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I'm more Tolkien, not so much Martin.
My SimpleSE amp kicked @ss and I look forward to building another one no-holds-barred like Pez's.
I have been a tube-lover for my whole life, and believed until recently that tubes were the yellow brick road. I lost my beloved Atma-Sphere 100w triodes to a murderous ppp last Thanksgiving and soon discovered that repair costs would far exceed their value. As a retiree living on a pension, I had to look at alternatives. With a budget of around $2k, the used offerings all over the net looked unlikely to even come close to sounding as good. There were a few amps offered that probably would have been in the same league, but I built up my system to run on mono-blocks. My speaker cables are all short and their replacement with longer cables would reduce the amp budget. After a month of research, combined with too much self-pity, I decided to take a big risk and try a pair of D-Sonic Class D amps using the latest cores from Pascal that earned a rare 'Blue Moon Award' from 6 moons. I would like to say that they fit right into my system perfectly and sound every bit as good as the $7500 pair (1992 price) of OTL amps I had been enjoying since they were new, but it has not been all that simple. Right out of the box, they sounded great, but lacked the old tube magic. They are far more transparent than any other amps I have tried before and will reveal weaknesses and problems elsewhere in the system. After the first 100 hours, the magic started to show through, but so did other gremlins. Apparently, the EMI/RFI problems that plagued earlier class D amps have been mitigated somewhat through better design and materials, but are still around. It is not a feature to hear the ball-game through the speakers while listening to chamber music. I solved this issue by moving the power supply for my phono preamp 2 feet farther from the right side amp. The improvement here led me to reconfigure the whole system physically to further clean up the background. I finally got off my butt and dressed my cables by the book - every wire off the floor, crossing a right angles only, no coiled up excessive lengths, clean sockets & connectors, etc. The results of this effort really brought the amps to life, but they soon pointed out other areas of improvement as well. I reread the 6 Moons review, paying particular attention to the reviewers set-up report: "The basic rule with this amp is, treat it like a high-grade performer and it'll reward you in turn by sounding like one" (http://www.sixmoons.com/audioreviews/dsonic/2.html). This begat a round of power-cord trials that resulted in my putting my most expensive cords, PS Audio Extreme SC that cost $1k/m, on the amps and they really started to sing. But, the song was a little too bright in the highs, a bit muddy in the bass, classic symptoms of the complaints against Class-D amps. I couldn't understand it - they did everything so well, how could the designer and the reviewer have missed this? I still had a few days left in the trial period when it hit me that these are also the signs that he SRA/VTA is off. I went back on-line and reread a bunch of articles that attempt to educate the curious audiophile about the arcane skill of setting VTA by ear. I spent the next few days playing around with my JMW on-the-fly VTA adjustments and discovered that my whole system had become transparent enough to actually hear the differences that only a few thousandths of an inch could cause. My VTA setting process to date was no longer accurate enough to deliver optimum sound. I now measure all my records with a plastic caliper and adjust the VTA for every record. This was only a pain in the butt when I started. VPI uses a metric micrometer that makes the math pretty easy to do in your head, and the system really started to sound good, but still lacked that glorious magical tube sound. It seemed that the project was doomed and I was prepared to send them back Texas for a refund, when I had an inspiration from rereading the review for probably the 50th time. He had put the review amps on some kind of expensive footers to reduce vibration and resonances. I had always discarded this branch of audiophilia as the lunatic fringe - expensive ways to tart up your gear for show. I bought some used Mapleshade triple-point footers and isol pads from Mapleshade, and improvised a platform using a round cutting board from the kitchen and an oak shelf from the nightstand in my bedroom for the other side. The improvement was astonishing! The soundstage tightened up especially in height and layering of the players. The bass definition and depth have dramatically improved. Background blackness, air, timbre all were enhanced. I became a believer in system and component support. My experiment with giving the amps crude isolation platforms led me to overhaul my entire system new dawns maple isolation platforms for the amps, preamp, phono stage, power conditioner, the remote power supplies for both preamps and the VPI SDS. The crown jewel is a massive 21"x27"x4" 65 pounder under my TT. I bought a bunch of used Eden Stones and Bearclaws and Herbie's footers on the web (thanks, starchild)The system sounds so good now that I never want to turn it off. I listen to record after record and don't think about anything but the music. The soundstage has become holographic, creating auditory hallucinations in every one who hears it. My children and grandchildren actually get why I do this. The bass is magnificent in depth and definition and is visceral. Percussion instruments are reproduced with all their complex overtones, transients and air going on forever. I will not attempt to do a 'compare and contrast' analysis of these amps vs. the expensive tube amps they replaced. It would not be fair to judge my old amps as the system has changed substantially since they last played. Besides, they were more than 20 years old and probably could have used an update to sound their best. despite all my efforts, the D-Sonic amps still don't sound the same as the tube amps, with all their glowing magic, but they have developed a magic all their own. In My System, the gremlins usually associated with class d amps turned out to be caused elsewhere in he audio chain. The stunning accuracy of these amps can be a two-edged blade. But, if you are willing to set them up properly and feed them sweet music, the result can be superb.
Pls post your impressions. I heard both sphinx and the more expensive pharoah at audio show .sounded great in that room. Both are tubed pre amps mated with class D. Strong dynamics and trasnparency with some nice tubey warmth. wish i could hear them in my set up.TB
I was listening to one of these babies last weekend - Pure Class D. No shame in it's game whatsoever. Paired up with PMC Twenty .24's. Just lovely.http://esoteric.teac.com/download/I-03/Downloads/I-03_Brochure.pdfD.D.
