Digital Amps - Your opinions and why so few?


Hi, I'm in the market for new amps for Maggie 3.6r's and just wondered what your experiences/opinions are on digital amps.
The technology seems well developed, and the advantages seem very tangible 'on paper'. I spoke with a tech guy at Tact Audio concerning their S2150 amp, and the 'specs' are very impressive. They amps also provide the facility to replace the speaker x-over. In a 2-way speaker, you can use two digital amps and program each amp with the associated crossover parameters.
I also spoke yesterday with a real gentleman, Henry, the designer/founder of H2O digital amps. I found him by following a buzz on the apogee audio website, where people using the difficult to drive apogees are dumping off their big Krells and Pass amps, and getting in the queue for the H2O. The few people already using the H20's are raving about them.
Then of course there are the Spectron amps, though I read somewhere recently that they may be going out of business?

The point is, if this technology has matured, and these amps can compete with convential amps, and they are cheaper, lighter, give off less heat, generate higher watts from a smaller/lighter chasis, and.....wait for it....may actually sound better dollar for dollar, why don't we see more of them around?

Rooze
PS - I'm considering dropping big $$$$$ on a pair of new S2150 Tact digitals, please, please talk me out of it, and tell me these amps are crap....
128x128rooze
Rooze...I understand that you are operating the amps bridged (1600 watts!). You should realize that each channel is operating into 2 ohms, and while the amp is built to withstand this environment, I think that fidelity is somewhat degraded relative to what it will do into 4 or 8 ohms. I suggest that you experiment with using only one stereo amp for the pair of speakers, and compare with bridged results.

In the long run, I think that you might do better to use the amps in a biamp configuration using an electronic crossover. That is what I do. One channel drives a subwoofer system, and the other the associated MG1.6.

I am not a great believer in breakin, and never performed the kind of listening (the same recording over and over again) needed to detect an effect. If they improve with use, hey...that's great. My cables are also nothing special. The sunwoofers and the woofer of the (2-way) MG1.6 are wired with generic #12 wire, with no terminations on either end. Bare wire, clampred into the binding post, which IMHO is the best way to do it unless you need to disconnect and reconnect the speakers frequently. The MG1.6 high end is biwired with deliberately small #24 wire. This gives me a 1 ohm resistance in the wire so that I don't need to use any tweeter padding resistor in the crossover. The MG 1.6 crossover is, by the way, modified with a large aircore inductor and fancy capacitors.

Of course the modification shops claim that this amp can be significantly improved, for a price. Since you have two, and really only need one, why not send one off for a mod, and see what difference it really makes. If you do go to biamp, you could use the modified amp for the high end, and stick with the stock amp for the lows.
Hopefully your running them in the bypass mode.Using the attenuators puts the amplifiers in a protection mode.It degrades the signal quite badly.

Good Luck!
AudioEng:The PC I thought brought up the performance somewhat and the synergy between speakers is paramount to getting exceptional sound.

What area's of modding have the most Impact to changing the characther?
Panny - an improved after-market power cord is beneficial. There is no "synergy" with this amp. If you have good speakers, they will sound good with this amp. This amp will drive any speaker well.

The mods that I do improve:
1)output filtering stages
2) op-amps - by eliminating 8 and replacing with 3
3) power delivery to both the remaining op-amps and Tri-path module

All of these I feel are necessary.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer
I've had two Carver ZR1600's running for about 30+ hrs now and they seemed to have leveled out as far as break-in goes. These are incredible amps for the money, but I don't think they are 'giant killers' as I've heard them referred to. I can imagine that someone with a difficult speaker load and a tight budget would benefit greatly from these amps, however, in stock form they are not SOTA sonically, at least not in my system.
I've posted a bit more information on this thread here Amps for Magnepan 3.6r since it seemed to be a more appropriate venue.
I'll get another 40 hrs on them and probably do a review.