Quiet heroes
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's Posts“With a splash of warmth and color of tubes, the M1200’s have the kind of dynamics that infuse even the most languid music with a spark of excitement. The Stellar M1200 Power Amplifiers have challenged many of the preconceived notions I have held about Class D technology.”
So begins Stereo Time’s reviewer, Richard Willie’s review of the PS Audio Stellar M1200 power amplifier which you can read here.
Of course, we’re ecstatic about the review (and this one from Ken Redmond). But perhaps an even more interesting aspect of these reviews comes to light when we consider the role amplifiers play in our systems.
I like to think of power amplifiers as quiet heroes. There they sit apparently doing nothing. No knobs, dials, displays, or outward indications they’re contributing to the system. Yet they are not only the gateway connecting the electronics to the speakers, they offer perhaps more sonic attributes than just about anything else in the stereo chain.
Power amplifiers are a make or break component.
There’s a reason people go just a little nuts when they hear what the best of the best can do in their stereo system.
These quiet heroes should never be ignored.
The M1200 really seem to be a great product and got true rave reviews!
Today I just reread the description of what Paul’s Posts is:
„… Not much is sacred, and there’s rarely a mention of our own products.“
The M1200‘s during the last 5 days now was mentioned in 4 of them..but I’m sure they deserved it 😉
Aren’t there loudspeakers which are highly demanding while others are an easy drive concerning the “power” requirements and stability of the driving amp? Thus I would never read an amp review which doesn’t compare the tested object in comparison with a reference amp and which doesn’t describe in detail the requirements of the loudspeaker being used and the efforts of finding the best (new?) set-up for the loudspeakers in the specific listening room. Thus which amps were beaten? Which speakers are to be focused for getting a relevant improvement in sound quality or “bass” power?
If it has a very low impedance at low frequencies you may get into trouble unless you have a good amp. That’s what happened at home.
Early series of Infinity loudspeakers were famous for showing low impedance values, Infintity kappa floorstanders for instance. No wonder that Paul highly recommends active subwoofers! 🙂
A pair of M1200’s in Australia retail for AU$10k.
A HEGEL H390 also has a recommended retail price of AU$10k.
An Ayre A-X5 is AU$21,600 here (also built in Boulder, Colorado)
I would still have to buy a pre-amp/DAC for the two M1200’s.
More importantly I would have to listen to all three to ascertain which one would suit me, whilst still keeping an eye on the overall cost…I guess that’s the A-X5 out then.
Happy Saturnalia to all !!
Since Christmas has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus Christ, it can only be recognized as a huge commercial & retail event.
We should threaten Santa Clause with crucifixion if he doesn’t bring us all a pair of M1200’s…or at least a HEGEL H390 🙂
You are probably a nasty boy if Santa Claus will not bring you a pair of M1200s! 🙂 But it could also be that Santa Claus is another audio myth still missing in Paul’s listing. According to this myth bad boys are punished by electric shocks or mains current blows their audio systems away – unless they haven’t purchased a PS Audio power regenerator! Thus be careful what you are telling here! 🙂
ps,
My wife punishes me enough when I’m bad.
I don’t need a hirsute, fat guy in a red suit giving me grief as well.
We love our 240volts @ 10amps here in the land of Oz.
It’s very stable & consistent, ie. I haven’t managed to blow-up or ‘fry’ anything electronic here in 52 years…but there’s always tomorrow 😉
Not enough, I might add. Let her read what you post and you’ll sleep in the doghouse forever.
You should also try the amps from WA of March Audio. You’ll save money and get better sound.
No tubes to distort.
sclaningham,
My wife, who is Chinese & was born in Hong Kong, read your post a few weeks back, wherein you accused me of being a bigot because I pointed out how the CCP (China) is economically bullying some countries around the world.
She said that you ‘are an ignorant woman’…her words.
No doghouse for me…you however…
Audio myth that tubes sound better because they distort. True of guitar amps like my Bugera’s and maybe some SET nuts, but not serious audio like Paul & Company.
Tubes sound better because they are inherently more linear voltage amplifiers, and extremely fast.
HO HO HO!!! You’re going to find a lump of coal in your Outback.
Coal is not clean or “green” so — Santa better watch out — the brainwashed hysterical liberals may being burning and looting the North Pole next.
What not add the BHK’s to your list? From all that I’ve heard, they still beat the M1200’s….
It’s a little late to put on the good boy hat. Maybe next year…. Santa told me the price of coal is too high and not renewable enough to hand out any more. So instead, the bad ones get a lump of frozen reindeer sh*t 🙂 it’s less messy to sh*p that way… 😉
Mike,
‘Why not add the BHK’s to my list?’ …simple; I’m not greedy 🙂
Liquid nitrogen for the reindeer crap?..if there’s any left over after all those containers of CoViD-19 vaccine 😉
No one accused you of being greedy….
But what the heck why not? You had the Ayer A-X5 on the list, even if only for a brief moment.
That ‘good man’ hat having some influence?
dry ice works well, no need for liquid nitrogen… in fact fly at 50k feet and no need for either. He can just drop sh*p sh*t.
New meaning for “drop ship”, coming soon via a drone near you!
Thanks for the smile acuvox.
since I’m out in the middle of far eastern CT I don’t expect drone coverage too soon.
The Hawks and Great Horn owls may become the latest in drone deterrent technology. If for nothing else just for the sport of knocking a drone outta the air 🙂
I imagine that hawks, owls and other raptors can upset the drone servo systems, but they may suffer injuries from the propellers. We recently had an incident with a broken Bald Eagle Wing in Northwestern Connecticut and i have to wonder if it was from a man made hazard.
Solstice Salutations from the Southwestern tail!
I was being somewhat factious, having just watched a great horned appear from out of no where and snatch up a squirrel. (Just the shear size) I do hope drones don’t become the ‘DDT’ of our more modern times when it comes to birds of prey.
Thanks for the salutations, and happy holidays to you.
Here the Hegel 390 is 20% cheaper than the M1200 and provides ample power (270w into 8 ohms), hence it is more popular than the much more powerful and more expensive Hegel 590. The 390 has also swept the awards board (e.g. EISA), suggesting power isn’t everything. If Father Christmas existed, he would bring an M700 upgraded with the valve input stage at the existing M700 price.
Amplifiers “offer perhaps more sonic attributes than just about anything else in the stereo chain”
Personally, I think the speakers contribute the vast amount of the sonic attributes of the audio chain.
“I like to think of power amplifiers as quiet heroes. There they sit apparently doing nothing.”
A lot of people share this thought, summed up by Peter Walker as “straight wire with gain”.
Steven,
I definitely believe that the H390 is the pick of the bunch.
I can’t get my ‘100wrms/ch into 6ohms’ Onkyo to clip or to distort & I listen to my Rock ‘n Roll up LOUD.
HiFi News reviewed the H590 (it’s online) and comments that of the mega-power amps they compared, the one with the most continuous power (Perreraux) had the lowest dynamic power, whereas the 590 had the most dynamic power. So in real world conditions, for real grunt into low impedance loads, high continuous power can be very misleading. The 590 has about 10% more continuous power than the 390, buy almost double the dynamic power, 2.2kW into 1 ohm. That power almost doubles the price of the unit. ICE specify a minimum load of 2.7 ohms and I’ve not seem any relevant measurements, so it is very difficult to get an idea how well the M1200 might perform with a very demanding speaker.
In my real world, parting with my cash only 2 days ago, faced with needing more power to properly drive a pair of speakers, I chose different speakers over more power. Others may have made a different choice and gone for more power. The reality is that if more power did not cost more money, we’d probably all have 1,000W amps.
Steven,
After closer inspection of my Onkyo A9070’s specs, it’s HICC (Highest Instantaneous Continuous Current) is quoted at 100 amperes, so no wonder it never gets driven into clipping.
It is quoted as being able to go to 2ohms & 450w @ 1ohm.
I’ve had it operating at just under 2.4ohms for half an hour running speakers A&B simultaneously.
The H590 has a RRP of AU$17k here
The 590 is £9,000, but a total beast.
I’d love Naim Uniti Atom in the office one day, its continuous power rating is only 40w but Naim peak power is much higher and it is one of the few such units that is Class A/B. The amp in the Bluesound is a bit of a disappointment running Harbeth P3 without a sub.
9kGBP = AU$17k roughly, at current exchange rates.
The only reason that I’m currently using the A9070 (2yrs now) is because I was able to purchase it, brand new, for a mere AU$700 (that’s not a typo) & it’s clean & rock (pardon the pun) solid.
If I come into some serious money, I’m pretty sure that the H390 will be on the cards for me.
More efficient speakers are the best course. Save on power compression, electricity, weight, shipping energy & costs, mining and manufacturing pollution, back strain, real estate, air conditioning.
Mega amps are like 20th Century muscle cars and monster trucks, Tesla Motors is literally class D.
Also, lower power multi-channel amps for tri-amped and quad-amped speakers. I just scored a Crown CT875 for $200, 8×75 Watts, 1RU and 5Kg. This is perfect for my 96-98dB drivers, gets me >120dB.
Congrats to Darren and the crew on another great review.
After reading these reviews and being a part of this family (where is my member card ?) I am so proud that I have some of the products of this brand (not these power beasts).
All my audio buddies envy me. They have to put up with Pass Labs, Soulution, Levinson, Bryston, Devialet or whatever other inferior brand.
Anyway, congrats again PSAudio. Keep up the good work.
I can’t wait to see what you come up with in 2021 (new DAC, server ?).
BTW., I always wonder why a lot of these reviewers use testtones instead of real music.
Music real people listen to in their homes, that is.
Not the “audiophile” (ECM !) crap they call music.
HAHA! ECM is possibly the most influential record label for the late 20th Cenutry New York Jazz scene because of the consistently high quality of music – the players are not concerned with the outstanding sound quality which makes their catalog an excellent test source. I believe I have more ECM works in my 4,000 CD collection than any other label. Leading Classical violinist Miranda Cuckson also appears on ECM. They are now considered ‘conservative mainstream’ compared to most of the people I produce and record, like Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut’s band members:
https://play.primephonic.com/album/712038011674?q=jeffrey%20hayden%20shurdut
The music consuming public has been dumbing down relative to the evolution of composed and improvised music since Schoenberg and the Jazz Age. I blame Radio which had to pander to the Lowest Common Denominator to sell mass market products, and did not have the bandwidth, clarity, dynamic range and attention span to promote art music.
From memory, Nelson Pass once experimented with adding a small amount of second harmonic distortion and then had people assess the ‘clean’ and ‘colored’ sounds. The preference was pretty much 50/50. I can thus understand why adding a tube input to a solid state amp to get the ;tube sound’ without the numerous weaknesses of a tube output stage would be attractive to many. I happen to be in the 50% who prefer uncolored sound.
The odd thing was that when I first looked at Class D amps over 10 years ago I looked at Bel Canto. They were a valve amp manufacturer and designed a Class D amp using modified ICEpower and a proprietary input stage to get a valve-like sound, more to do with the spatial qualities of valves than harmonics. The amplifiers were very successful and about 10 years later they got Bruno Putzeys to modify his NC1200 amp and SMPS, again to producer a valve-like sound, but with a lower noise floor than ICEpower.
Some people may think of Class D just as efficient brute force that has only recently become valve-like. To the contrary, even 20 years ago there were Class D amplifiers with valve-like qualities.
That said, there are plenty of valve amps that are coloured, with a boost around 1.5 and 6 kHz, the former being midrange warmth and the latter being the critical presence region.
No valves, less distortion. My husband tells me our amps are from Putzey design.
Class D amp were primarily introduced for car stereo requiring high efficient amps being supplied with pure and clean DC power from batteries! Maybe when driven from early SMPSs the sound became horrible? Perhaps that’s why the TacT Millenium ( http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/revequip/robert01.htm ) featured a linear power supply? (Linear power supplies were also offered for TacT’s room processor as optional upgrade!) This 20 years old integrated amp in MK3 or MK4 version (featuring a digital equalizer function) is sound-wise still on par with a Devialet pizza box which however is less bulky. Thus where happened the progress concerning power amp’s overall sound quality? Or are there just different preferences for voicing? I heard some slight improvement in sound quality when comparing the TacT amp with a 40 k$ class A power amp in a system with power cables and interconnects both costing more than 30 k$ each! Not to mention the additional preamp/DAC (35 k$) needed. 🙂 Or is the real progress found only in DSD recordings?
Lars Risbo was and remains (now with Putzeys at Purifi) at the forefront of Class D amplifiers. I went to hear a system: Lyngdorf/Sooloos/Wilson Benesch about 15 years ago, before opting for Linn. These were pure digital, the pizza box is a Class A hybrid and rather more powerful and a much more complex system. The capability was there many years ago, a lot it is simply getting the price down. 10 years ago nCore1200 and nCore 1200 SMPS mono block amplifiers might have been $15,000, you can now get them for $2,500 and they don’t need to be tweaked, although some people do.
We actually love the performance of the amps. They are incredibly quiet, run the low impedance speakers very well, bass is now very clear and precise. And they are very small, plus they don’t act as heaters in the room. His old amp with tubes is somewhere in a closet. Big, heavy, releases hot air and useless. Like…. no, I won’t say it.
I had the valve experience, but got over it in about 18 months. I’ve thought it a real problem for mid-market companies like PS Audio that you can now get high performance very cheaply. For years they scoffed at Class D, now its a real force and are trying to adopt it when Putzeys, his client manufacturers and a few other like Devialet are years ahead. The focus then becomes on design and functionality – NAD M10, NAD M33, Linn Uniti Atom, Bluesound. etc. take all the prizes and sales.
Having ignored our audio for 28 years (although my kids use it), my wife fell in love with my Devialet Reactor (and stole it – just bought her another one) and she became a Roon user. She is now designing our new sitting room around the Wilson speakers that she chose and arrived on Saturday. Our Devialet Expert sits in a cupboard, but in the new room she wants it out on display.
In the USA, PS Audio is now a mail order company, but the salesman at my dealership tells me decisions are often made by the wife, who strangely often have a very good ear for sound. I think most hifi companies completely ignore this reality.
sclaningham,
Oh go on, you can say it…I mean, we’re all thinking it…your rear end, right?? 😉
TACT used a linear power supply to avoid a digital volume control. The power supply voltage was turned down to reach appropriate listening level, and was superior to switch mode supplies in this modality.
I have tremendous respect for Lyngdorf and Putzeys, they are gentleman and outstanding engineers. They have both innovated in both amplification and speaker design in ways that have largely escaped the buying public – for example, tightly controlled novel polar patterns and electronic time correction.
“ No knobs, dials, displays, or outward indications they’re contributing to the system.”
The looks of some AR Mac’s and others are great displays and indicators of how hard an amp is working. Maybe having an SE version and adding a “real meter “ display would appeal to those who value such things. That way a black box or rounded edge amp wouldn’t have to be hidden behind the speakers. Think of something cool that incorporates the PSA logo.
Congrats again!
I would love to hear them someday when your place reopens for customer visits.
Is there any significant longevity issues with class D? Most people are familiar with longevity, reliability and maintenance for older technologies – but I’m not sure about class D. Will they last 30+ years like some of the legendary amps of the 70’s?
And a more trivial question – will PSA offer choice of chassis colors in the future? I may be in the minority here but I do care about the aesthetic of the components as well as the speakers.
djB-O-B,
“…Will they last 30+ years like some of the legendary amps of the 70’s?…”
Keep your amp 30+ years ? Are you mad !?
Finally you’re showing your true colors. You are not an audiophile. 😐
Audiophiles trade in their amps (etc.) every 2 years or so.
I have to confess though I have my speakers for 14 years already, my cd transport 8 years.
That makes me an audio heretic as well I guess.
LOL – true colors are admittedly due to my thin wallet. I’d love to have new gear and multiple systems. But divorce and two kids still in High School means my audio budget is TIGHT! So I’m in the learning and tweaking season of my life.
Spending is Pending LOL.
🙂
Does anyone here know what G(j*omega) means? Just wondering.
It’s a phasor function. I abandoned the Fourier transform 20 years ago, because human aural cognition games the Fourier limit and Nyquist criteria with temporal resolution four octaves beyond the frequency response (3 microseconds).
I’m surprised Ken Redmond didn’t like the sound right out of the box. Explanation 100 hours of burn in time needed. Others stated they sounded great right out of the box. Hmmm.
A Tale of Two Sounds
I was seriously distressed for the first few hours that I listened to the amps. The sound was flat and etched with a top-end that sounded like, well Class D. The sound was not inviting. In fact, I contacted Darren to see if I was possibly doing something wrong.
I got a quick answer. The amps need to have a minimum of 100 hours run-in on them before critically listening. He advised me that this could not be achieved by just turning the units on and leaving them on for 100 hours. They need to be fed a signal. Well thanks, Darren, my wife is going to love that! Fortunately, he told me that I could simply run a signal through them without attaching the speakers. Problem solved!
So, I fired up the CD player in my adjoining shop and fed the M1200s a continuous dose of music for the next 5 days. On day 6, I reinserted them in the system, and an entirely different sound emerged.
A lot of talk about Hegel here. They build nice stuff, used to have a couple of their top of the line integrateds, last 1 being their 300 series. The Hegel dacs included in their integrated amps are a compromise, I always used a better external dac. When at RMAF years ago, I had Hegel demo their better stand alone dac to their current 360 and their stand alone dac blew away their dac in the 360. This is common in integrated amps.
A couple of years ago, when I got more demanding speakers, I sold the Hegel and purchased the BHk amp and the ps audio DS dac. The BHK has the same 250 watts as the Hegel but the BHK is a much better amp and the DS dac is in another league even compared to the Hegel standalone dacs let alone their compromised dacs in their integrateds.
But for what you get in an integrated amp, meaning a compromise, the Hegel sounds pretty good compared to other integrated amps