New Bel Canto REF600M using NCORE

" I suspect the tubed LS25 is contributing positively to the musicality and lack of edge."
"A good amp is like a sewer: What you get out of it depends on what you put into it."

Same for "the best preamps" they should be "totally transparent" like a direct source to poweramp connection, yet with control over the volume.
Not adding "musicality" or removing "edge" if any.

Cheers George

We spent a afternoon with them on different speakers. Make sure you hear them with your speakers before purchasing.
As they "can" sound good with flat 4ohm’ish impedance, but also not so good if the upper-mid/high impedance curve of the speaker looks a bit like a roller coaster.

Cheers George

All this talk about noise/hum is a bit mute, without proper bench test results.

The way to "pseudo" see what is noisier than what without looking at them on the test bench, is to disconnect the preamps and put shorting input plugs on the power amp inputs, this is a better layman’s way of saying what noisier than what.

BTW some not all Class-D’s modules, don’t even switch their main section on, if there’s no signal present, they may appear to be on. And then there’s different amp gains to consider as well, as this also has a bearing on noise levels.

Cheers George

rampage60

I would stick with the XA160.5's as the ML's like all of them go down to 1ohm in the HF and this is where Class D has real problems.

Cheers George

I listened to a promo pair of these a few months ago, and I was finally impressed with the sound of Class D.
But they were driving expensive two ways with an easy load, and in particular the ribbon tweeter was a nice flat 6ohm load impedance and flat small negative phase angle, which can to my ears make Class D sound not so good if it wanders too much in impedance and phase angle. So I wasn't sold, and have no opportunity to hear them on something more taxing to Class D. in the HF
 
From what I gather they do stray from just the off the shelf NCore design, as I believe that Belcanto have do their own output filtering which is tricky, and from what I gather it's a few series up filters so they can still push the power though them without blowing them, yet get a sharper rolloff to get that nasty switching noise killed off without effecting the audio band too much. But then series'ing up filters has it own set of problems, eg ringing again?? At least their trying.

Still to me the best way is to increase the switching frequency at least 5-10 times higher than what technology can do now. Then in the future when the technology allows this to happen,  just a single filter will do the job of killing the switching frequency noise without it's artifacts being anywhere near the audio band. 

Cheers George