Bel Canto REF1000M vs. Simaudio Moon 400M

Zuigisland..before you jump on the Esoteric bandwagon, consider the MPS-3 or MPS-5 players from Playback Designs.
The designer of these machines is Andreas Koch, the King of digital engineering. He designed the original SACD technology for Sony when he worked for them back in the ninetie's, and he built the worlds first outboard D/A processor in 1982. No digital engineer can top Koch, not even Mike Ritter with Berkeley Audio. He worked for EMM Labs and Ed Meitner but was ticked off at Ed and left due to the lousy analog stage that Meitner designed in the EMM players. Andreas designed the digital stages for all the EMM players. The Playback Designs machines will smoke or equal any other brand regardless of price due to the algorithm, rail array topology that is exclusive to Koch. No other SACD/CD player in the world has advanced engineering that can equal Koch.

Mapman..for the power that the Sim Moon 400M puts out, which peaks at a whopping 56 amperes, the amp is light and very efficient. Sim recommends keeping the amp on at all times. In idle mode the amp runs on a low 22 watts. Each mono block weighs just 33 lbs. Due to their advanced Renaissance circuit technology, they are the lightest high powered A/AB amps on the market. The whole idea with class D amps years ago was to make a light efficient amp. Now Sim has achieved the problems with class A/AB amps where a class D amp is no longer necessary, and no class D amp will ever equal the superior musicality of a class A or A/AB amp.

Mapman..what is important to make the comparison is the gain output, the max amperage output and voltage storage.
Class D amps work best with dedicated 20 or 30 amp a.c.
outlets since they move current by means of pulse modulation or switching modualtion. Comparing the Simaudio 400M to the Bel Canto Ref1000M, The Sim has 100,000 microfarads of storage if you count all main and secondary caps and has a max output of 56 amperes where as the Bel Canto peaks at 45 amperes, the Sim has a superior power supply. I have owned Class D amps in the past. They are great if the recording is good quality but since Class D amps are known for being extremely neutral, they can be brutal on poor red book CD's. Class D amps do not have the full, liquid midrange of the best tube and S.S. amps. I had the Nuforce 9SE V2's, and they where too dry in the upper frequencies. A close friend of mine in Chicago has the Sim 400M's with a Levinson 326S Pre and a Playback Designs MPS-5 SACD player. He describes the Sim's as very organic with a very full rich and smooth midrange, with outstanding transparency and echo decay. Class D amps are good if you are on a budget and want a short cut to obtain high power, but they are cheaper too make and do not possess the superior beefy power supplies and larger transformers of conventional amps that will always have greater power reserves then Class D.