@tweak1 I am expecting the GAN1 to be better than the LSA Voyager 350 GAN. If so, that would be quite an accomplishment, especially at the price.
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 6 responses by yyzsantabarbara
@tweak1 Yes, I did get it modded by Ric. It was an improvement over stock, especially on the top end. I had another amp that had more low-end power but not as good on top, I sold the Voyager because I wanted more power for the bass with my old Thiel CS3.7. Everything I just mentioned was sold. |
I got this amp coming in soon (maybe next week?). I will first test this out with my KEF LS50 Meta system in the office. This system is really great and has about $20K+ worth of gear. I would not change a thing on this system. I calculated that the GAN1 system (+ streamer parts) will cost a total of $4800. My current system in the office is a neutral and clean sounding system (Benchmark gear). The GAN1 should be similar. This is based on my experience owning the LSA Voyager 350 GAN (now sold). The GAN1 is said to be better due to the single box design. If this is as good as people say I will use it in a few months with a KEF Blade 2 Meta that I will be ordering soon. At least for a year until I can raise funds for the KRELL KSA i400 amp that I always expected to use with the Blade 2 Meta. |
@bigtwin Can I afford a Boulder, a single amp, yes. A stack of Boulder gear, no. Being able to afford one and wanting one are different. At one time I desired these uber expensive gear but I did a lot of listening, bought some semi-expensive gear, and later sold them. I now know what I like and the max cost to achieve that (around $65K including speakers). There are more expensive speakers that I would love to have but I can get similar happiness for less. If I were to be given a Boulder amp for free or something with a smaller form factor, I would take the smaller amp because the Boulder gear is too big. It would annoy the crap out of me just looking at it. There are a lot of mega dollar gear that I would not want. I have heard a lot of them so I know what I would be missing. This GAN1 amp I am getting I assume is certainly not going to cut it for my next speakers but what I am curious about is how good is this iteration of the digital GAN gear (Technics, Lyngdorf et al). I wanted to buy the Lyngdorf a few years ago but the amp section really disappointed me. I want to hear where we are with this digital tech today with the GAN1, which is actually more exciting for me to hear than the Boulder (call me crazy). Maybe the next more powerful GAN iteration (with volume and more inputs) will be something to consider. |
@tweak1 Sorry to hear about that mishap. That was a very good amp. I have mishaps like this with my audio cables because I am always tinkering with placement and other gear combos. I also keep my audio stand as far away from the speakers as possible. I believe I get delivery of the GAN1 on Tuesday or Wednesday. Along with a WyWire SPDIF cable with BNC to RCA termination. I already received the streaming addition I needed, the Sonore UltraDigital to connect to the GAN1. However, the mystery is if it will actually work via my ROON READY Sonore OpticalRendu. I have feedback from the guys at Sonore and 2 of them said it will work and 1 person said no. I need to make a ROON READY Endpoint change from FIXED to the other option (I forgot what that is). This is where the mystery lies of whether my setup will work with the GAN1.
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