Class D is rubbish.
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Only a potato would enjoy class D.
I see someoneās got a chip on his shoulderā¦
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You should go over there and mash him 
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Yeah, but I donāt want the peelers getting involvedā¦ 
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yeabut an eye for an eye, and all thatā¦
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Puns are the Class D of humour.
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Not enjoying the roasting then?
Wot no chip amp pun?
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Iām open to the possibility but in my own system Iāve not yet heard a class D amp that sounds better to my ears than class A.
Very interested in your long term thoughts @Mrs_Maureen_OPinion as you spend more hours with the NAD.
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Iām already clear about how this fits into the hierarchy of Stuff, itās just going to be a case of experimenting a little to find the optimal balance.
The bottom line to finding the right amp for You is how it interacts with your speakers. The Dreiklangs sound brilliant with 10 watts+ if the amp is Quality, but the truth is they sound at their best with a good deal more power than that - though again it has to be Quality.
For you, the power thing just wonāt be the case - you donāt need it, which then leaves you to find the sound you like via valves, class A, or whateverā¦
I still love the benign distortion of good valves, but Iām DONE with the unreliability of the glassware itself, certainly in the form of output valves!
Class A solid state is fab, but I canāt afford anything powerful enough to get the very best out of the Hecos, and if I could, the heat and running-cost is unviable.
The Electrocompaniet monos (nominally Class A, but A-B really), were superb - best of all worlds in many ways, but I just canāt be fucked to tear them apart and service them RN. They may prove better than the NAD long-term, but I doubt it.
Compared with the First Watt, the NAD is immediately more of absolutely everything - most especially capital-R-Resolution: treble is airier and more extended - itās sweeter and lights up soundstages much better with way more sense of any given acoustic; midrange is more tonally rich and contrasty - yielding (e.g.) more vocal intelligibility and tonal colour with acoustic instruments; bass is more extended but tighter and way more nuanced: e.g. lost bass-guitar lines have definition, form and colour now, rather than being a muffled mumble hidden in the overall bass growl.
This extra resolution does not come at any negative cost - perhaps because both the DAC (Audio Note Kits DAC4) and pre-amp (AudioValve Eclipse) are valve units - so there is nothing strained or overly āhifiā going on: so the NAD never sounds painfully analytical or forensically harsh at-all. Itās just the right kind of neutral, and another big step towards the sound I hear in my head!
Iāve no doubt one could move higher up the hifi food chain and get better results - but even if I could afford such a move, I certainly couldnāt afford the upgrades required to match the rest of the system to it!
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Thatās a nice looking bit of kit, seen lots of good reviews of the Purifi based amplifiers. Iām still quite impressed with my Lyngdorf TDAi2200 which I believe is a digital/class-d design.
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Tru all dat.
I thought your Electrocompanient monos would be end game for you - whatās up with them?
Yep and that same paranoia feeding sense of unreliability is why I have a Dartzeel pre which has tube like sound w/o the fear, same with the SIT monoās which as you say need no gain/power.
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Bulgy caps - need recapping - the biggest problem is how much of a lazy cunt I am.
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Switched to single-ended earlier - as expected it halves the gain, and in the process loses a sllightly āfranticā edge which creeps-in with heavily-compressed playback material. Suspect this is down to a better impedance match with the pre-amp, and not the miniscule reduction in distortion measured by ASR.
Also has the minor benefit of doubling the arc of adjustment on the volume control.
Nice. Very, very nice.
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Strongly preferring single-ended with this pre-power combo.
The AudioValve pre outputs pretty serious voltage and current - it could probably run >105dB/W/M speakers - and the signal was just too āhotā using balanced outputs.
I started out connecting single-ended terminals with a cheap pair of aerial cable coax RCAs, which sounded good - but solid-core cables often seem slightly off tonally to me, theyāre not really the optimal stranding for the frequencies involved I guess, and I was missing some resolution in familiar material.
So I inserted a pair of Viablueās āreferenceā ICs (<Ā£200 back in the day - silly for wire, but itās 2024 and Ā£20,000 isnāt unknown nowā¦). These are reassuringly thicccā¦
ā¦because they use air-spaced conductors to try to reduce capacitance in the cable.
Result: the fucking-good got even better. Best sound Iāve ever had here, full stop. Really bloody enjoyable. Cables donāt matter.
Except when they do.
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GO NAD !
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NADine Dorries.
Coincidence? I do not think so.
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