Digital amp beat them all? Audio Physic Strada .

Well, according to the measurments in Stereophile,the
monoblocks are down 1 dB at 100 kHz..
I also make a translation from german to english, and quote
Stereoplay:
"Madonnas voice seems -while the other amps make it compar-atively cooler and more pale, more free, more female and warmer" .
I, for my part, have a pragmatic attitude towards audio,
if it sounds good, it is good, independtly of the technique
being used. So I will look forward to see the opinion of
other magazines about the Stradas.There is a mag in Germany
called Audiophile (owned by the same publishing house as
Stereoplay) that will publish a review in their next issue,
will be out in September. Audiophile´s favorites are e.g.
Accuphase A-50 V, Lamm M1.1, Pass X 600, ML 33H, and Spectral DMA-360. No Krell amp reviewed,yes I´m not a fan
of Krell.
Better still, will be to find out for ourselfs, if digital
amps can be superior, but for my part I dislike shows.
Having heard to many probably good products sound terrible, e.g.an expensive new loudspeaker from an European company that begins with L, this winter in a show in Stockholm. And
a lot of amps that were clipping........
BTW, wouldn´t it be a good idea to have different fees at
shows;by paying extra (one day), there could be a (strict)limitation in the numbers of visitors!
Then it will be easier to us, to find out if digital amps
can compete with "traditional" amps. Please be open-minded!

I´ve heard the arguments before!There has to be ...because
..To be more specific: there is an audio society here in
Sweden called Ljudtekniska sällskapet "The society of sound technique". Their guru often has some splendid explanations
of why products have to sound in a certain way, even before
he seems to have listen to the products in question.
One member thanked him, because "before, I thought I heard
that SACD sounded better than CD, but after talking to
the (name of the guru),and after getting his technical explanations, I realised, that I was totally wrong!"
The question: are the Stradas overpriced or not, can not
be easely answered without a general discussion of the whole
audiomarket! To me, quality of components in an amp,the
built quality, the efforts and intellectual challanges that
are laid down in a certain product; these factors play a
great role.Please note, that digital amps can be realised
in different ways, and that the Stradas doesn´t use
the Tri-Path building blocks, used in several other digital
amps.
I´m not trusting magazines that much, but their findings
may or may not have significance to us, as consumers. That
is our own choice.
I´m not saying that the Strada monoblocks are splendid
products,because that I don´t know. Certainly they are not the end of the road, but I find them interesting enough.

Regards
Håkan

Vinyl and 8 Hz reproduction? You get serious problems with
warped records, then these sub-frequences, if sent further
up the chain, will charge your amps in vain,and your woofers
will flutter.Marakanetz it´s a good idea, to adjust the
weight of the cartridge, its suspension, and the mass of
the arm so that sub-sonic information (low frequency rumble
and that of warps)form a high-pass filter . This was shown
several years ago, I think in the 70´s, by a dane named
Paul Ladegaard.Like Unsound, I think you have come a bit
off target!And the frequency respons curve in Stereoplay
shows that the Stradas are only down by a fraction of a
dB at 10 Hz. Their subjective bass reproduction is said,
in the review, to be better(lower, with more grip and with
more corpus)than any amp tested before, including Krell
FPB 650 M.

Sorry, correction;should be:to adjust or match the weight of the cartridge,its suspension,and the mass of the arm, so that they form a highpass filter, that rejects low frequency information like rumble and signals from warped records.

I agree to that Albert, most measurments (on amps)doesn´t tell us much about how the amp actually sounds.Some well- reviewed amps that I have read about recently, have rather high figures of intermodulation distortion.Probably, the usual,static measurments miss important information of an amps behavior under more realistic, transient signal conditions.But some measurments, e.g. an amps delivery of power into a reactive load, tells us somthing about the amps ability to drive real world loads, i.e. speakers.
Stereoplay has an interesting hypotesis that valve amps and digital amps have one thing in common, namely that they are less prone to be affected by back-EMF sent (back) from the speakers to the
amp(s).And perhapes they can be made,so that they pollute
the mains less than conventional amps?

If digital amps can compete in the High-end sector, only time will tell.But I find a big advantage in their superior efficiency! That is less disturbing to the environment,and
at the same time save us from some heat! (I have to admit,
that I now use a big class A amp.)My own belief, is that
we will see digital amps taking over the scene sooner that
many of us expected.Like all predictions, it can be wrong.