New Class D amplifiers

@tweak1 With XLR inputs, you may try all four possible positions for the back switches and see if this affects SQ

Honestly, i don't see a point in personal insults. 

@drhamp ,

 

The Cherrys are gone for obvious reasons 

It's not that obvious...

There may be not much of universal objectivity in comparing  different amplifiers.  The tastes are different . Most people like 8 cylinder pickups. I don't like them independently of their price and the gasoline they require. I prefer a light sport car. If an "American meat and potato" translates to an 8-cylinder pickup,  I am not sure if I will like Atmosphere class d. In fact I am not  impressed with Pass labs stuff, it's again matter of a taste.  If you want to drink water and instead you are given a very good prepared tasty lemonade, you would not like to drink it. I don't like  lemonade and Coca-Cola-like drinks although most people do like them (by the way if you want a cheap version of a Pass  amplifier, try Nuprime stuff, e.g. ST-10 class d amplifier). I'm so glad I was able to repair my Cherry Megaschino class d amplifier. I can now drink a pure good quality water. Tommy would have been very happy to hear this. 

Kuribo, your judgement may come from some objective data, this may make sense. To be more convincing you may go a bit deeper into the design basis of some GAN amplifiers, e.g , those of Atmosphere. Of course it would be important to compare them by yourself with Purifi etc.  (By the way, what you would say about the former amplifiers if they were five times cheaper?) In fact, i own LSA GaN Voyager for already some months and keep it on a shelf unplugged. I am disappointed not only with its sonic properties but also with a terrible service i experienced. 

@tweak1 , thanks for your remark. My LSA GaN 350 Voyager was sent back for the repair, but it came back with the same performance and a worse physical shape (they have broken the plastic frame of the case without even letting me know about it). Do you use the back RCA/Balanced selection switches? Independently of which of the inputs I use, my Voyager sounds more or less acceptable only if one of the channels (the left one) is in RCA and the other one is in XLR positions. Otherwise, the amp sounds like a $100 Sony amplifier from BestBuy. They were not able to or did not wish to spend enough attention to arrange this issue, literally returning the amp as it was (and not precisely, because of the broken case). If you like how it sounds, there could be possible to do something. I contacted Ric Schultz earlier regarding the problem with my Chery Megaschino, he said he cannot help.  (but Ralph has agreed very kindly to try to arrange it, but finally, to my surprise, it was repaired for $80 by a technician who is within 10 minutes of driving distance from my house, hope this will last). I will try to contact him though am not too optimistic that this amp may sound good. 

@kuribo , honestly, I did not notice any dependence of the frequency response on speaker loads. I tried the Voyager with three different pairs of Thiel speakers in three different systems. The problem is not literally in frequency response (in both high and low frequencies). It rather gives a "dead" sound for my taste. I cannot explain it logically, though soundstage and separation could have been better. Curiously, I enjoy even more Nuprime   ST10 class D amp. And there is just no comparison with Cherry Megaschino amp, which I indeed enjoy. 

@tweak1 This makes sense, that unit is non-functioning for me anyways.

The real FUN is in experiencing things......try expeiencing joy and love......you can experience it right NOW.......we create our own reality.....What do you want? It is all right here.....right now. Blessings for everyone!

Ric, depends on what things we experience and if they really give us a joy. Right now i am experiencing a joy that gives me my Megaschino on jazz vocals. Hope soon will experience another joy with your moded *Voyager*. I am sending an email message to you (soon). 

We need a formula with a number of parameters (including the price, and a few parameters that measure the SQ, and a few parameters more like the weight, the size and the power consumption of the amp, etc) to measure the overall benefit/performance of each amp. We may easily construct that formula if someone will carry out experiments and put the corresponding parameters into the formula. @jeffseight , does it look good to you? 

@tweak1 I am sorry for that accident. Something similar happened with my Megaschino, but it was finally repaired (just 10 days ago). Now neither am I in an extreme hurry to repair my 5.5 watts SET amp (earlier the left channel  EL34 tube of the amp was blown up and damaged  the 50 v 470 capacitor which is just below the amp. The amp still worked but the left channel was a bit weaker. Finally, I decided to replace the capacitor. We touched just this small part of the amp, nothing else. Surprisingly, no sound coming out of either channel anymore. I have no idea what could happened. The amp has a blocking system, which now does not unblock). 

@ricevs , if I understood it correctly,  does an essential part of your moding consist of verifying and replacing wiring,  capacitors and resistances, or something similar? Do you rely on your personal sonic preferences, how you attain a better sound reproduction? 

@atmasphere , your thorough thoughts and comments are always highly appreciated.

How the measurements reflect the sound that we perceive? This is very interesting question somehow relating theory with practice. I still cannot put these two things together. For example, I have never heard a more complete, realistic and clean sound than my 5 watts SET tube amplifier gives (which unfortunately was broken due to a defective output tube). It has very high distortion including at high frequencies (up to 5%). I perceive no distortion on normal listening levels. On the other hand, i am not sure whether the distortion per se (as it is commonly defined in electric engineering) is that important. Again i perceive no distortion with my LSA GaN Voyager 350, neither at low nor at high frequencies, independently of speaker load. I think the frequency response is adequate.   I would not say that it has no soundstage or it is harsh. Apparently all is good but the sound is not alive, realistic and joyful. You see a wax figure, apparently all looks beautiful, but something is missing (you cannot make any real relationship with a wax figure). Perhaps , the problem is not that this and other amplifiers do not do something well, but that it doesn't do something that it should do? You may say that  second and third order harmonics are missing. But if there is no distortion, what needs to be masked?