This is a review and detailed measurements of Living Sound Audio Electronics Voyager GAN 350 stereo amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US 3,000 from the company.
I really like the high-end look of this amplifier case:
Strange though as there is no power indicator, nor switch. The latter is in the back only:
I really dislike the hard to read type on the back. Other than that, the connectors seem to be of good quality.
As the name indicates, this amplifier uses GaN transistors to ostensibly lower distortion and increase efficiency of the amplification. In use, the bottom where all the modules are mounted barely god warm so efficiency is good.
LSA Voyager GAN350 Measurements
I started my testing with XLR inputs which showed really odd results:
As you see, the gain is nearly 10 dB different between the channels. I looked for configuration switches but couldn't find anything. After wasting half hour, I switched to RCA input and problem vanished:
If I were to guess I would say the XLR input is miswired on one channel. Bad execution if so in such an expensive amplifier. For the rest of the test I stuck with RCA input.
Signal to noise ratio while OK, is not state of the art:
I like to see full 16 bit/96 dB dynamic range at 5 watts. We fall short here.
Frequency response was sad to see:
Class D amplifiers have a low pass filter that can interact with the load if not designed well and that is what we have here. The impact falls clearly in audible band. This would be OK for a budget amplifier in $100 range but not in this class. Depending on what speaker you hook up to this amplifier, the highs may be exaggerated or filtered.
Crosstalk on the other hand was exceptional due to dual mono design and no crosstalk through the power supply:
Multitone performance was also very good, indicating low intermodulation distortion:
Power was healthy into 4 ohm albeit with unexceptional distortion and noise levels:
There is still plenty of power available even into 8 ohm:
Interesting how distortion keeps rising and clipping is rather soft. As they state, this indicates low amount of negative feedback.
Transfer function is frequency dependent with distortion rising quite a bit at higher frequencies (likely due to that low feedback level):
Spectrum of switching frequency shows good attenuation but not that high of a frequency:
If they had opted for higher speed which GaN transistors allow, the impact of the output filter would have been lower (and possibly above audible band).
The amplifier doesn't need any warm up as it is stable on power on:
Conclusions
Other than having a lot of power and good efficiency, there is not much else to be happy here. Clearly companies are using GaN as a buzzword without fully taking advantage of what it can provide. Lots of money is left on the table here in many areas from frequency response load dependency to high amount of distortion. At the end of the day, you have an expensive, high power amplifier here with average performance.
I can't recommend the LSA Voyager GAN 350. Performance is not there, nor is quality control.
Edit: teardown just posted: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...a-voyager-gan-350-teardown-class-d-amp.28208/
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I really like the high-end look of this amplifier case:
Strange though as there is no power indicator, nor switch. The latter is in the back only:
I really dislike the hard to read type on the back. Other than that, the connectors seem to be of good quality.
As the name indicates, this amplifier uses GaN transistors to ostensibly lower distortion and increase efficiency of the amplification. In use, the bottom where all the modules are mounted barely god warm so efficiency is good.
LSA Voyager GAN350 Measurements
I started my testing with XLR inputs which showed really odd results:
As you see, the gain is nearly 10 dB different between the channels. I looked for configuration switches but couldn't find anything. After wasting half hour, I switched to RCA input and problem vanished:
If I were to guess I would say the XLR input is miswired on one channel. Bad execution if so in such an expensive amplifier. For the rest of the test I stuck with RCA input.
Signal to noise ratio while OK, is not state of the art:
I like to see full 16 bit/96 dB dynamic range at 5 watts. We fall short here.
Frequency response was sad to see:
Class D amplifiers have a low pass filter that can interact with the load if not designed well and that is what we have here. The impact falls clearly in audible band. This would be OK for a budget amplifier in $100 range but not in this class. Depending on what speaker you hook up to this amplifier, the highs may be exaggerated or filtered.
Crosstalk on the other hand was exceptional due to dual mono design and no crosstalk through the power supply:
Multitone performance was also very good, indicating low intermodulation distortion:
Power was healthy into 4 ohm albeit with unexceptional distortion and noise levels:
There is still plenty of power available even into 8 ohm:
Interesting how distortion keeps rising and clipping is rather soft. As they state, this indicates low amount of negative feedback.
Transfer function is frequency dependent with distortion rising quite a bit at higher frequencies (likely due to that low feedback level):
Spectrum of switching frequency shows good attenuation but not that high of a frequency:
If they had opted for higher speed which GaN transistors allow, the impact of the output filter would have been lower (and possibly above audible band).
The amplifier doesn't need any warm up as it is stable on power on:
Conclusions
Other than having a lot of power and good efficiency, there is not much else to be happy here. Clearly companies are using GaN as a buzzword without fully taking advantage of what it can provide. Lots of money is left on the table here in many areas from frequency response load dependency to high amount of distortion. At the end of the day, you have an expensive, high power amplifier here with average performance.
I can't recommend the LSA Voyager GAN 350. Performance is not there, nor is quality control.
Edit: teardown just posted: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...a-voyager-gan-350-teardown-class-d-amp.28208/
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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