IMHO the most recent negative comments must be based on 100% illogical thinking. I have owned many high end tube and SS amps over 5+ decades. My LSA Voyager GaN 350 is excellent and competes favorably with several exotic= uber expen$$$$$ive amps I and my X- audio biz partner had (FYI I am one of the few lucky ones to also have a EVS1200 powerhouse, which is in use as I type), I suspect the GaN1 to be another leap as it provides all the goodness that GaN does while removing a dac, a pre, a transport, and the associated cables, power cords, vibration control, shelving...
The revolution has begun!
Digital amps along with digital xovers are the future.....and you can have it NOW. I am not going to say that a $1400 Peachtree GaN1 amp will sound better than a $120K MSB Select, $145K Boulder Preamp and Bouder $250K mono blocks with $20K worth of cables in between (over half a million plus power cords and amp stands)......but it did beat the Holo May KTE with the Holo Serene Pre and Kinki B7 mono blocks with $1000 worth of interconnects ($13k). So what will it take to beat this $200 digital board from Elegant Audio Solutions powered from a $100 switching power supply? With a digital amp you do not need a DAC or a preamp or regular amp with feedback, tubes, or transistors. With digital amps you can bi or triamp your speaker drivers directly without the distortion of passive components. In fact, I would bet that if you bought two GaN 1 amps, bought the $600 digital xover from minisdp (with great linear supply and great coax cables) and biamped some drivers directly that it would sound better than most $50K systems. You could get 2 12 inch woofs and mount them on an open baffle and put a beryllium tweenter on top and set the xover to 1K or less (48db per octave). You hardwire your speaker cable to the woofers voice coil wires and use Music Purifiers and Ground Enhancers on each driver.....Bybee Clarifiers on the back of the woofer magnets.......speaker wires hardwired via plastic clamps into the amps (no binding posts or spades allowed here!). Of course, you can triamp.....and manufacturers will soon have powered digital speaker so all you will need is a source.
There will be other manufacturers designing and building digital amps that will (no doubt) be better than the EAS boards.....but they will come at a price. These, yet to be made digital amps will blow the industry wide open....as no more big heavy expensive boxes will ever need to be purchased......but what EAS has not is fantastic. When I do some mods to the Peachtree amp next month it should get a step or two better. Have fun!
http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/The_Audio_Revolution_has_begun.html
I have started a webpage about all this and more and will be updating it continuously.
Showing 4 responses by tweak1
@yyzsantabarbara Did Ric tweak your Voyager? @ricevs I have not gotten into streaming/ripping and at 74+ it’s not a priority. In your last post you first mentioned the GaN 1 can be used with a CD PLAYER + Flex, then a few sentences later- a TRANSPORT. So, either? I am admittedly confused when it comes to digital tech. I am using a Audiolab 6000 CDT transport into a Audio Alchemy DDP-1 + PS 5 dac pre + LPS. My speakers are Emerald Physics 3.4s; Open Baffle, concentric 12" woofers with 1" polyester tweeters AND outboard XOs!, oh and your EVS 1200. I managed to blow one of the modules in my Voyager, but damn, the EVS 1200 is fantastic too. Even though I had expensive Wire World XLRs and speaker cables, apparently they did not bring out the best in our EVS 1200, whereas the Ali-Express Odin 2 knockoffs do. Who knew back then? @jerryg123 I, too have owned many class D amps, but not until I bought Ric’s EVS1200 (based on the ICEPower AS 1200 modules) + Rics Pixie Dust, was I happy, even moreso with the LSA Voyager GaN 350, I would agree with you
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Needing more umph over the PS Audio M700s is why I bought Rics EVS 1200. Unfortunately, both my cables (Series 8 Wire World and Boutique PCs that didn't plumb the depths compared to what Im using now), and a Solid State vertical rack got in the way of my hearing what it is capable of. This was remedied when I came across a solid maple table (5 X 2 x 2") locally for $270!, and in the process of moving the kit out of the vertical I rested my V on a floating platform from which it slipped off. That would have been ok, but I had the top off and resting sideways on top, so when the amp slipped off the top nose diving into one of the modules. It looked ok until I turned the system on I had major fireworks, and so installed the EVS 1200. As much as I raved about it in a long thread when I first got it, which Ric asked me to take down for health reasons he wasn't going to make any more of them, the Voyager bettered it then. And so, it sat on the sidelines. Glad I still have it |