Are these the amps of the future

[GreenJelly]

My grandfather had BOXES of tubes. We sold them for around 10K.

Solid state amps can be as good as tube amps, but people still like the tubes cause of the past. New better components (compacitors, transistors, coils, etc) are coming out, and have been improving for years. This is exciting for us all, because it means solid state amps are valid. It also makes these class-D amps possible.

 

[don maico]

Not sure whether I posted this but you might find it interesting:
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/nuukspot/decdun/t_amps.html

 

[nbourbaki]

That's interesting. I dumped my Parasound A51 and JC-1s and went with 4 Bel Canto Ref. 1000s for my 2.2 setup and 10 channels of TACT BOZ216/2200s in my HT setup. I thought the Parasound amps sounded very brittle, however perhaps my normal listening volume and room conditions favor a a slight attentuation at 10-20kHz. It may be b/c I use room correction, but I have yet to hear any amps in my setups that have sounded better. I have tried everything from Parasound, Meridian, LAMM, Krell, etc. The TACT BOZ amps accept digital input only and the Bel Cantos only accept analog inputs.

My home theater is in a basement finished with the Owens-Corning finishing system. Very quiet, very few reflections. Room correction is not as important to me. I found the ICE module that your Bel Cantos are based on to roll-off the high frequencies. It was very pronounced listening to Jamie Cullum - Twentysomething (SACD) and the snare drum. On the Halo it was like right there in my room, on the ICE module it was diffused, it just didn't sound like a snare. The unit I demoed was the Rotel RB-1092.

 

[GreenJelly]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_room

Now there is sound proofing.

 

[jaxvon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_room

Now there is sound proofing.

There's a difference between anechoic and sound proofing. With an anechoic chamber, the only goal is to eliminate any reflections from the room. Soundproofing is to stop the transmission from inside the room to the outside, or vice versa. Often an anechoic chamber will be soundproofed as well, but a home theater should opt for only soundproofing. Making your HT an anechoic chamber would be a gigantic waste of money.

 

[don maico]

The borne again toe rag syndrome i would say

 

[GreenJelly]

There's a difference between anechoic and sound proofing. With an anechoic chamber, the only goal is to eliminate any reflections from the room. Soundproofing is to stop the transmission from inside the room to the outside, or vice versa. Often an anechoic chamber will be soundproofed as well, but a home theater should opt for only soundproofing. Making your HT an anechoic chamber would be a gigantic waste of money.

Yeah, but that doesnt make it any less cool

 

[Ampdog]

When I last heard, we were on digital amps??

There is sure to come further development (which also will have to include ample r.f. shielding for the 10x MHz components accompanying very fast pulses), but for the time being it must be kept in mind that part of the latest buzz-word is also misleading, as I explained in my post #11.

Sleestack asked whether one has to go the way of digital/analogue/digital. For the moment, yes!

The digital signal used in class T amps is, as far as I know, for the most pulse width modulated (PWM). That is an “analogue-digital” signal, in that it contains unprocessed analogue information. Until we have digital loudspeakers, or for that matter digital ears, there has to be an analogue interface. The digital signal on a CD is a “non-audio” signal, in the sense that it can never drive a sound-creating device without conversion to some form of analogue-modulated pulses. With conversion to PWM, as explained earlier, there is then the same possibility of distortion as with a normal analogue amplifier, although less so.

There will also always be the need for some form of low-pass filter if super-audio energy is to be kept from frying one’s tweeters, radiation etc. In that sense the present chips will be most useful for mass-production, economy and use in music systems or where efficiency is a factor. With the results already achieved with analogue amplifiers I doubt whether in the foreseeable future these will be audibly improved by whatever form of digital driver stage.

 

[GreenJelly]

From everything I hear, these devices will be highly powerfull Very cheap, and extremely good sounding. Way beyond what the human ear can hear. Their are proto-types that prove this.

In fact they are SO precise that their is discussion of Amps beign able to download profiles that will make there sound like the amp of your choice. Be it the old Tube amps to the McIntosh amps that cost 10K.

Their is very little doubt that we will see this, and the reason why we dont see them now in more frequency is because Texus Instruments are slow to move and promote their products. DLP and allot of other major improvements they made are prime examples of this.

Mike

 

[Ampdog]

Where can I read about what exactly is taking place in class T? Preferably non-promotional?

Wading through waves of internet waffle with all the usual cliches, all I seem to find are mostly descriptions based on the Tripath algorythm. This is said to be proprietary - fair enough, if they feel they have a secret algorythm. But comments are contradictory. Somewhere they claim that the digital signal goes "directly" to the output devices (not via PWM or any other analogue related method). But then it is stated that this is a process using the best of analogue and digital techniques. Yet another commentary stated positively that the original digital signal does not go to the output, but some "accurate" conversion process, better than PWM (thus still analogue) is used. I mostly detect that the final switching is better and at higher frequency, not so much the route from the CD signal [pulse coded modulation (PCM)] to the final stage. Tripath gives graphs, but they are not better than -95 dB higher order harmonics - can be surpassed with a proper analogue design. Neither is the distortion/output power graph better.

I based my previous commentary on that. As said, at some stage one must still come back to analogue (some of the above commentaries warn that that is still not easy). One of the questions still out is: What exactly does one want to improve if there are "blameless" amplifiers? (Apart from the obvious advantage of efficiency, which is secondary.)

So, if anyone can enlighted one, I for one will appreciate it.

 

[Seth=L]

I will fight for cheap analog transistor amplifier solutions.


http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27028