Are future improvements in Amp/PreAmps slowing to a crawl?


don_c55
@asvjerry you are, indeed, correct. Class T are built using the Tripath chips and are a subset of class D amps. From what I understand, though, Tripath chips are no longer manufactured and haven't been for a few years, so anything advertised as Class T is probably not going to be a great example of cutting edge class D.
No - the future is already clear. The new switched Mode Power Supplies are reducing 60Hz hum and lowering noise floors further than ever before imagined with a linear power supply.

Look at the specs on a Benchmark ABH2! Can anyone find an amp with better performance specs?

Only a few years ago world class was around -110 dB SNR, THD etc... these improvements are nothing less than staggering and YES you can hear the extra definition, clarity or blackness that such performance brings even though the best speakers are only -70 dB in performance. (I was doubtful about whether this level of performance can actually be heard but my ears tell me otherwise)
maybe the Future is already here and we are at the very end of technology breakthrough regards to audio?
Class D is a poster child example of modern day innovation in audio amplifiers. It is indeed SOTA in some spectacular designs and will only get better. I suppose many manufacturers, Pass Labs included, are a tad offput at the fact that great sounding amps, amps that cost and weigh a small fraction of theirs, are becoming readily available. The fact is we are in the midst of disruptive amp technology. It is pretty much the opposite of the article’s suggestion in amplifiers.

Class D is still in process, but great sound is already out there. How can we dismiss this reality? Strange to me how when in the very midst of innovation and change some still miss it. Some that should, and probably do, know better.

Tommorows’s Class D amps will be wonderful, but some will still prefer a tube amp or this other amp etc... This will always be the case as choice is so very important as we all hear differently. However, dismissing  the Class D evolution/revolution is startiling.

Combining Class D with high quality DACs (powered dac) is another fascinating innovation hot bed.


The Map is Not The Territory.

A wanky and side shifted statement might be that Class D is about solving a problem that no one in the world of high end audio was interested in asking.

Further... in the world of stately posturing (why back down when you can double down!): For me, an innovation has to exceed what I know, almost from the get go, not spend 20 years in the middle of a fistfight argument about barely equaling it. Like Digital vs analog.

Human spheres of communication and awareness/sharing, social grease, clannishness and so on. Marketing..being a thing that works..speaks to the eternal shame of some of humanity's complex integration(s).