is it quality or..........

[Mallette]

Well, oldmako, you made me think of something I'm not sure has been connected. Of course, we can't know for sure, but I'll posit that if PWK were still with us, he'd have one of these in the big Hope listening room and when people asked "What is THAT?" he'd say "It's a good 5 watt amplifier."

For those not into the lore of Our Founder, one of PWK's oft repeated (obviously, since he said it to me) sayings was "What this country needs is a good 5 watt amplifier," which is of course, based on the immortal Thomas Riley Marshall's (VP under Woodrow Wilson) statement to a senate clerk that "What this country needs is a good 5 cent cigar."

Who we really need here is Who (Mike Bentz), as my engineering is conceptual at best. However, I THINK that the nature of these amps should make them significantly less susceptible to an electrically noisy environment than analog designs simply because a lot of the sensitive work is happening in the digital realm.

Their lack of authority of bass at higher levels is entirely an issue of the output power, not the design. You get exactly the same issue with the marvelous little SET amps. Awesome for chamber music or jazz lovers, but not recommended for pipe organ freaks.

However, the higher power ones do fine in that department.

As to your own "discovery," many make assumptions based on the weight or size of amps. Not unreasonable in the past, but these things represent a paradigm shift and the future. I rather doubt the first few analog audio amps built were as good as they were going to get and these things are starting off equal to or greater than the others.

I'd put the digital amp development stage to be about where SS was in 1968. So hang on, the best is yet to come.

Dave

[oldmako]

David,

You said that

".... However, I THINK that the nature of these amps should make them
significantly less susceptible to an electrically noisy environment
than analog designs simply because a lot of the sensitive work is
happening in the digital realm..."

My plan was to wire this thing directly to the ships 'house' battery to eliminate any noise. But your comment makes me wonder if just hooking it up to the present 12V power supply (generated and already at the planned point of install) would be a way around the noise issue. Plus, it would save me a fair amount of work. I suppose I can just try it, and if its noisy, run the wires directly to the batt.

I'm going to take the little mother to my brothers house. I'll hook it up to his Chours II's and amaze him. This thread reminds me of the guy in the desert with LaScalas driven by a tiny little amp with a motorcycle battery.