Having heard the new D-200 monos in the Modwright room at RMAF I was extremely impressed with the non-fatiguing, realistic organic sound that came from this great system (paired with Dan's SWL9 Preamp), and I am fairly sure these will be my next amps. I appreciate your telling me that you design mainly by your ear, not just to a set of specs.
One issue that concerns me a bit, though, is the fairly rapid roll-off of D-200's frequency response after 20kHz. For Redbook CD's I suspect this is a non-issue. But I am still intrigued by the ability of SACD (and maybe whatever successor HD format emerges) to reach much higher --beyond 40 kHz. Yes, this is well above the 15-20kHz we humans are supposed to be able to hear individual notes, but people who play with super-tweeters swear that this HF extension greatly improves the midrange as well as the treble--better defined and three-dimensional music overall. And strangely these benefits seem to come not just with Hi-res (SACD and DVD-A) but also with Redbook CD (probably after upsampling) sources. A recent Circle post underscores these findings:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=22156.msg196680#196680http://www.townshendaudio.com/supertweeter.htmDusty, could please share any more measurements on the HF performance of the D-200 mono's. Do I recall your saying it extends to 40KHz at -3db? And could you and others please share their thoughts/ experiences on the super-tweeter effect and Hi-Res and upsampled music/ amp requirements. Is there any possibility of the D-200 being tweaked to have the filter roll off above 40-50KHz? I would like to feel I have the amp extension to be able to fully exploit the potential of SACD, not to mention upsampled CD, possible with a super-tweeter added to the mix.