Hello dear ASR community.
I would like to share with you my feedback from demoing the Hypex Niali (two monoblocks in single case) in terms of the sound quality. I am not having some extraordinary hearing capabilities, but I like to have fun listening to music... But to keep that post shorter, I go straight to the description of my experience.
I was listening on speakers in my home on Spendor D9.2 connected to an old Denon AVR X3300W used in Direct mode.
First listening ( Denon -> Nilai -> Spendor) - the sound quality has improved in terms of detail and sound stage, instruments were separated, and the speakers sounded much more powerful, however, the sound became less alive, boring, and hm.. metallic. The music lost its magic and fun, it was noticeable from the first song...
Second listening ( Topping DX3Pro+ > Nilai -> Spendor) - I have used Topping as a DAC and preamp to check if old DAC in Denon could be the reason of that metallic sound. The music in this configuration was better in any terms, with even more details, better sound stage and more hm 3dimentional, but still no fun, no magic, still the metallic sound.
Third listening ( Denon -> Spendor) - back to the roots, as expected, the sound became weaker, but not so much as I thought it would be, less detailed, but the magic has come back! My favorite songs came back to life, they were rhythmic, and alive, and it was fun to listen to them again.
Next day, I have packed the Nilai and went to a local hifi store where they prepared a listening room for me with Spendor D9 to compare my amp with their flagships Accuphase E-800 (Class A) and Accuphase E-5000 (Class AB).
First listening Accuphase E-5000 - the music was extremely good, and detailed, bass was massive and went much lower than at home, it was fun to listen the music, and it was alive.
Second listening Accuphase E-800 - music was also very good, but class A was too weak for this size of speakers, and it was heard...
Third listening Nilai - the power came back again, very detailed, bass was there but was not able to go as low as Accuphase E-5000 but it was much better sound as E-800, and again... music lost magic and became metallic. It surprised me because I did not tell the experts from the hifi store what to expect from this amp, and after the listening I asked them for feedback before I said mine. They have agreed that the sound was very good, sound stage wide (but less wide than E-5000), and unfortunately... metallic and fatiguing.
4th listening Accuphase E-5000 - to check the sound signature of this metallic touch, we have returned to listening to the first amp. It was clear from the first song, that magic was there, the song was joyful and it was a pleasure to listen to it, the bass was very low.
After that two intensive days I have decided to return Nilai and start looking for an amp which would give my similar experience to Accuphase.
Conclusion
Hypex Nilai is a great amp, very powerful, sound is high quality, but it lacks filters or something else which in the end became artificial, metallic and lifeless.
I did not want to criticize anyone or the class d amp in general, but maybe there is a measurement which could find that problem and test it - from the scientific angle - during ASR review process.
To be honest, I have not heard of the competition. Recently I contacted Tibor from ApollonAudio and he recommended Purifi with Sparkos SS2590 op amps which he described as a more musical and warm sound. Maybe in near future I will have the opportunity to do so, but for now, I need to allocate my audio budget to something different.
I hope that it will help someone and show my thoughts about Class D amp from different angle.
