has anyone heard both Bel Canto and W4S amps?

Hi Koven,
I owned a S300 about a year ago. I currently own the Bel Canto M300 mono amps and I just tried a Wyred4Sound ST-500 which I sold immediately.

I found the S300 to be a very pleasant sounding amp but it did not have enough power and control in the bass for me. And it was too laid back for me. The M300 is a significant upgrade from the S300 with deeper faster bass, more resolution at all frequencies, with more entended highs(the S300 is a little rolled off). The M300 also maintains control and sorts out complex musical passages easily where the S-300 just sort of ommitted detail. The S-300 never offends, but it subtracted too much for me.

While the ST-500 is noticably more detailed than the S-300 and offers good bass control and more volume capability, I found it to have a significant emphasis in the upper mids/highs. It was not etched or harsh, it just had too much energy in the upper bands for my taste and system. The bass is good but not great.

If you basically like the Bel Canto sound, but want better performance at the same power level, the M300 is probably your best bet.

At 150/300 vs 250/500 wpc into 8 Ohms/4 Ohms, there is not a significant difference in overall volume capability between the M300 and the ST-500.

Of course, YMMV!

Tim

Koven - I have Rowland 102 based on the same module (200ASC) as Bel Canto S300 (or M300). It is 100W@8ohm and not 150W. Bel Canto rates it 150W but at 10% distortions. Icepower modules have pretty low input impedance (10k). Rowland uses THAT1200 instrumentation amp on separate tiny board to increase impedance to 40k. Other companies might use transformer (some distortions but at low frequencies). W4S has great reviews but 2x more power is only 22% louder.

Largest Icepower modules 500W/1000W (1000ASP) have (according to reviews) more focused/coherent but less airy sound (Bel Canto Ref1000) than smallest 100W/200W module (Bel Canto S300). It might be related to stronger/heftier supply and lower bandwidth because of lower carrier frequency (bigger Mosfets are slower).

I'm guessing more of a sideways move, at least if used with a SS pre-amp.

The 60K input impedance of the Wyred compared to 10K on that particular Bel Canto unit might benefit if you are using a tube pre-amp.

Search the forums as I have read where a few members have compared the two. Just do a search under " Class D amps"