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RE: Power for Pennies.... except when its not

Posted by Ralph on April 11, 2022 at 12:03:43:
You make a valid point about Class D "power for pennies". While that is generally true along with fantastic bang for the buck and excellent sound, it doesn't explain the mega-buck audiophile Class D amp. You know, the ones where the manufacturer boasts about applying their own special secret sauce in marketing hype cleverly disguised as technical whitepapers.... so they can bamboozle and charge mega-bucks.

The real heavy lift engineering is done by the Class D module manufacturer, not the amp assembler.

Some of your hyperbole is real, and some isn't.

You can get inexpensive class D power but often its in chip form and distortion is 10% at 'full' power.

The more expensive amps that actually use a module like Icepower or Hypex tend to also have better distortion specs!

We use a toroid power transformer in our class D; to do so and have the amp survive shipping we had to make the chassis fairly heavy- out of 3/16" aluminum. So the amp is a bit heavier than you'd otherwise expect- nearly 14 pounds. To make a chassis like that in 'small' quantities you do have to pay for it- and then finish it; that all can be a bit of an investment.

We designed our own module. All the engineering was done in-house. All these things tend to be more expensive, especially if you build the amp to last.