Anyone hear the Class D Audio Mini GaN 5 amp yet?

Greetings all. Just getting back into the audio game after a 9 year absence.

Just got one in today and after only about 2.5 hours of playing I’m very impressed. Best Class D I’ve ever heard and I’ve had the best the like of Bel Canto and Wyred 4 Sound had to offer. No comparison IMHO.

The midrange is simply stunning for Class D. Midrange weight, tonality and overall soundstage stand out so far. Base is tight with the high end smooth and refined as others have stated.

We’ll see what happens after about 100 hours of break-in time on it. Its a keeper for sure.

For you measurement folks, looks like ASR just gave this amp a bad review:

https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/premium-audio-mini-gan-5-review-stereo-amplif...

Checked out that review thread. Not a place I’ll be frequenting. Ugh!

With a few more evenings of listening time, a few more observations. Bass and dynamics are really superb. Both those elements got slightly better with playing time. I find this amp quite reveling and true to recording quality.

What I find strange is that lead voice tracks often appear too far back in the sound stage and certain instruments like a piano, lack a bit of the weight expected from a good class A/B SS amp.

I moved the gain from mid to low with no discernable difference is sound quality. Nothing that cranking up the volume could not address. No problems whatsoever mechanically (on/off, warm-up time, disconnecting and reconnecting cables, etc.).

This amp does a lot of thing really well. Nipping at the heals of good Class A/B. I would not say it surpasses it.  But does kick the crap out of previous Class D I’ve used.

I'm rather surprised and a bit confused.  I have an Esoteric F-05 driving Egglestonworks 9se speakers, Pontus II dac, Spacedeck table with a high end Van Den Hul cartridge.

I had heard some mid range clang if you will at moderate to high volumes for which I had to adjust tone controls on the Esoteric quite dramatically.  I became concerned maybe they weren't getting enough wattage from the Esoteric.

I wanted to see what some additional wattage would do, and wanted to do it as an experiment as cheaply as possible.

In my system after 1 day of break in the soundstage expanded (although vocals rather fixed centrally, depth variable was impressive), clarity improved, and for what it's worth stopped needing to use my tone controls.  Maybe a touch thinner but all other parameters improved.  I really couldn't believe my ears so had multiple friends with great ears listened.  The all voted for the 5.  Guess I'll keep it.  Dang. 

 

@maw8c Congrats! Once the amp is fully burned in and you’re acclimated to it you might consider talking to Ric Schultz at Electronic Visionary Systems about mods he’s developed for your amp. He upgrades/reworks key parts that can bring these amps to an even higher level of performance for relatively small cost for the improvement you get. There’s more info on his website if you might be interested at some point. I was seriously considering the GaN5 as well as I’m sure once modded it could be a pretty special amp on the relative cheap, but I decided to have my McCormack amp upgraded instead and although I know it’ll be a great amp I still wonder if I made the right choice.  Anyway, enjoy the new amp and if you would please report back with your thoughts as the amp settles in.