Thank you very kindly, dear experts, for your most appreciated advice!
You saved me quite a bit of dough: I almost pulled the trigger on one of the ML clones. Glad I asked you first!
The Job INT (upgrade from 225?) looks interesting indeed. Just a couple of points: digital volume control, and no balanced input…
I am not familiar with class D designs: can they REALLY sound like class A (think PASS Labs XA series, e.g.)? Are they not equipped with SMPS? Are they capable of providing adequate power bandwidth? Anyway, this UK-based outfit, Nord, does offer a few models looking good on paper… Any first-hand listening impressions? And how do they compare in terms of price/performance ratio to the competition?
Please chime in!
Digital volume control and Class D amplification are two persistent audiophile bugbears.
Digital volume control, if implemented well, is completely transparent. It's likely possible but more difficult and expensive to achieve the same transparency with analog volume control. The IC solution for digital volume control in the JOB INT is probably fine. That said, because of the unusually high gain of Goldmund's JOB amplifier circuit, the JOB products are not a slam dunk; the gain seems to make them prone to hiss and grounding noise with most equipment.
Class D amplification can be fine, too. The three best speakers that I have heard--the Kii Threes, Dutch & Dutch 8Cs, and B&O BeoLab 90s--all use Class D amplification, and two of the three best systems that I have heard used Class D amplifiers (NCore amplifiers in one case, Pascal amplifiers in the other).
With these technologies, all depends on the implementation. The Nord amplifiers seem promising, but it's impossible to know without measurements.