It beat my current tweeter reference-amp for sound quality AND power AND price, which is currently a pair of B&O 1000's.
I don't say this lightly.
But there is a gottcha to it, you have to use a pre-amp with high quality XLR outs, such as an XSP-1 or such.
I don't have an XSP-1 yet, but routed through my crappy sounding BFD and UMC-1 in bypass-mode, it is already beating every other amp I have EVER heard in my life.
There is a bit of background hiss, but I think that is from my BFD, I'll reconfirm that when I buy the XSP-1 which has no such hiss.
More testing is needed, but this changes EVERYTHING!!!
This amp, for this price, seriously embarrasses many many other amps in existence.
I'm seriously contemplating selling off 16 Rack Units worth of amps (~$7000) and replacing them with three or four of these amps, I'd save 10Units of rack space AND would gain a gigawatt more power AND with 4 x the efficiency
and I would have nice clear clip indicators, of which most would just be idling along or not even powered on until movie-mode engages.
The only other amp I would bother keeping would be my iTech. All the other amps I have bought are sort-of a waste of time and space, although still very respectable gear in the face of no other such alternative.
and yes, I can hear the difference in most lower-quality gear in the top-end, and no, you won't be able to change my viewpoint on that because I'm actually hearing it
If you are using an AVR to power your speakers, unless it is something spectacular, do yourself a favor and upgrade away from it, you might just be nicely surprised with the results. The key word there is: might. I couldn't say 100% sure unless I was there.
I don't say this lightly.
But there is a gottcha to it, you have to use a pre-amp with high quality XLR outs, such as an XSP-1 or such.
I don't have an XSP-1 yet, but routed through my crappy sounding BFD and UMC-1 in bypass-mode, it is already beating every other amp I have EVER heard in my life.
There is a bit of background hiss, but I think that is from my BFD, I'll reconfirm that when I buy the XSP-1 which has no such hiss.
More testing is needed, but this changes EVERYTHING!!!
This amp, for this price, seriously embarrasses many many other amps in existence.
I'm seriously contemplating selling off 16 Rack Units worth of amps (~$7000) and replacing them with three or four of these amps, I'd save 10Units of rack space AND would gain a gigawatt more power AND with 4 x the efficiency

and I would have nice clear clip indicators, of which most would just be idling along or not even powered on until movie-mode engages.
The only other amp I would bother keeping would be my iTech. All the other amps I have bought are sort-of a waste of time and space, although still very respectable gear in the face of no other such alternative.
and yes, I can hear the difference in most lower-quality gear in the top-end, and no, you won't be able to change my viewpoint on that because I'm actually hearing it

If you are using an AVR to power your speakers, unless it is something spectacular, do yourself a favor and upgrade away from it, you might just be nicely surprised with the results. The key word there is: might. I couldn't say 100% sure unless I was there.











The BFD in the HF signal path still isn't the best, but that is all I can do at the moment.






