High End Amp Price Collapse musings

The thing about many of those big, heavy older Class A amps is that they were made so good. Think about it. Many people still have 1960’s and 70's McIntoshes at the heart of their system.

Which of the McIntoshes were Class A?  Must have been a secret series they released.  The Macs of the 60's were just slightly above class B, nowhere near in range of class A bias.

I'm also not impressed with the build quality of the big class A's.  I remembered a friend who bought some of the Levinson 25W heavy bias class A amps (got a partial "HQD" system then found he didn't much like it.  Put the amps in storage for about 10yrs).  Got them out later... oops the filter caps had gone bad.  Seriously, old Japanese 70's receivers have sat for that long and powered right up.

Like a microwave a Class D is either on or off as opposed to a Class A/B which is always on.

Not really... a Class A/B output device is either partially-ON or completely off. (Class A outputs are always partially-ON). The "partially-ON" part is the hard one, no device is entirely linear doing that. So they basically do just "some more" or "some less" in relatively accurate but still uneven amounts.

But the very fast solid state devices are VERY good at being ON or OFF over precise times, so in at least that way that works better -- the power devices don’t have to be linear, they just have to be fast.