tempted to buy one and rebuild it in a more suitable case.

 

[abdo123]

And here we go

Some people are just living under a rock it seems.

 

[DanielT]

E]

Some people are just living under a rock it seems.

Wait now. I was just referring to what I read another designer of amplifier said. Since what PMA wrote.

I'm curious. Hence my question to PMA. I think we let him, as a designer of amplifiers, develop it all.

Or?

Edit:

May well paste what the other designer/manufacturer said about a measurement of a class d amplifier. It got curious anyway. This:

NAD C 298 power amplifier Measurements

Sidebar 4: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Morello:
"Note that the measurements on this class-D device are performed with the low-pass filter (for = 25 kHz) Audio Precision AUX-0025 connected between the output of the output stage and the input of the analyzer, so all THD measurements are irrelevant above about 6 kHz. It surprises me that Atkinson does not limit the graphs to just this.

THD is a measure of the nonlinearities of the step - quadratic, cubic and higher order terms in the transfer characteristics. The same terms lead to intermodulation distortion. If you want a correct picture of the amplifiers distortion, the bandwidth when measuring THD up to 20 kHz must be at least 80 kHz, which means that harmonics up to and including order four are included.

Nad C298 shows high THD at treble frequencies above 10 kHz despite the numbers being beautify due to the low-pass filter used in the THD measurement."

faktiskt.io • Visa tråd - NAD C 298

Edit 2:

I have no love for any special amplifier class. If it measures well, it sounds good (sounds nothing so to speak). I am just curious.

 

[Schollaudio]

I think Amir was pretty straight forward even saying the issues could possibly be AP related. He even checked the AP by re measuring an old amp.
Everytime a product doesn't do well there is always a surge of optimism the reason is anything other than the product, I get it, we all want the stuff we buy to do well.

Especially with this product. We're all looking for that break through product with excellent performance, sound and power for reasonable costs. If the parts are genuine and competently executed this amp could be that product. I honestly hope the company figures it out and produces the amp we hoped for. It's not impossible to do today.

 

[sarumbear]

@amirm , which one you think is better? Interestingly enough, beheaded panther vs. recommended component .

View attachment 157281

View attachment 157282

Why don’t you take your fight somewhere else?

 

[sarumbear]

Frankly, I do not care about price. There are $30K products worse than other $1K products. All I care about are parameters, reliability, built quality, not the price. Price tells almost nothing.

Some of us do care about the price and we all understood what your criteria is. You don‘t have to come in in on every amplifier review stating your criteria. It gets tiring.

 

[sarumbear]

Given the large disparity between the published specs and the measured performance, especially given the burst-power graph that the manufacturer has apparently owned, I wonder if this example has some sort of production fault, perhaps in the power supply, that is limiting its performance. The inability to produce anywhere near the rated power has me especially suspicious, because that misrepresentation would be so easy to discover, and would support a complaint to the FTC.

Rick "has anyone communicated with the manufacturer?" Denney

Here we go, the faulty unit excuse has arrived.

 

[PeteL]

E]
Wait now. I was just referring to what I read another designer of amplifier said. Since what PMA wrote.

I'm curious. Hence my question to PMA. I think we let him, as a designer of amplifiers, develop it all.

Or?

Edit:

May well paste what the other designer/manufacturer said about a measurement of a class d amplifier. It got curious anyway. This:

NAD C 298 power amplifier Measurements

Sidebar 4: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Morello:
"Note that the measurements on this class-D device are performed with the low-pass filter (for = 25 kHz) Audio Precision AUX-0025 connected between the output of the output stage and the input of the analyzer, so all THD measurements are irrelevant above about 6 kHz. It surprises me that Atkinson does not limit the graphs to just this.

THD is a measure of the nonlinearities of the step - quadratic, cubic and higher order terms in the transfer characteristics. The same terms lead to intermodulation distortion. If you want a correct picture of the amplifiers distortion, the bandwidth when measuring THD up to 20 kHz must be at least 80 kHz, which means that harmonics up to and including order four are included.

Nad C298 shows high THD at treble frequencies above 10 kHz despite the numbers being beautify due to the low-pass filter used in the THD measurement."

faktiskt.io • Visa tråd - NAD C 298

Edit:

I have no love for any special amplifier class. If it measures well, it sounds good (sounds nothing so to speak). I am just curious.

Yep, it's not living under a rock to be interested by these subtleties of amp measurments. That's why we are here and it's relevant to the discussion.

 

[GimeDsp]

Some people are just living under a rock it seems.

Rocks/land goes for a lot of money in California.

Especially with this product. We're all looking for that break through product with excellent performance, sound and power for reasonable costs. If the parts are genuine and competently executed this amp could be that product. I honestly hope the company figures it out and produces the amp we hoped for. It's not impossible to do today.

At least it's not like waiting for the flying car.

 

[daniboun]

Hi amigos,

Just talked to Tom from ClassDAudio when I read this :

I had trouble getting the amplifier to function initially. It would simply not output anything. I played with grounding as I have seen some very low end amps cause AP to not be able to capture their output due to high level of noise (despite my use of AES-17 filter). This didn't work at first so I switched inputs to RCA. That did not work either. After some fiddling and switching back to balanced input, the amp all of a sudden started to work. Not sure how much of this is interaction with Audio Precision or design issue. Either way, it is an exception to the rule of 95% of amplifiers I have measured.

I tried to figure out what was wrong with this amp ... specially with the balanced inputs arfffff
However, I hypothesized, was the Mini Gan 5 on loan to ASR working well?

here are our exchanges :

 

[GimeDsp]

Hi amigos,

Just talked to Tom from ClassDAudio when I read this :



I tried to figure out what was wrong with this amp ... specially with the balanced inputs arfffff
However, I hypothesized, was the Mini Gan 5 on loan to ASR working well?

here are our exchanges :

I believe the validity of Amir's testing puts it way beyond just talk on "An internet forum".

That's like saying the technical experts here are "just forum members". Lol.

Hopefully they get to the bottom of the issues and everyone will benifit.

 

[daniboun]

Given the large disparity between the published specs and the measured performance, especially given the burst-power graph that the manufacturer has apparently owned, I wonder if this example has some sort of production fault, perhaps in the power supply, that is limiting its performance. The inability to produce anywhere near the rated power has me especially suspicious, because that misrepresentation would be so easy to discover, and would support a complaint to the FTC.

Rick "has anyone communicated with the manufacturer?" Denney

I am in touch with the Manufacturer and and we had a lot of discussions, which I have also shared here.
Premium Audio is a brand of ClassDaudio and I spoke with both brand representatives

As you could read it above, i made a hypothesis: was the model tested by Amir defective?

I sincerely wish that Tom from ClassDAudio could send another model back to Amir to clear the doubt and confirm or deny the results.
for the time being, Amir's test is final)

 

[Koeitje]

E]
Wait now. I was just referring to what I read another designer of amplifier said. Since what PMA wrote.

Ok, then lets Bruno Putzeys what he thinks? I mean, who better to just ask than somebody who designs state of the art amplification.

 

[PeteL]

Especially with this product. We're all looking for that break through product with excellent performance, sound and power for reasonable costs. If the parts are genuine and competently executed this amp could be that product. I honestly hope the company figures it out and produces the amp we hoped for. It's not impossible to do today.

But since nobody, at least any that we can easily find measurments had yet to deliver a high performance amp using the tech, may the tech itself be judged too? Because in the end many research firms comes with theoretically revolutionary tech, but it has to be applicated. In the world research, enormous budget are often allocated if a Patent has great potential, but they should be able to come up with reference desings, not just proofs of concepts. Until then the benefits are just theoretical.

Edit: looks like GanSystem do make reference design. Maybe the value of the tech should be assesed by measuring those...

GaN Systems Releases Best Performance Class-D Amplifier and Companion SMPS Evaluation Kit | GaN Systems

Gallium Nitride (GaN) enables high power Class-D solutions with superior sound, efficiency, and thermal performance OTTAWA, Ontario, May 14, 2020 – GaN Systems, the global leader in GaN (gallium nitride) power semiconductors, today announced the debut and availability of a new amplifier...

gansystems.com