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Thinking of replacing my Bat spaceheater with class D, real world thoughts please

Ok so I know there are already lots of threads on class D both negative and positive

As I have had a very positive result with replacing the ss amps in my ht rig with a single tiny Nuforce class D amp I was tempted to look into the same for my stereo rig.

This is a little more difficult as my present amp is a BAT VK600SE, 120LB of muscle and heat.

Now I am in love with my present sound but still am very curious if class D could do anything for me as it certainly did in the ht rig although those ss amps were not in the BAT league to start with.

So I would like to hear from people who have actually gone this route, replaced their expensive, heavy, power consuming amps with tiny little cold running boxes and what their results were.

Was it uplifting, about the same or make you wish you had never heard of class D!

uberwaltz

Showing 5 responses by georgehifi

georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
I just turned on my BAT space heater for the winter.  It sounds great and the room is warming up nicely.  The W4S gets a winters rest.  
Says it all, you prefer the Bat.

Class D is not a heater beater
Ditto, +1 we (most of us) are all in it for the best sound we can get.

Cheers George
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Yeah, properly designed class d doesn't have the distortion spectrum of tube amps.
Correct, but class-d's can have other problems that are not so easy on the ear, at least the distortions from tube amps are nice sounding ones "2hd", and easily liveable. 

Cheers George
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 

Dodged a bullet. So glad you kept the BAT before getting a Class-D.

The day will come though when that BAT will become a door stop, or boat anchor, and that will be when Class-D finally get a much higher switching frequency (the technology is on the door step) that will cure the problems you heard.
If you get a chance you will hear Class-D almost perfect if you get a chance listen to that very rare phoenix, the Techincs SER-1, as it already has double the speed of the switching frequency that everyone is using now, but it’s $35k!!. if your a King or President, you can get one.

Cheers George
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Ones I had considered so far include Bel Canto, Jeff Rowland, NuForce, D-Sonic
Out of that lot the BC600mono’s were the ones that has the best Class-D sound I’ve heard, but it needed to be driving a very flat benign 4ohm, from mids to highs to get that sound, otherwise it sounded fair, this was achieved with a very expensive Raven tweeter’ed 2 way. "Could" also work with Maggies.

Cheers George
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
uberwaltz
Thinking of replacing my Bat BAT VK600SE spaceheater with class D, real world thoughts please

http://www.openaudio.co.kr/cdn/item/20080506/VK-600SE-2.jpg

Whatever, do not sell/trade the BAT VK600SE which is a magnificent amp, before living with Class-D for a while, they maybe fine in a in a high processing HT system, but when it comes down to hi-end hi-rez stereo without visuals to fool your ears, you may find things change.

I’ve worked on modified and listen to a few Nuforce 9SE v3’s and while cute and powerful for their size, don’t come within coo’ee of my similar amps to the the VK600se, on a hi-end stereo system.

And yes the sound of the BAT does change a fair bit depending on volume

And this could be your pre,, and not the Bat doing this.

Cheers George
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