Time to buy a class D amp?

This is wholly, completely, and utterly false, speculative, and prejudiced not only have some of us "listened' we have also actually "measured" using reliable, repeatable, objective measurement techniques that are recognized by engineers, scientists, and industry as fitting, proper, and appropriate but of course if you are happy with Class D you should absolutely enjoy it but you're reasoning, arguments, and suspicions are unfounded and false.

Wow. Because of the unqualified way in which this is stated, it renders the statement false.

I have a little Topping class D amp that makes 30 watts per channel. It has a lower signal to noise ratio than a Realistic SA-175 amp (despite the fact that the Realistic only makes 10 watts) we have in the shop that is rebuilt (being nearly 50 years old). In case anyone is wondering why I have an old Realistic amplifier hanging around, I put myself through college working at the regional Radio Shack repair center in the Twin Cities, and I enjoy troubleshooting and rebuilding work as a hobby; this amp is definitely a bit of nostalgia and its cute.  I rebuilt the matching tuner too.

In our work the main thing that we've seen that contributes to noise in a class D has to do with the encoding scheme- in our case, Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). PWM relies on the use of a triangle wave generator and a comparitor that compares the incoming audio signal to the triangle wave and thus has an output that is either on or off. If the triangle wave generator is not perfectly steady in its frequency, or if there is a bit of DC offset at the input of the comparitor, the result can be a bit of white noise hiss in the loudspeaker. With fairly simple techniques this noise can be reduced to noise floors that are less than conventional amplifiers.

Niodari, Check out ATI. They make ncore based amps from 2-8 channels. Come in 200 WPC and 500 WPC.
I needed 200 watts and 8 channels. Driving Linkwitz Orion speakers which use an active crossover. Each driver gets an amp channel.

The sound is high end. Huge stage, precise images and natural timbre. The sound reflects the front end. Changes in upstream equipment are easily audible.
ATI uses a large linear power supply. No SMPS power. I listen about 12 hours a day. Every day. Jazz and classical primarily. No listener fatigue here.
Enjoy
Kevin

Thanks @sumaato for sharing your experience with using different pres for PS audio Stellar S300 amp, and thanks @darstar for letting me know about ATI class D amp (yet unknown for me). Did you select an integrated one or otherwise which  preamp are you using? 

As to the use of preamplifiers,  I suggest that if the source signal is good (and it has volume control) then this signal does not need to be altered before it comes to a power amp. In general, why the source signal should be altered in case you have a good DAC?  I suppose that  a good pre should not alter the signal coming from the source. Its like if someone does not like a salted meal. You still give him a salted meal suggesting to add much sugar to it so that to compensate the excess of salt. As a result, you get much salt and much sugar (but you just wanted a meal without salt, that's all). 

Best, 

Nodari

 

Can someone please list the Top to Midrange Class-D options on the market at present and the relative MSRP?  The Merrill 118 is fantastic but tooooo expensive.  Give me some options <$10k and I'm not one that believes something is better just because it costs more so if you know of an outstanding $700 amp, bring it on.

The Amp will be used in a bi-amp system handling the frequencies below 200Hz so a high damping factor may be a positive... or not.

I'm interested in the views of this group.