Hi,
The board is a demo board. I was just at Intersil as an FAE and ordered it. It took Palm Bay 6 weeks to ship it. There are four versions of the board and they shipped the wrong one. Doh!
D2 is closed loop. There are 5 different D2 chips with variations. DAE-1 os older, DAE-3 is newer and DAE-6 is the newest fully flexible part. You can put processing blocks in any order. DAE-4 is new, but has a fixed signal path, an integrated power stage, and you can tweak parameters on all the blocks. IPS is an integrated power stage good for 10 or 20 watts depending on load and if you bridge it. The variations are licensed options for Dolby, DTS or Mark Levinson's Mighty Cat.
I have it up and running and it sounds great. I have four single ended amps into each of the 8 ohm speakers for a total of 30 big watts! With the bass enhancement it beats your head pretty well. My plan is to build discrete power stages with ISL2111 drivers and MOSFETs. Phihong has a 1KW 57V power supply at Digi-Key for $400 which is fine for prototype and early production.
I bought the guitar second hand. I figured it would be good enough to learn on. LOL. I was working at Gallien Krueger designing bass amps and a friend called from Guitar Showcase and said if I wanted a stupid deal, get in the car and come now, not after work. Whoever sold it didn't even put it on consignment, he sold it directly to the store and probably got less than $1000 for it. As far as test driving one, let me know what city you're in and I'll find out from Mica at Alembic where a dealer is. My hope is to sell the amp through Alembic, so they can afford to hire me
Best regards,
Marshall