Thread: Gallium Nitride Class D Amplifiers

The AGD room at the Florida Audio Expo has been a favorite of mine for a few years.

I heard the ADG with a speaker I'm not familiar with, I believe the name was Ocean Wave. This was at a show, I thought the sound was good.

One or two members have the Atmosphere and Ralph pops in from time to time.

Future Audiophile reviews a lot of Class D but they really seem to push them. They don't try to hide the bias.

Not long ago I was hunting an amp and didn't want one that weighed 100 lbs. My amp then weighed 65 lbs. the replacement weighs 107. Not looking forward to moving it again but my ears are happy.

Love my Atma-Sphere “Class D” monoblocks. Light weight, cool running, more powerful than my DIY Firstwatt amps. These amps have linear power supplies, and have both RCA and balanced XLR inputs.

I have 95 db speakers, so 100 watts is great, in fact I use -10 db adapters. I do plan to get the pre-amp adjusted (resistor change for -6 db).

Being class A fan previously, I use a tubed pre-amp, but the amps run great straight from the DAC. Ralph did a great job designing, and voicing, these amps.

Originally Posted by Bones13

Love my Atma-Sphere “Class D” monoblocks. Light weight, cool running, more powerful than my DIY Firstwatt amps. These amps have linear power supplies, and have both RCA and balanced XLR inputs.

I have 95 db speakers, so 100 watts is great, in fact I use -10 db adapters. I do plan to get the pre-amp adjusted (resistor change for -6 db).

Being class A fan previously, I use a tubed pre-amp, but the amps run great straight from the DAC. Ralph did a great job designing, and voicing, these amps.

Yes, I have the Atma-Sphere Class D monos too. I'm very pleased with them after previously using SET tube amps. No regrets in switching.

For me, the "Class" of an amp or whether it's tube or ss is irrelevant - it's just the sound that matters and how much enjoyment I get from listening. I home-auditioned many ss amps and chose a Purifi Eligentakt based one that matched or bettered the others and my earlier SETs. Recently I bought the A-S amps and there's very little difference though perhaps (hopefully) I'll notice a bigger difference when I upgrade my preamp.

When Merrill went to the Element series the amps went out of my budget reach. I have still yet to hear one.

I did get to audition his former top of the line monoblocks in my system. I wanted to like them. I heard a set at Axpona driving Sadurna horns and the sound was incredible. In my system they were fast and clean, neutral. I was using Pass at the time and maybe the contrast was to much at the time. I just wasn't engaged.

Originally Posted by GSOphile

No mention of Merrill Audio (which seemed to make quite a splash several years ago)? Not inexpensive though.