Getting tired of the D sound ?

[RaymondFromThePyrénéés]

I hear more and more about people
abandoning the class D sound,
switching back to the AB sound ?

Audiophonics among others, see this happening.

I know that on paper this does not, cannot, show up ?

I saw a blind test between class A, AB and D
and no one could tell,
BUT BUT, these were all very expensive amps,

not amps between 300 and 800 euros !

I know very well that class D has improved a lot,
but still wondering about this ?

Someone told me to buy
with my futur WiiM Ultra

instead of a 3E A7,
a Yamaha A-S701 or some other AB.

Any opinions about this ?

 

[Salt]

 

[RaymondFromThePyrénéés]

 

[Salt]

Thanks for the reply, but now the discussion starts (await some tenth of pages to follow)...

 

[RaymondFromThePyrénéés]

this is a discussion I had with M. David Aubert at Audiophonics.

Perhaps the neutral very linear sound
is not so pleasing after all ?

 

[Audiofire]

I hear more and more about people
abandoning the class D sound,
switching back to the AB sound ?

Audiophonics among others, see this happening.

I know that on paper this does not, cannot, show up ?

Paste This in Your Hat!
What Every Audiophile Should Know and Never Forget

By Peter Aczel

Paste This in Your Hat!

In controlled double-blind listening tests, no one has ever (yes, ever!) heard a difference between two amplifiers with high input impedance, low output impedance, flat response, low distortion, and low noise, when operated at precisely matched levels (±0.1 dB) and not clipped. Of course, the larger your room and the less efficient your speakers, the more watts you need to avoid clipping.

 

[tineared]

I hear more and more about people
abandoning the class D sound,
switching back to the AB sound ?

Audiophonics among others, see this happening.

I know that on paper this does not, cannot, show up ?

I saw a blind test between class A, AB and D
and no one could tell,
BUT BUT, these were all very expensive amps,

not amps between 300 and 800 euros !

I know very well that class D has improved a lot,
but still wondering about this ?

Someone told me to buy
with my futur WiiM Ultra

instead of a 3E A7,
a Yamaha A-S701 or some other AB.

Any opinions about this ?

Poop

 

[Prana Ferox]

More of a C# guy myself

 

[RaymondFromThePyrénéés]

Paste This in Your Hat!
What Every Audiophile Should Know and Never Forget

By Peter Aczel

Paste This in Your Hat!

Interesting. What means : and not clipped ?

I suppose that the exception to this are tube amps ?
that are willingly or not willingly distorted ?

 

[ivayvr]

At least something to argue about!
My first class D was NAD D3020 some ~ 15 years ago that I was using for 2-3 years. After reading how "musical, intoxicating and all that shoyten.." Rega Brio was, I couldn't resist.....I was using it with the same speakers, Focal Aria 905, and it was so intoxicating and musical that I dumped it after a few months. Bought Bluesound Powernode and never looked back. If I remember correctly, D3020 had 20W less of declared power than the Brio and it was running Focals just fine and Brio was occasionally struggling with the task.
I am aware that my experience is in no way scientific and for that , we have a great number of reviews on this site proving there is a high number of splendid and less splendid amps in all classes.

 

[Audiofire]

Interesting. What means : and not clipped ?

I suppose that the exception to this are tube amps ?
that are willingly or not willingly distorted ?

Not clipped means the signal is below the maximum level of the system, so the waveform peaks are not flattened (clipped). Clipping happens when an amplifier, ADC, or other stage is driven past its maximum voltage/current and the tops of the waveform are cut, producing distortion and added harmonics.

Tubes have soft clipping when saturated, so like overdrive. Tubes round the waveform peaks more, which can seem harmonic or musically pleasant. However, this is still distortion and not necessarily better. It is subjective.

 

[Timcognito]

My thoughts, I'm tired of this topic as amplification is solved issue for quite some time. Transducers that capture and transmit mechanical sound energy not so much. New tech in amplification mostly moves in efficiency, unit size and price per watt.

 

[Saponetto]

I currently no longer use Class D amps, just chose to have A/AB, SS/tube amps to feel some pleasure on getting my cold hands on hot surfaces.
Just kidding of course, but this is -actually- a problem long time solved, indeed.

 

[SuicideSquid]

I hear more and more about people
abandoning the class D sound,
switching back to the AB sound ?

Audiophonics among others, see this happening.

I know that on paper this does not, cannot, show up ?

I saw a blind test between class A, AB and D
and no one could tell,
BUT BUT, these were all very expensive amps,

not amps between 300 and 800 euros !

I know very well that class D has improved a lot,
but still wondering about this ?

Someone told me to buy
with my futur WiiM Ultra

instead of a 3E A7,
a Yamaha A-S701 or some other AB.

Any opinions about this ?

There is no audible difference between modern Class D and Class AB amplifiers merely because of their class. In most cases there is no audible difference between Class D and Class AB amplifiers at all.

Some old Class D amplifier designs had issues with load dependency and high-frequency distortion but these have been solved problems for awhile.

Even very low-cost Class D amplifiers have largely resolved these issues. All other things being equal, I would choose a Class D design in almost all cases due to the cooler operating temperature, greater efficiency, and higher power output vs. a comparably-priced Class AB design.

 

[kyuu]

Only thing I'm getting tired of is audiophiles finding dumb crap to continually kvetch about.

 

[eddantes]

 

[10PSPMemSticksForMiku2007]

Measurements on this site show plenty of class D amps that are good quality and absolutely transparent. There is no Class D sound or Class AB sound unless there is a design issue with the amp. However when there are issues they may manifest differently.

I think there may be some other Class D amps out there which are not so good quality, such that if measurements are not available it can be reasonable to prefer some random AB amp to some random class D amp.

Specifically, when doing an active multichannel car system on a budget, I decided to use Power Acoustik's affordable Class AB amps for the mids and tweeters and use Recoil's Class D amps for the woofers and subwoofers. The power requirements for the mids/highs were low and the qualities of the cheap Class D amps are not known, so it made sense to me. Frequency response could be corrected with software but nothing can be done about noise and distortion for a given gain setting. Low pass helps for a woofer, not for a tweeter. The results are good and I would certainly use this configuration again. You could 'just' get Class D amps that are known to be excellent quality, but it will cost a lot more, save only the slightest amount of power, and there will be no audible benefit.

Without any measurements, I found the Power Acoustik AB amps obviously picked up much less high frequency noise than the Recoil amps with the gain set the same (and yes they were connected to the same distribution blocks for ground and power). I'm not going to say this is specifically because of any differences between AB and D but I will say that's typical in my limited experience with these lower budget products.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

This reminds me of the transistor vs. tube controversy in the early '70s.

 

[Multicore]

Oh, class D. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the D2 null sound in my music room but circuit class? Really? I don't care about that so long it works and isn't wasting electricity.

 

[Rick63]

Here we go again