Class D Technology

Guido, in your posts you have indicated the Merrill Veritas are among the Class D amplifiers you enjoyed listening to and that do not display, "any displeasing high frequency artifacts or limitations."  

I owned the Acoustic Imagery Atsahs, which should be a close sonic twin to the Veritas.  Unfortunately, I cannot confirm the differences between the two since Merrill does not condone opening their amplifier casework and looking inside and I can find no posted pictures of the insides of a Veritas amplifier.  Based on my review of online information, the differences between the Veritas and Atsah amplifiers include, hook-up wire and binding posts, individually milled spaces inside the Veritas chassis - although both use solid milled aluminum casework, soldered wire connections (Veritas), and the use of the Hypex input board (Atsah).  I would not expect these differences to substantially, or possibly even noticeably, affect sonics as perhaps would items such as a linear power supply, input buffer or input transformers.  One listener over at Whatsbestforum who tried both amps (and ended up buying Mola Molas) posted this;

"They are sonic siblings. It would be silly to argue otherwise. The basic designs are the same. They both use the same unmodified NCORE SMPS and NCORE 1200 module from Hypex. Sonically, I would give the nod to the Veritas. They are a little more resolving, but not by much and I don't have them side-by-side. So, if an Atsah owner calls me out on this, I won't fight back."

So, proceeding on the assumption that by owning the Atsahs for over a year, I have a mostly reliable understanding of how the unmodified SMPS1200 and NC1200 modules sound, whether in the Veritas or Atsahs, then my question to you is, would you describe what you hear differently between the Veritas and the Rowland M925 amps that have earned the M925s a permanent place in your system? - Thanks

(reduced price,electricity consumption,heat, size and weight)

Don’t listen to the negative propaganda especially from just one or two who repeat the same thing over and over. Just try them for yourselves if interested and see. 

Myself, I’ve had way less trouble finding top notch sounding Class D amps than others. 

Hi Mitch2, my PFO article on Veritas details all the technical information that I have gathered on Veritas, based on conversation with Merrill, and by reading the publicly available technical literature on the amp. See:

http://positive-feedback.com/Issue68/merrill_audio.htm 

Unfortunately, I have not heard the ATSAH, so I really cannot comment on internal differences, nor sonic differences.

In itself, Merrill Veritas is exceptional value for its $12K list price. In a more traditional SS design, At the time of my review a couple years ago, I would have expected such sound to be more in the capabilities of an excellent amp in the lower $20K range.

Although there are obvious commonalities between the behavior of M925 and Veritas, there are quantitative and qualitative audible differences, which are however less than the price difference would suggest.... Famous laws of diminishing returns that audiophiles are acquiented to *grins!*

Thus, were I to ignore any budget considerations, my preference would comfortably go to M925 for the following parameters: 

* Power reserve

* authority.

* Macro and micro dynamics.

* Harmonic exposure.

* Linearity.

* Frequency extension.

Transparency.

* Sweetness and complexity of treble.

* stage size and concreteness.

* Imaging concreteness.

* Aliveness of "black" background... Also called the sound of the silence between the notes... Or the reproduction of ultra-low level information.

* Immunity to electronic background noise.

*  Immunity to intermodulation artifacts in the treble region.

Yet again.... let us Keep things into perspective.... the rowland M925 was engineered with a sophistication commensurate with its pricepoint just shy of $60K, several times the price of Veritas.

Saluti, Guido