Out-Of-Body Experiences...
This little piece of gear has rocked my audio world.
Been into the hobby heavily for 25 years. In my most active period of buying & trying gear, 2005-2016 or so, I owned certainly over $1 million worth of stuff, all told.
About a decade ago I settled on the Quad 63 line of speakers as my reference - the 63/988/2805 and the larger models too (2905) - all basically the same speaker. (I also owned two pairs of 57s, one rebuilt by Wayne Piquet (RIP) and the latter Art Dudley's (RIP) pair, built by the incredible Kent at Electrostatic Solutions. I prefer the 63 series.)
In that period I've used any number of sources and amplification chains. I was formerly a SET addict, and large SETs figured in here too.
I went to Purifi for a time, then went back an 805-based SET - but even with my bi-amped Quads (actively crossed at 80 Hz), no SET can supply the current the Quads need for proper dynamics.
To cut this short, I went from a high-end DAC, preamp, analog crossover, and GaN monoblocks (after the SET) to - just this. Plus an all-in-one *digital* processor/preamp/crossover (miniDSP Flex Digital). About 25% of the cost.
Is it better? Of course, or I would not have switched. And I was very careful about this, doing both A/Bs and long listening sessions for a few weeks.
I keep hearing things I've never heard before. The cliche has become alive. It's certainly not a frequency response tilt - the GAN-1 has a nonzero output impedance, but shifts are very mild. So mild I could not really measure them using REW.
This is the future, at least if you're already set on switching amps. Because producing a line-level analog signal in a conventional DAC only to have it converted to PWM in a switching amp - such as my former Starkrimsons used to do - is clearly non-optimal.
I've eliminated *two* active stages to the chain, and, as you'd expect, I hear that, in greater "transparency."
Occasionally, to be sure, recordings are bit *too* "raw." Yet there is no going back.
This amp - Power DAC - deserves a Stereophile cover. It's that significant.
