Typical classist comments.I might get crucified for it here, but I'm one of the people who doesn't particularly jive with the sound signature of some Class D amps, specifically in the treble. I don't know if it's the different presentation of harmonics or what exactly, but it is very fatiguing to my ear over time.
I have several thousand hours of listening on my NAD M10 on several different types of speakers, both direct (unadjusted) output and also tweaked via Dirac. It's slightly better with Dirac but the lingering high frequency difference is still there. Current speakers are Klipsch Heresy IV, so it's not a "difficult load" problem.
When I started using the pre-outs to a Schiit Vidar (class AB) it improved dramatically. Fatigue dropped immensely and now I don't notice it at all. Seems like an utterly unnecessary thing to need to do, though. If the Hypex nCore in the M10 is even remotely what they claim it to be, it should be almost entirely transparent, and I don't find that to be true in practice.
If anyone has an opinion on this, please share. I'm all ears (pun intended).
Both the Vidar and the M10 have a flat enough frequency response and in fact the M10 is about half a dB down at 20 kHz compared to the Vidar. They both have rising distortion with frequency, SINAD wise they are very comparable, although the M10 will do better at high levels and the distortion products are some 10 dB lower. High-frequency distortion is also probably a bit better. Overall, they should be very similar performance wise, probably giving the edge to the M10. Which one is more transparent? The M10, maybe by a hair?
I bet you’ve never done a properly level matched comparison? I doubt you could keep them apart.