Re; Dynamics, Class D vs tubes…

Hilde:

You didn't have me until lubricious.

DeKay

@dekay I learned that word from a master of pleasure:

“Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace”
― Marquis de Sade

I had to look lubricity up  

oily smoothness

As opposed to the extra meaning in lubricious

offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire. "he probed the ladies for every lubricious detail of their interactions"

Really depends on the design, but generally speaking, I’d say tube amps. 

That is because tube amps tend to boost the “bass-slam” frequency range when mated to highly reactive loads. It’s the same reason for why listeners often say tube watts sound more powerful than SS watts. Tube amps also clip softly, but that’s not the reason they often sound more powerful than a SS counterpart. 

Another reason is that IME, most Class D amplifiers sound flat and lifeless in terms of bass dynamics (well most of their bandwidth actually). The notable exception I’ve encountered is the Axxess Forté 1 integrated—the only Class D amp I have ever felt was worth owning. Its distortion is second harmonic dominant, similar to a good SET amp in that regard.  

 

I think the real answer is that you can probably find samples of each class of amplifier design that could be compared directly and hear no difference at all, especially at low volumes. On my desktop system I am often at less than 1 watt drive level especially if I am working on something that requires concentration. At low levels like that distortion should be vanishingly small and since these speakers are 78.5 db efficient and I am driving them with a 65 ish watt Emotiva amplifier there should be plenty of headroom for low level listening (and there is) 85-90 db listening levels are possible even with that relatively low powered amp coupled with very inefficient speakers.

My thinking is that with sensitive measuring equipment it would be possible to measure differences in dynamics but the differences would not audible unless the ampllifier in question was being overtaxed by the load. But in that case it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

My first adventure into this crazy hobby was a mono Heathkit receiver with a 5 watt rms amplifier driving an 8" Jensen Dual cone speaker and for a kid who liked his music louder than was smart, I found it acceptable much of the time. So I guess that sets the bar pretty low for a low powered system. I doubt anyone on this forum would find anything of such modest capabilities to be acceptable. That said, I think there are synergies that are quite possible to exploit, though I would say it often happens by accident and those magic equipment combinations that are greater than the sum of their parts are pretty uncommon, though I have experienced a few surprising marriages that were clear improvements over what came before.

For example, I have a very modest system in the living room of our apartment using a pair of ADC 303 ax main LR speakers, a JBL center speaker and a pair of Dayton Audio surround speakers. The surrounds have had upgraded drivers installed with a very nice fabric dome tweeter and nicer 6 1/2" woofer and sound pretty respectable especially at low levels. The ADCs have new fabric dome tweeters and crossovers and punch above their  original weight by a lot. Amazing what a really good tweeter will do for sound quality. Been driving this combo with an Emotiva MR1L that I thought sounded pretty darn good. Sadly the MR1 is not a great piece reliability wise. Its boxed up and awaiting an RMA from Emo. So what replaced it, at least for the short term is a Schiitt Audio Syn (analog surround processor) and 3 Stereo Hypex amps built with the NC502 modules rated at 500 wpc into 4 ohms. I have honestly never heard these speakers perform like they do with this amp combination. There is some secret sauce going on here that I cannot explain. I have run the ADCs with many different amps over the time I have had them and the choice of amp never seemed to make much of a difference until I arrived at this current pairing. I'll happily take the improvement but it was completely unexpected.