Switch from Parasound JC-1 to Bel Canto Ref 1000?

Review, the listed links and then go listen.

Class D amps seem very hard to make well, so most license the basic blocks and go from there. Not a bad thing if it's really good. Based on pricing, I see some really BAD stuff going on however. The advantages of the design (low cost) relative to the disadvantage (too numerous to list) aren't factored in to the amps price. The prices are well in excess of where they should be for what the product offers.

If they sounded the SAME as a comparative A/B amp, and use FAR LESS expensive materials, where's the price leverage that the size and weight brings to the table for wide-band CLASS D use? I see massive mark-ups and designs that are not comparative on an absolute sense to A/B amplifiers.

Not knowing what CLASS D is all about seems to have allowed the price to escalate to levels the technology and cost should be allied AGAINST (weight and high cost), not for.

From my perspective, the amps are, at a reasonable price, a casual listening product but not yet eclipsing even modest A/B amps in linearity and sound. Is the high price of some of these products (I could name two vendors) done just to "buy" relevance and at the same time, pad the pockets of those selling them?

CLASS D seems to work well for low frequency applications (subs) but suffer many problems with wide band amplification. I'd argue that a good CLASS B amp might be more linear even for subs. I use Velodyne DD10+ subs, so I'm not necessarily accepting CLASS D as better simply based on ownership.

http://www.audioholics.com/education/amplifier-technology/clone-amplifiers

or

http://www.hificritic.com/downloads/Class-D.pdf

or

http://www.audioholics.com/education/amplifier-technology/the-truth-about-digital-class-d-amplifiers

Not so much has it changed. The basic ICE block (and the other two vendors products) are still the same, but with a few "added" minor tweaks. The point is, the PRICE has NOT changed and it SHOULD!

We need to bring people into the hobby and not push them away with greedy pricing by vendors. I see almost no attempt to leverage the reduced parts cost through to the consumer. BEL CANTO and Mark Levinson products are purely leveraging the name against a cheap manufacturing cost to maximize PROFIT margin. The pricing has zero concern for the consumer’s pocket book. These are TODAYS PRODUCTS.

Once it is priced fairly, THEN we can maybe talk about the sound. Yes, I heard a HYBRID class D power supply / Class A audio stage integrated that sounded good. It was priced WAY out of reach, too.

CLASS D is still a tricky build, though. That's why vendors license the technology. But, this should increase the QTY sold, and REDUCE prices. If anything they went up. Get rid of that expensive and heavy linear supply and what? The price stays the same or goes up?

Two products aren't a market. I listened to the Devialet unit and it was indeed very open and precise, but with a restricted sound stage. When the music opens up, it didn't. The MOON A/B unit was tremendously more dynamic and thus, much more musical, not to mention much richer in texture.

A/B amps have been around since 1967, almost 45 years, and are still improving. I really haven't seen class D get where it needs to be in the last two years. Better, yes.

I think that they can match the needs of low to mid full-range applications in performance most successfully but are still not as consistent as a high-end analog power supply at getting clean Vcc DC voltage to the AC signal path. Restricted to low frequencies in matched systems (powered subs) where they work best is a good audio nich.

My biggest complaint is the poorly market indexed pricing. Again, one or two products isn't the market, and one's that are pretty esoteric at that. The average Joe or Jane won't even register that the Hypex nCore 400 kit even exists.

Clear winners in sound? No, everyone will determine the sound that they enjoy. There will never be a winner there. I don't like the Plinius SA-103 at all for instance, but it is a good amp for a lot of people. So SOUND is NOT my point, base material cost / pass through mark-up is. Most class D amplifiers exist to substantially pad the pockets of the manufacturer's and dealers. Especially now, realistic pricing is needed to pull people into the hobby.

The plethora of class D amps is changing as manufacturers try to ride the excessive mark-up wave much more than true design improvements. Adding a few caps here or there to a D-class power supply (maybe $300.00 in parts at best) and pricing a unit at $2,000.00 is close to the 5X parts to sell ratio. $8,000.00 for a Bel Canto REF1000M II series is suspect.

Be careful out there.

Adjusting for inflation the facts are correct. The sources are listed for your reference. I listened to the Devialet and this thing goes for 15K. SOUND isn't the "main" issue (although such HUGE variations in opinions of the same amp should give you pause!). My opinion, which most should care less about, is that the mids were great, but the bass and treble were pushed back. The imaging was one size too small compared to AB amplifiers, but very precise. It was a usable performance, but not to the level I'm after.

Few vendors (ANTHEM being one) can design, build, and absorb the R&D costs to market a class D pulse supply with the majority licenses a major market block and add little else. And, making one isn't the solution. It has to be good. Few engineers really understand CLASS D like they will going forward. We went to the moon, but we made a ton of mistakes along the way.

I'd love to think that in just two years a totally new technology with tremendously varied negative attributes relative to linear amps could be oh so perfect in such few design attempts. This isn't TV, we all aren't 28 year old geniuses.

I find it curious that people can decide their choices are perfection only to dump them a year or two later. Prior to the abandonment of their old technology, anybody that made comment towards it's merits on price or performance is a "blowhard". Ya, we'll learn a lot thinking like that.

The market will take from you what you allow. Get educated.

The pursuit of CLASS D amps is to achieve superior size, weight, and cost advantages over the same linear parts. It is MUCH more electrically complex, however. That complexity has been mitigated over a wide audience (for audio anyway) to leverage the R&D costs across a larger universe of users. But, the cost advantage has been absorbed by the manufacturers at this point, and not passed on to the consumer. The designs are better, but the lessons are still pages deep on this technology.

I would wait a few more years before I plunked down 8K for a CLASS D amp for hi-end audio. My opinion, lightly blown in your direction.

You can't take Devialet apart, so you’re stuck with 15K. That's as simple as it gets. So for what it's worth, you pay 15K to listen to the amp, so to speak. You can't get it any other way.

I will wait a few years on pulse power supplies to mature. Early fuel injection progressed for five or more years. It's great now. Manifold injection, Port injection, multi-port spray injection and then direct. Each step was much better than the last. To think a few generations of CLASS D is "done" is probably premature. The ANTHEM may be the "newest" take on overall design.

But, new / early adopters are free to go for it. Just don't marry your decisions as "pure" and complete and slam any comments to the contrary, then dump the technology and do it over with the next best thing. After all, why did you leave your last decision if the product was "perfect"?

I'm talking about maturity, not brainless new love lust. Nothing is more perfect than the first ten minutes of a relationship. But give it awhile...

One last point, fuel injection is dirt cheap at a high comparable level of performance, too, and at every market sector...it is much more broadly distributed at the markets low-end as R&D expenses are asymptotically small. With CLASS D, that's not the case...yet. That tells you R&D is an expensive part of the equation to bring the best to you.