Left diy-ed audio, returned to audio, need amp recommendation

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I stopped playing with audio equipment 2-3 years ago, and now I've decided to upgrade my TA2024 amp to something more powerful.

Prefer to get something from a brand that stays relevant throughout the years, as opposed to stuff that generate hype for a year then fade into obscurity which I have seen too much of and what made me leave audio in the first place. Most importantly it has to last and not give me problems from day one due to bad design. Something with a long warranty from a company that doesn't suddenly disappear/reorg would be nice.

Thing is, i have never looked at those "corporation" brands because I was only looking at "new revolution" and "giant killers" and "SWAG" (or was it called "PRAT" in the past), so I only know of few established brands, like NAD and Cambridge. Now I'm willing to buy them, I have no idea what to buy.

Budget $500-1k USD range.

Currently looking:
NAD D 3020 - because I mainly use it with a computer, the bluetooth is a plus with handphone
 
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Great that I did my homework, but now I've come full circle and back to square one.

First I was attracted to the NAD due to stereophile's review and the hypex modules inside, but a reviewer's measurement shows it to be below average while Yamaha A-S501 is way more awesome for the price. But the yamaha is a truck and a power guzzler which costs $60 to run annually and the 60Hz snr can use some improvement so I looked around more and found TEAC using Abletec modules with on board PSU but since Abletec doesn't sell to consumers I look cheaper and found Icepower used in cheaper TEAC and found an eBay seller but also that it needs a preamp on the input which raises costs close to the second hand value of a A-H01 so I might as well buy that but the new price of that is close to the Yamaha and NAD... and I remember why I haven't upgraded my amp in 7 years.
 
$60 a year? Not even over here. Most of the time the amp is in idle, and idle power draw for an 80 wpc stereo unit tends to be ~40 W. If the amp runs for an average of 8 hours every single day, that's 116-ish kWh a year, or maybe 35€ around these parts. And when really not needed, you can always put it into standby (<0.5 W) or turn power off altogether (0 W).

But it seems like you're looking for something a little more compact and less power hungry - fair enough. Unfortunately good Class D amps tend to be harder to build, usually exhibiting higher distortion, more noise and lower damping factor and frequency response irregularities in the highs due to the heavy output filtering necessary. Not everything is a Hypex nCore module (and those with the matching SMPS600 cost more than what you're willing to pay for a finished unit, but then again we are talking about 400W of super-clean Class D power output into 4 ohms, which may be more than you need). I'm not aware of anything even close to that in commercial units, except for ones using UcD modules, obviously. Actually the NAD D3020 includes Hypex-designed power amps, and as such it should perform well. I'm merely not exactly fond of NAD's parts quality.
Onkyo have been making Class D integrated amps for about a decade, and their A-9355 can boast good SNR at least. You can have a look at A-9555 measurements to get an impression.
Pioneer have been using their own D amps in their high-end home theater receivers for years (where they perform very well), though stereo units using them only came out about 2 years ago (A-50 and A-70). Definitely worth a look. The preamp section seems to be noisy unless tone controls are bypassed by the Direct function though, at least in the '70. They still seem to have the tone control section after the preamp as they always had (other companies like Onkyo prefer to run those at line level in front of the volume pot, where noise essentially is not an issue but distortion needs to be watched).
 
$60 a year? Not even over here. Most of the time the amp is in idle, and idle power draw for an 80 wpc stereo unit tends to be ~40 W. (snip)

40W idle consumption is very high for a typical class AB amp. Let's say it's an Adcom 5300 (50V rails and ~0.1A bias per channel): somebody check my numbers, but that's ~10W per channel (not counting transformer losses). A better estimate is 20W...
 
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