No clipping or distortion att all even at very high level volume with my McIntosh MC152.
"If you are considering a new power amplifier then it is sensible to consider the best of the class D amplifiers using Purifi modules - the best of them are less expensive and outperform the amplifiers on your list."- such as ?
If you possess top notch loudspeakers, such as Revel Salon 2 of KEF Blade meta (be careful here many/most equally or more expensive speakers aren’t as good as these) and you have set up your listening room well and perhaps you’ve used room equalisation then we may be moving to the point that slightly better results may be achieved with amplifiers other than the McIntosh MC152. But you don’t notice any lack of power from the MC152 amplifier so that isn’t the issue.
The Purifi modules are used by a number of amplifier builders. Naming just a few quality builders (there are others) consider BoXem if you’re in Europe, Buckeye in N. America and March Audio in Australia. All these builders take quality seriously. If you want a mainstream manufacturer who has adopted Purifi then consider NAD, although I believe that they use their own variant of the Purifi circuits under licence (Nothing wrong with that - they do a good job).
Purifi now make 3 different modules
1. 1ET400. 225W into 8 Ohms. Can drive full voltage into 3 Ohms
2. 1ET7040. Marginally more power into 8 Ohms but very robust in driving low impedance speakers down to 2 Ohms (950W -depending on power supply used)
3. 1ET9040. Brand new. 400 Watts into 8 Ohms and depending on power supply, perhaps 1400 watts into 2 Ohms. Arguably the best amplifier in terms of performance on the market. No 9040 based amplifiers have been reviewed by
@amirm yet. Somebody who was cautious might wish to wait . . .
Now the interesting thing about these amplifiers is their price/performance ratio. March Audio sell the monoblock 9040 based amplifier (you need 2 of them for stereo) P801 at $2027 + shipping + taxes. This is substantially less any high performance Class AB amplifier and is something of a game changer.
All of these Purifi based amplifiers will sound the same right up to the point when the amplifier approaches voltage or current limiting. Their sound is essentially ‘neutral’ since they just amplify and and do not distort so don’t expect the warm, fuzzy sound of a low feedback amplifier. Even still will they sound noticeably better than your MC152 which is pretty neutral? Probably not!
EDIT:typo
