Affordable GaN FET amp from Peachtree Audio

i hope this unit isn’t plagued with this problem... absolutely shocking they would let production units out like that... 

cool concept (but not having a usb digital in is a miss imo)

mini gan 5 is only $750 at full retail though... very similar internals i would suspect

OK, color me curious...How in the world can a GaN amp be fed a digital signal and amplify that signal and have it be an analog output without a D to A conversion taking place?

And if that D to A conversion is taking place (me thinks it has to be) then the GaN amp is incorporating a DAC (of whatever strip you wish to call it).

By extension does this mean that any GaN amp doesn’t need a DAC and can be fed a straight up digital signal.

ralph at atmasphere or others working with these technologies can probably answer better ...

...but to my understanding the class d amps use pulse width modulation of the output transistors... so the input into that form of power transistor control scheme is digitized by nature... so when you put an analog signal into these units, it actually goes through a-to-d conversion initially, so that the amp module is working off a digital signal it needs to its modulation (downstream control) scheme - and then the amplified output is delivered to the output taps (speaker terminals) in analog form, thus playing music

amps and integrated amps like those from devialet, lyngdorf et al all work this way - you feed in an analog signal, it converts to digital at the input... then the amplification module converts it back to analog with the juice behind it to drive the speakers...

so this peachtree product is simplifying the scheme by taking the digital in only at the spdif rca port... to a-to-d conversion is being done for any inputs

https://digilent.com/blog/whats-the-point-of-a-dac-and-why-do-i-care/

https://www.adam-audio.com/en/technology/pwm/

https://www.eetimes.com/class-d-audio-amplifiers-what-why-and-how-part-5/