Hypex Nilia vs NCX500 vs PURIFI Eigentakt Opinions?

[Bryguy]

Sounds good and purist to say, "changes nothing, just plays what it's fed" ... but not if the life is gone.

If there is life in the input, Nilai will output life. Again, I really think it is not right to place the blame on class D as a technology. Look at the amps from AGD. They are class D, but they have been designed to add coloration just like the class A amps you're talking about, and they get universally rave reviews from diehard class a fans. Nilai doesn't add or subtract, you seemingly want something that adds. Nilai doesn't do that, so it's not the product for you, but it's not because class d is limited as a technology

There are class A/AB amps that are designed not to add coloration too. Neurochrome Modulus amps come to mind. I bet you would be hard pressed to hear a difference between those amps and Nilai

 

[Flaxxer]

I disagree. There is "life" in the signal. Lumin is good at that, as is my loaded LP-12. And three different amazing DACs.
Class D has not been able to translate that "life" properly in my experience. It IS a Class D issue obviously, imo. Otherwise someone would make a Class D amp that sounds lifelike. And this discussion wouldn't be understood even. The very fact that different members are posting about the differences, means there's something to the point. Not baseless.

Lastly ... please understand that I'm not comparing average Class A amplifiers with Class D, but extremely good amplifiers that actually have much less of their own sound.

 

[Flaxxer]

I have been trying to find ways to express a point, that's a bit difficult to qualify.

Let me try this: 12 years ago, I lucked out and made a "perfect" recording. I was reading some of my daughter's poetry and recording it. The stars must have lined up that day, because this single voice recording has something special.
You can seemingly walk all the way around the person speaking, me.
It's as if the voice is spookily 3d and you can walk around the voice, hanging at the microphone location.

This effect goes away on Class D amplifiers to date. This alone is worrisome for good reason.

 

[Brijac]

That is weird to me, i kind of have to disagree (doesn't mean im right). I have been with musicians all my life (my godfather was a well known musician), and purifi amps are really good at recreating what i heard in studio. I don't have listening fatigue, nor does it feel aggresive or anything in between. Feels very relaxed like class A, but with significantly more power to run bass as god intended. My hearing is still above 18k. And yes, i heard better amps, but definitely not at this price range. If nilai is as good as, they punch way beyond it's price point and anything that can be made for the same amount of money in diy that gives the same benefits.

 

[Bryguy]

Class D has not been able to translate that "life" properly in my experience. It IS a Class D issue obviously, imo. Otherwise someone would make a Class D amp that sounds lifelike

I believe I mentioned an amp with the qualities you're looking for. AGD. Nilai too, but it won't make the sound MORE lifelike than its input. Anyways, what experience do you have with class d exactly to make a statement like this?

 

[Bryguy]

I disagree. There is "life" in the signal.

I never said there wasn't. I said if there is life in the input, it will not be lost in the output of the Nilai.

Lastly ... please understand that I'm not comparing average Class A amplifiers with Class D, but extremely good amplifiers that actually have much less of their own sound.

I would not hesitate to classify Nilai state of the art. Anyways, I don't think extremely good and less of their own sound are mutually exclusive. There are amps that absolutely have their own sound that I love, but Nilai is not one of them as far as I can tell

You can seemingly walk all the way around the person speaking, me.
It's as if the voice is spookily 3d and you can walk around the voice, hanging at the microphone location

I have experienced this many times through class d gear. If you haven't, I would question the quality of the class d gear you have heard. I agree any good amp should not stand in the way of experiences like this. That said, there are certainly amps that will create that kind of sound, even if it's not present in the recording. Some tube stuff comes to mind. Nilai won't do that, if that's what you're looking for, but that's not because it's class D. It's because it was engineered to be neutral. There are class D amps that will do that, if that's what you want. Again, AGD for example

 

[Bryguy]

LP-12

I have an LP-12 too by the way, though it's close to stock. I like it 🙂

I mostly do digital though

 

[Logon]

Listening to great Class D always leaves me "realizing" or feeling something isn't quite right. And I want to end my listening session early.

This can happen from time to time, but not "always" for me.
I think there could be many factors at play, not least EMI.

However, I think that even the way the modules are implemented in the cabinet (which shouldn't be too small at all in my opinion) should not be underestimated in the case of these amplifiers without contradicting the fact that they can certainly improve their performances further with future designs.

The attention to be paid in assembling them and even positioning them with respect to their respective power supplies could reserve more than one "surprise" in SQ if you catch the right way to do it.
But I do not have a recipe to offer here.

Of course, I'm not able to theorize a best practice on this subject more than reporting some personal experience (already said previously in this thread), but also how you build your internal cables and how you arrange them does matter, in my opinion.


May be of interest:

Searching for the Extreme: Bruno Putzeys of Mola-Mola, Hypex, and Grimm Audio -- Part One

Searching for the Extreme: Bruno Putzeys of Mola-Mola, Hypex, and Grimm Audio -- Part Two

 

[Bryguy]

May be of interest:

Searching for the Extreme: Bruno Putzeys of Mola-Mola, Hypex, and Grimm Audio -- Part One

Searching for the Extreme: Bruno Putzeys of Mola-Mola, Hypex, and Grimm Audio -- Part Two

I know the comment wasn't directed at me, but thanks for the links!

"So an amplifier with a massive amount of feedback at bass frequencies might actually have quite little at high frequencies, because that’s where it gets difficult. What you get is high frequencies that are much more distorted than the low frequencies. Well, maybe that explains this very brittle, thin, choked kind of sound that is typically associated with negative feedback. Maybe the real cause isn’t there being too much feedback at low frequencies, but too little at high frequencies."

News to me. Cool!

 

[Logon]

thanks for the links!

My pleasure!

Please note that for what it's worth, Bruno Putzeys is one of my favorite audio engineers and I find his intelligence, insights and research to be top notch.
From my modest point of view, he is not one of those engineers who pontificate because he knows he does not know enough (!), and he constantly carries out research and experiments.

As I already said I've personally noticed that the internal layout of the modules/SMPSs inside a (not small) case and the arrangement of the wire bundles can make some difference and I think that Class D amplifiers of that level deserve the most attention possible in this regards, more than other type of amplifiers.

So, in my humble opinion, if you want to get the best out of your high-end Class D modules/SMPSs you need to do (in addition to following manufacturer's instructions to the letter) some experiments and research yourself, otherwise you need to settle for what you got without doing it.

From the first link:
"Switch-mode power supplies and switching amplifiers are, in fact, very closely linked. In both, the power devices ideally operate either fully on or fully off, and they alternate very rapidly between those states. By and large, when it comes to unwanted behavior of the circuit (you were referring to the noise, with the more generic term being EMI -- electromagnetic interference), most of these things happen in that space between turning a device off and turning another one on. This happens really rapidly, and whenever you have rapid changes in voltage and current, every bit of wire will turn into a transmitting antenna. You really have to think extremely hard about how fast you really want to switch -- can I reduce the problem at the source? -- and then look at the conduit by which the noise gets out: the wiring and the printed circuit board. Everything that is left after that -- even after you’ve done your best to make the switching power stage as quiet as you can as far as radio-frequency interference [RFI] is concerned, and you’ve done your best to make sure there is no internal wiring that actually radiates this stuff -- in the end you might still need to add some further filtering to the incoming and outgoing lines. And you really need to be extremely careful with these things, because a lot of audio equipment is astonishingly sensitive, sonically, to any of this high-frequency noise circulating around power cables, speaker cables, and interconnects."

Please also read what follows in the article (about RFI too) otherwise I'd have had to copy too much text here. 😉

P. S.: I posted those links for anyone who was curious and interested in reading them...

 

[analog_sa]

Well, maybe that explains this very brittle, thin, choked kind of sound that is typically associated with negative feedback. Maybe the real cause isn’t there being too much feedback at low frequencies, but too little at high frequencies.

Yet, nfb free amps sound anything but "brittle, thin, choked" at high frequencies.

How much easier and simpler is life when one sticks to large linear power supplies feeding large, linear class A amps. True, having 70, rather than 700W is certainly a drawback with inefficient speakers.

 

[analog_sa]

"Switch-mode power supplies and switching amplifiers are, in fact, very closely linked. In both, the power devices ideally operate either fully on or fully off, and they alternate very rapidly between those states. By and large, when it comes to unwanted behavior of the circuit (you were referring to the noise, with the more generic term being EMI -- electromagnetic interference), most of these things happen in that space between turning a device off and turning another one on. This happens really rapidly, and whenever you have rapid changes in voltage and current, every bit of wire will turn into a transmitting antenna. You really have to think extremely hard about how fast you really want to switch -- can I reduce the problem at the source? -- and then look at the conduit by which the noise gets out: the wiring and the printed circuit board. Everything that is left after that -- even after you’ve done your best to make the switching power stage as quiet as you can as far as radio-frequency interference [RFI] is concerned, and you’ve done your best to make sure there is no internal wiring that actually radiates this stuff -- in the end you might still need to add some further filtering to the incoming and outgoing lines. And you really need to be extremely careful with these things, because a lot of audio equipment is astonishingly sensitive, sonically, to any of this high-frequency noise circulating around power cables, speaker cables, and interconnects."

So, feeding one radio transmitter from the output of another is tricky. Who would have thought?

Little wonder in such systems turntables sound indistinguishable from digital sources. Maybe even more "digital" 🙂

 

[Logon]

So, feeding one radio transmitter from the output of another is tricky. Who would have thought?

Little wonder in such systems turntables sound indistinguishable from digital sources. Maybe even more "digital" 🙂

Hi, it's not the first time you've done this, and I don't really know why and I don't really know who you really are, but your comments are often even too ironic for my taste. 🙂

Furthermore, I really don't know if you're even an electrical engineer, but if I were you I'd be a little more cautious in comparing yourself to the greatness of Bruno Putzeys, in my view. 😉

Just sayin'...


P. S.: Just for your information, the interview to Bruno Putzeys that I linked (and that you surely haven't even read) is from 2014.

 

[Logon]

Well, maybe that explains this very brittle, thin, choked kind of sound that is typically associated with negative feedback. Maybe the real cause isn’t there being too much feedback at low frequencies, but too little at high frequencies."

Yet, nfb free amps sound anything but "brittle, thin, choked" at high frequencies.

Hi, In order to avoid confusion, please note that the statement you quoted has been clearly reported by @Bryguy as a quote from Bruno Putzeys' interview taken from the link I posted before.

https://www.soundstageultra.com/ind...s-of-mola-mola-hypex-and-grimm-audio-part-one

Obviously simplifying, exaggerating and taking any concept out of its context I don't think leads to any correct conclusion.

The statement should be inserted in its right context which is (along with much else) the following and in the following article:

"PR: It’s interesting that you’ve now talked twice about zero-feedback class-D amplifiers. I’ve read -- without fully understanding more than a fraction of -- your article on negative feedback, published in Linear Audio magazine. What I took away from the paper is that you either use zero negative feedback and make the best circuit you possibly can, or you otherwise use a whole lot of feedback and take full advantage of the theoretical maximum. Also, I think you made the point that the feedback itself is just one tool in the toolbox, and that to maximize the overall result, you have to start with a fundamentally sound circuit design. Did I get it right?


BP: It’s a correct statement, but that was not the emphasis I wanted to get across. The article, just so people can find it, is called “The F-word.” The subtitle was added later on: “or, why there is no such thing as too much feedback.” Maybe I should step back and explain how it was I got into that direction, which was around the time when I started designing UcD. As I’ve said, the management was quite happy to have me go wild on very out-there, blue-sky schemes. But they did ask me to design something sweet and simple that could see them through while I was doing the more crazy stuff, something they could drop into whatever application that they had for linear amplifiers.

I then remembered that, a couple years before, I had a vision in my head of a power stage that was switching, and of the way that the output filter would swing in response to the switching and then couple back into some other circuitry. The output filter was actually a part of the bit that makes the amplifier oscillate and modulate. And I also had begun to form the suspicion that the sound of feedback has nothing really to do with the fact that there is feedback, but with the fact that, usually, the amount of feedback you get (called the loop gain, technically) typically decreases as you increase in frequency. So an amplifier with a massive amount of feedback at bass frequencies might actually have quite little at high frequencies, because that’s where it gets difficult. What you get is high frequencies that are much more distorted than the low frequencies. Well, maybe that explains this very brittle, thin, choked kind of sound that is typically associated with negative feedback. Maybe the real cause isn’t there being too much feedback at low frequencies, but too little at high frequencies.

So, as I was starting work on UcD, I thought to have a secondary goal, a private one, of trying to build a circuit which has a substantial amount of feedback that is constant all across the audioband, just to see how that hypothesis pans out once I listen. If it hadn’t worked, if it had turned out that it sounded so-so, then it would still be OK, as they would have something to use in those shitty black boxes. But if it did turn out right, then I would have made headway into high-quality class-D, and more importantly, I would have understood more about technical performance and sonics.

And it actually worked".

https://www.soundstageultra.com/ind...s-of-mola-mola-hypex-and-grimm-audio-part-one

How much easier and simpler is life when one sticks to large linear power supplies feeding large, linear class A amps.

It's just a point of view, I don't know what use this is in a thread like this.

However, my understanding is that comparing hi-end class A amplifiers with hi-end class D amplifiers only from SQ point of view is just a choice to identify a "sonic" topic.
And "neutrality" and "a wire with gain" seem the most conclusions.

In my view, no other type of comparison can be correctly made regarding built, weight, size, costs in money, energy consumption, power output, heat dissipation, expected lifespan, et cetera, et cetera.

 

[Bryguy]

Sorry if I caused any confusion. Wasn't trying to make a point. Just marked a spot where I learned something new. I see how that might raise some eyebrows for folks who don't also read the articles

 

[Logon]

Sorry if I caused any confusion

No, you didn't cause any confusion.
Whoever quoted your quoting in your comment did so.
Involuntarily, of course.

 

[Flaxxer]

Wow ... one day away, and interesting!

I've had two GanFet amps, two Purifi Et400 amps, one Hypex 500, and an Ice Power amp in my system. Oh, and a pair of extremely modified (upgraded) amps from a manufacturer... I'm trying to recall the company. I'll remember todsy, sometime and update. Red Dragon, or Red Rose Audio?

The only way comparisons have been done, is back to back with existing amplifiers. Three amplifiers have been used in comparisons. A Parasound JC-1, a Kinki EX-M7, and my BEL amplifiers.
The Kinki is definitely colored. Sounds like a good tube amp. The JC-1 is an amp that I consider good. The BELs are in another league entirely.

It really is this simple ... one person swaps the cables, everyone else listens. It wasn't difficult. Class D amps immediately lose "something" in realism ... which everyone heard and commented on. This was at a particular get together.
But this is only one time of comparing. This is a consistent in my personal experiences.

But a very late phone call set me a bit straight. A buddy who forgot that I live in Cali now, and not DC, lol. So at 11:20 last evening, I awoke and talked. He had seen my posting here. This thread, and called to remind me of something...

He simply asked me this: Since Dick passed away 15 years ago and BEL went away, how many people have contacted you about what to replace them with? And how easy was it to replace?
And that really brings it down to earth.

BEL amplifier owners have had raw hell since BEL went away. Here's why: Finding ANY amplifier to replace them is extremely difficult! Regardless of the amp Class. The BEL is simply that good. Which is why TAS magazine kept one on a shelf for 20+ years as a reference.
(Maybe they still do. I wouldn't know anymore).
But the few people who replaced BEL that didn't feel they were stepping backwards too much, replaced them with stupid expensive gear... think Rowland, Levinson, Ayre.

Scott's point was: Replacing BEL with anything has always been difficult for everybody that's done it.

I LOVE the thought if Class D!!! I like the smaller size, the high efficiency, and the available power. I would love to make the move. Maybe the newer Nilai will satisfy my desires. I haven't heard it yet.

 

[Logon]

I would love to make the move. Maybe the newer Nilai will satisfy my desires.

I really hope so for you, but before listening to them, make sure they have been implemented to the best of their ability in a spacious case. 😉

 

[Bryguy]

Maybe the newer Nilai will satisfy my desires. I haven't heard it yet.

I have an NC252MP amp as well as Nilai. I should do a comparison subjectively sometime. I'd be surprised if the difference was big. I'm curious. Have you had any super neutral amps in your system other than class D? Benchmark AHB2 comes to mind. Would be interested to hear your take on them if so.

Very surprised to hear you weren't able to get that imaging effect you described on class d. That has not been my experience, even with lower end stuff like icepower

Dang you've got some nice stuff! I say you should check out AGD, or some more "HiFi" oriented class d. Maybe Mola Mola. Based on the interview Logon shared, the guy behind a lot of the tech in Hypex and Purifi stuff designs everything to be as accurate as possible, and that by default sounds the best in his opinion. That doesn't seem to be the design philosophy behind some of the stuff you've compared class d to. It might be for others though. I'm not familiar with BEL for example

 

[Flaxxer]

I really hope so for you, but before listening to them, make sure they have been implemented to the best of their ability in a spacious case. 😉

I will most likely build a case, or maybe use this one... of course, I'll need to use a solid copper sheet for the floor.