What going fully Class D has taught me.

I think you are right and it is even at low cost in my system my own experience too ...

Fine, fine, I’ll chime in. Over many years of experimenting in my own system, I have concluded that it’s the preamp that is the heart of your system’s electrical performance fingerprint. The amp simply makes the preamp’s sonic signature louder. For me, as I prefer the lush, rich, harmonic subtleties of tubes (yes, we can debate if that is “distortion” and if that is good or bad, etc.), I have found that employing the best tube preamp for your tastes/budget, and then amplifying that signal with whatever amp works best for your speaker’s unique electrical characteristics, is the best approach.

I’m not an electrical engineer, but I’ve come to believe, through lots of system configurations over the years, that the power amp is simply an extension of the electrical circuitry of your speakers. You might think of the amp as part of your speaker (I know I’m gonna catch flak for that, but that has been my experience). From that context, the amp simply does what the preamp tells it to, in order to “mate” with your speaker’s electrical characteristics. Things like impedance, sensitivity, etc of your speakers can help define the best amp for them, rather than focusing on the amp’s “sonic personality” per se.

I have had good results with modern class D amps to drive full-range speakers, with tube preamps up front. Certainly, for subwoofers, class D has clear advantages.

The good news? We have Audiogon to feed this addiction. It could be worse – we could be obsessed with vintage cars.  ;-)

@mhwalker  - I think you are right.  When I have funding sources again I plan to get a 2 channel tube preamp to fully restore my musical experience. 

Just another confused thread... He confused the sonic gains from the active crossover (vs passive) and attributed it to the use of class D. Once he ditches the class D with class A/AB, while retaining the active crossover...he shall realize class D was nothing but a diddly.

Forget the luxman, when he tries even a cheap schiit gjallarhorn (class A ish continuity topology) on low power drivers and a cheap schiit vidar for the woofers while retaining the active crossover, he shall realize how crappy his class D really was.

@erik_squires --

Focusing on the difference in amp to speaker interfacing through the passive/active configuration and the effect it has/what it facilitates sound-wise (which also, to some extend, comes down to the Hypex DSP section in the active scenario) it’s important to have in mind that, presumably, you’ve only heard either amp - the Luxman and the Hypex solution - in each their particular configuration, passive in one and active in the other, and this is not trivial - certainly insofar what you’re pursuing here is a more isolated assessment on the different amp designs/topologies, or active vs. passive more fundamentally for that matter. 

If you are a really bad dancer with no sense of timing and rhythm Class D will probably be OK.For those that do get that stuff and enjoy rhythmically interesting and engaging music it is poor choice.The class D amps I have tried completely mangled those aspects of the sound.Purifi slightly less bad than Hypex but still terrible. For example swing music has no swing.More musicality deletion units than amplifiers.