@noble100
Just the thought of comparing the diminutive Atsah class D monos at 1/4 the weight and size of the pure class A Clayton monos seems like a big mismatch to me reminiscent of David vs Goliath. I suspect you were not very surprised that, in this modern rematch, the favored Goliath clearly beat the underdog David
Hello noble100, I will try and respond to your question. First, during my direct comparison of the Acoustic Imagery and Clayton amplifiers over a prolonged period in my system, I did not attribute any performance characteristic or selection bias to the size of the two amplifiers. In fact, the Acoustic Imagery amplifiers are well-made with very solid CNC'd aluminum casework and excellent Furutech binding posts. They look cool and between the looks, small size, ability to remain turned-on 24/7, and quiet operation, I truly hoped they would be my last amplifiers.
Could it be that the reason the musical material that you played through your class A Cayton M300 amps sounded so good, while the same recording played through your very accurate and revealing class D Atsah sounded so poor, was due to the musical material not being as well engineered as you originally thought? In other words, Do you think your class A Clayton M300 amps are less revealing and more forgiving of bad recordings than your Atsah?
That is an interesting question. The Class D Atsahs are revealing, but so are the Claytons. I did not have the sense that one amplifier displayed more information than the other. The recorded information was typically Redbook CD burned to a Mac mini and played through
Channel D's Pure Music player and then later Redbook CD burned directly to the Antipodes DX. The DAC is a Metrum Pavane. Therefore, the material is not high sample rate DSD, or even upsampled to any great degree. My preference is for a natural sounding presentation so even through the mini I preferred the 24-bit, 88.2 sample rate. I do not believe the Antipodes upsamples.
I understand your implication that the Atsahs displayed the "warts and all" of poorly recorded material and thus did not sound as good as the Claytons. I guess I never really thought about that and simply made my choice based on how the two amplifiers sounded in my system with the source I was using. My issues with the Ncore Atsahs were related to spatial cues and not detail. I did like listening to music through the Atsahs and particularly liked their rich tone, that not too many SS amplifiers get right IMO.