Hypex nCore vs Class A amps

[mdunjic]

Honestly, I'm pretty disgusted by the wave of attacks on @6feet . It's really not friendly and makes ASR look like a bunch of brainwashed Hypex followers at a church gathering.

He's put his money where his mouth is, and purchased Class D amplifiers, something a lot of you keyboard warriors have not done. He's clearly slightly disappointed after his comparisons, and is happy to let them go to someone who wants them at a bargain price. He's an independent thinker and not afraid to speak his mind- something increasingly rare in this group-think driven world.

As Don pointed out, the amplifier and speaker combination he had may be a better match than the Class Ds. Nothing wrong with that- Class D is not a universal panacea.

Oh, and Welcome to ASR @6feet Rest assured it's a mostly friendly place...

Well said !

 

[mdunjic]

back to "Hypex nCore vs Class A amps" or Class D vs Class A

Class A has no crossover distortion
Class AB has
Class D?:
Class D switches also between output transistors, but at a much higher frequency than Class AB (above 20 kHz). So the distortion that this switching creates is at an even higher frequency, we cannot hear that!

And yes, feedback reduces the distortion for both the Class AB and the Class D amplifier.

We cannot hear the "crossover" distortion of Class D (already before being reduced by feedback) and Class A has no crossover distortion at all. This fits my experience with (uncontrolled) listining to different amplifiers.

Class A amplifiers are heavy, heaters, expensive and rare. So mostly I prefer Class D amplifiers. Although I must say that there are also a lot of very capable designed Class AB amplifiers.

Quad “current dumping”, Linn Chakra, Hegel Sound Engine and THX AAA are all feed-forward designs and all successfully eliminate crossover distortion by applying feed forward error correction within that crossover region of the main output push-pull power stage transistors … all of them are using separate, very low power & ultra high quality class A amp, to drive output load within crossover region of main power output transistors in push-pull class AB config … where these feed-forward designs may differ, is in the method to sense error, and trigger error correcting class A amp to iron-out / eliminate the crossover distortion and also type of power supply they use (linear or switching) … that’s all sound engineering… no rocket science