Honest Amp Reviews: Impossible?


So, I’ve noticed a flood of class D junk hitting the market over the last several years. They come from many different brand names from people you’ve never heard of before like "VTV", to popular Internet-in-the-know brands like PS Audio to famous names like Marantz. One thing they ALL have in common: the complete inability to find honest reviews online for these products.

For example, let’s take for instance the Stellar series from PS Audio. Class D junk with the usual attempt to improve euphonics with some kind of input stage. They call this scheme class AD, I guess to differentiate all the other brands that do something similar. However, you’ll never see a review site point this out; they’ll comment briefly on the design and then dutifully call it class AD afterwards as if it isn’t just a class D amp like many others.

Next, the reviewer will invariably lie about the sound. This lying usually takes the form of lying by omission. They’ll gush about how beefy and controlled it is, how neutral it is, how wide and natural the soundstage is, etc. What they WON’T mention is how lifeless, flat, boring and ultimately fatiguing they ALL are. The buyer who doesn’t know any better has to find that out for themselves while he slowly grows to distrust anything a reviewer has to say about anything. So, the only way to actually get value out of a review is to see if a certain amp has the positive attributes you are looking for while trying to painstakingly research any problems it might have because the reviewer won’t mention them.

In addition to the lies of omission, there’s the usual con of giving certain gear to certain reviewers who will appreciate / like the piece. That Stellar will NEVER be put up against a Dan D’agostino or a Pass for example. This could be valuable to the buyer to see how a lesser amp stacks up against a high end one, but it’s not, apparently, useful to the reviewers. Why? Why is telling the whole truth about amps -- all gear really -- taboo?
madavid0
George is that you?

I think the ops "rant" is quite possibly born out of the same reaction that people with $200K+ sports cars had when they came to the realization that some "lowly" pleb, with a $50,000 Tesla Model 3 could clean my clock at the light.  How dare someone with less earnings than me be able to "beat" me. ME!    Weirdly this afflicts even those that can't afford that $200K sports car. They are still strangely offended by the sudden removal of "exclusivity" of something expensive.

Let's face it, this spills over into the turntable \ CD-Digital argument as well.  You may like your $10,000 or $20,000 or more vinyl setup, or perhaps you just envy having one, but I guarantee that a well designed DAC for $2,000 (or less), recreates a far more accurate version of what was recorded.  I am not saying you will like that $2,000 DAC more, I am saying that it will recreate what was recorded more accurately, more faithfully, or whatever adjective you want to use. That fact offends some people, and as opposed to accepting it, they strike out and attack.

The op also makes the classic mistake of thinking everyone wants what he wants, which can have some relation to the above as well. Some people want and love accurate music recreation. Some (I would even say a majority) don't, though if they are an audiophile, the will profess up and down stomping their feet that they do, even though, in most cases, they have no clue what that sounds like.

I can't say I have been fond of Pass amplifiers myself, even though I have recommended them to other people. Pass even states he "tunes" the sound for each family, so there goes that whole neutrality thing out the window. So given that Pass intentionally adjusts the sound of his amplifier away from neutral, why do you insist they are the penultimate in amplification?


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A love of Music is why we have the equipment!

This a hobby, a passion for some and it makes our time on earth richer.

The hardware is a tool we must have in order to make it all happen.

This passionate love of music is not a competition.

I find it disheartening to read  posts that are declarative statements expressing some point of view that often sound like veiled anger or dissatisfaction with the very thing that brings us together as a forum of like minded souls with a passion for the musical arts. 
Let’s celebrate our hobby and passion and move beyond the petty stuff.

By the way I have had class D amps that did a pretty good job at their price point ( Jeff Rowland 525 mono blocks ) but moved on the Pass labs class a-ab and now listen to twin Jeff Rowland 625 S2 A-AB amps that sound very musical and fluid to my hear, budget and meet my expectations. 




I feel like I could very accurately estimate the OPs demographics and age just by the “tone” and “imaging” of his threads. 


Pouting about lesser audiophiles thinking that they’ve gained access to some secret club that requires a decoder ring and minimum spend is pretty rich, even for this place.. 


I also find it reallllllly special that I get moderated all the time here, but people like OP do not.