Channel Islands Audio Setup

Inspiribomb

Enjoy the journey
In my quest to find my new system, I have been highly intrigued by these newer Class D amps (does not mean digital, but switching power supply). They run cool, have a very transparent sound, low distortion, and are supposed to sound great. Of all the manufacturers, I have really looked into Bel Canto, Nuforce and Channel Islands.

Nuforce is very nice and supposed to be one of the nicest setups you can get, but it would run me upwards of $5K to get set up with them. Bel Canto I've also read good things about, but again looking at a large sum of coin to get setup. With Channel Islands, I can get setup with their D-200 monoblocks (200 watts RMS into 8 ohms, 325 into 4) and their PLC-1 passive preamp (with remote!) for just over $3000. Their gear is pretty well regarded, has won many awards, and is designed by a guy formerly of Audio Alchemy.

Does anybody else have experience with CIAudio, or any of these other brands for that matter?
 
Well, we now know why you're selling off gear! ;) :thmbsp:

Scott
 
Guilty as charged...

PLC_D200.jpg
 
I've owned Monolithic Sound's PS-2 phono preamp and optional external power supply for a couple of years. Great stuff. Monolithic is the sister brand of CI Audio. Note the family resemblance.
comp_.JPG
 
Last edited:
Where did you hear about these new amps he is building??? I've only read about them on Audio Circle. Ahhh, the D-400. They are 400 watt monoblocks. I'm sure the Classic 3's wouldn't mind one bit. Actually, at $4000-5000, I'd rather have four of the D-200's and use two for the subs, and two for the mains.
 
Does anybody else have experience with CIAudio, or any of these other brands for that matter?

I know one of the prinicipals, Dusty Vawter. His background was one of the engineers for Audio Alchemy if anyone remembers them. He has also had an association with Monolithic, a high-end car audio amplifier company from days past. I think one of the principals of Monolithic has an association with CIAudio. They are the real deal.
 
In my quest to find my new system, I have been highly intrigued by these newer Class D amps (does not mean digital, but switching power supply). They run cool, have a very transparent sound, low distortion, and are supposed to sound great. Of all the manufacturers, I have really looked into Bel Canto, Nuforce and Channel Islands.

Nuforce is very nice and supposed to be one of the nicest setups you can get, but it would run me upwards of $5K to get set up with them. Bel Canto I've also read good things about, but again looking at a large sum of coin to get setup. With Channel Islands, I can get setup with their D-200 monoblocks (200 watts RMS into 8 ohms, 325 into 4) and their PLC-1 passive preamp (with remote!) for just over $3000. Their gear is pretty well regarded, has won many awards, and is designed by a guy formerly of Audio Alchemy.

Does anybody else have experience with CIAudio, or any of these other brands for that matter?

Hi,

First post here, maybe I can help you out a little.

Class D does not mean digital (correct), but it also does not mean switching power supply. Like any other amp, they may or may not have a switching supply. Many of them use standard unregulated RAW DC supplies, for now.

Of the ones you mentioned, I believe the only one that does actually feature a SMPS is the Nuforce. About the Nuforce, it isn't even market worthy. Avoid it all costs.

Why? Well, it has nothing to do with the fact that it's got a SMPS. It has to do with the fact that they really are unable to design or implement decent low noise power switching circuits, they spew forth EMI like crazy. You'll be lucky if the FCC doesnt' come knocking on your door just for plugging one in, and it doesn't matter what version or revision, it's the same for all of them.

Bel Canto I believe uses IcePower technology. Those amplifiers (the stuff inside the black box) were actually not designed for audio, but for motor drivers. So what? They lack the characteristics of a good amplifier, like a flat load independant frequency response, or frequency independant THD. However, I don't believe them to be known for poor EMI like the nuforce, so it is likely preferable over it.

Then we have the CIA stuff. Dusty didn't design what makes these things tick, he just packaged it. What he did do, was make a very wise choise as to what amplifier modules to use.

Inside that amp you'll find Hypex UCD modules. Look them up. Designed from start to finish to be a high end audio amplifier. The actual inventor of which, is one of the very few true masters of the trade. Those amps are so low in EMI that you can pack several of them side by side to no ill effect, while a nuforce for instance, spews forth such filth in EMI that it will blank out radio reception anywhere in the room, if not half way down the block. So you don't listen to the radio? That's OK, that kind of noise permeates everywhere, including right back into the input, even into the source, you get to hear it on your speakers over the audio, yeap, that's your "amp of the year"..nufarce. incidentally, many of the "happer users" of the nuforce amp posting rave reviews all over the internet, were done by nufarce themselves.

CIA is really your only choice here, and one you likely would not regret.

Perhaps another option you don't know about is a very new offering from Bryston. It's one of the latest in their "zone amplifier" category. It too uses Hypex UCD modules, though a slightly different OEM version, very high end as well. It's Multi channel and has some neat features. Sorry I don't know the price of it, but you may want to look it up. Of course, they have their 20 year warranty to back it (I think).

The very nature of class d means a highly volatile environment for low noise audio circuits, as such it takes a very deep level of understanding spanning a very wide variety of what's considered specialty fields in electronics, where very few are capable of producing anything of worth. This is why guys like CIA and Bryston get their solutions from the few people who can do the job right. On the other hand, there is no shortage of pretenders! So if you truly appreciate good audio and want to be a part of la revolution, stick with "Hypex inside", and by people who really know what they're doing with it. Seriously, there are no equals for the kind of quality Hypex produces, nobody else is even in the running.

Well that's not exactly true, you could look up Halcro, as I understand they are rather competent as well, but just look at the cost, they've priced themselves out of a market.

Cheers,
Chris
 
Hey Chris, Welcome to AK!


Interesting reading your thoughts in the subject. The Nuforce amps seem to be showing up for sale (used) in pretty strong numbers. I have read some of the same regarding the EMI issues with their products.



Yea Aaron,
I think you had better check out Halcro also, Just bring all your credit cards and promised first born :D

RC
 
Either 1) NuForce recently fired you, B) you work for Hypex, or III) you've lived with these products long enough to draw solid conclusions.

Which is it?

Welcome to AK.
 
Oh - Dragnet!!

:thmbsp:

Yes - I can relate to that.

Aaron - good luck with the CI. I read the reviews in S'phile and really like the idea.
 
Chris, I sincerely appreciate the response. Nuforce, IMO, is extremely overpriced. They package their stuff nicely, though. I thought it was RF interference that they spewed out? Looks like I'll be going with CIA, you only confirmed what I was leaning towards.

Thanks again man, I owe you one :thmbsp:
 
Hey Chris, Welcome to AK!


Interesting reading your thoughts in the subject. The Nuforce amps seem to be showing up for sale (used) in pretty strong numbers. I have read some of the same regarding the EMI issues with their products.

Yea Aaron,
I think you had better check out Halcro also, Just bring all your credit cards and promised first born :D

RC

Hi and thanks. Yes they have and are, and you know why, severe buyers remorse.

What happens is that a few nuts who don't mind risking being crucified for saying what's what eventually get the word out and sales drop. Suddenly a new special edition revision is released along with a whole new slew of marketing; patents, reviews and awards to lend it authenticity. Wonder why they cost so much.

To me these revisions of theirs are like putting a bandaid on your ankles because your knees are bleeding so you don't step in it too soon, keep changing the bandaid and it's business as usual.

If you spot one in the trash bin and your beer fridge is right off balance, do what you have to do, otherwise, avoid at all cost.

Their PCB layout is used in industry as a perfect example of what not to do. Bandaid after bandaid it stays the same. If it ever got spelled out any more clearly for them, they'd be handed a complete design.

Either 1) NuForce recently fired you, B) you work for Hypex, or III) you've lived with these products long enough to draw solid conclusions.

Which is it?

Welcome to AK.

1) heh. :nono:

B) :scratch2: :no:

III) :thmbsp:

More like I'm well versed on the subject matter.

Thanks

Chris, I sincerely appreciate the response. Nuforce, IMO, is extremely overpriced. They package their stuff nicely, though. I thought it was RF interference that they spewed out? Looks like I'll be going with CIA, you only confirmed what I was leaning towards.

Thanks again man, I owe you one

One day I will call upon you for a favor..

I don't know if I'd say they're insanely priced, if they worked as promissed it would be half reasonable, as it stands they aren't worth the cost of the parts they're made with.

Want to see overpriced? Halcro. They seriously know their craft, but I think their sole gimmick is their pricing which puts it into a very exclusive category of crazies. Good for them!

As far as nuforce being packaged nicely, if someone wanted to serve me a big sloppy brown one on a plate for breakfast, they damned well better put some sprinkles on it!

EMI and RFI are often found mentioned as "EMI/RFI"... they are in effect the same monster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_interference

"EMI can be induced intentionally for radio jamming, as in some forms of electronic warfare, or unintentionally, as a result of spurious emissions and responses, intermodulation products, and the like. It frequently affects the reception of AM radio in urban areas. It can also affect cell phone, FM radio and television reception, although to a lesser extent."

It's quite illegal to engage in such "warfare". That kind of thing can't co-exist with a low noise amplifier, it will infect itself, and the source that feeds it. Nufarce are not alone in producing junk like this, it's extremely common because in order to tame EMI in this kind of thing you need a very deep level of understanding that few have.

In contrast UCD modules are perfected to such an extent that they emitt no more EMI than ambient levels. This is exactly what puts them in a class of their own and is a testament to their solide engineering. There is just no way that anything less can pretend to be a high end, low noise amplifier.

Something like a nufarce on efficient speakers would sound like a Harrier hovering over your head from across the room, and you know what you do with that right? "Its' a great amp but I think I just like my tube amp better so I'm just going to sell this one... its' been updated to special edition 45xyz.b5A, free of charge from nufarce...great guys, I'm letting it go for only 3 grand". On inefficient speakers it would still be annoying and physically tiring to endure for any length of time.

What you get out of UCD with no input signal and proper wiring is nothing more than absolute dead silence even on the most efficient speakers, and mine are 102dB. Short the inputs to ground and glue your ear to the tweeter, you'll be wondering if it's even powered up.

Anyway I hope you enjoy your new amps when you get them. At least you'll know they are the best option, and by no small margin. I think you'll get your money's worth.

Cheers
 
:D

Glad to see you have a sense of humor!

Makes me wonder about the AudioSource tripath found on Ebay recently - not saleable due to not passing FCC requirements.
 
:D

Glad to see you have a sense of humor!

Makes me wonder about the AudioSource tripath found on Ebay recently - not saleable due to not passing FCC requirements.

Thanks.

I never heard of that one in particular, but if they were selling it on ebay because it wasn't sellable, hm, interesting twist.

You can't rely on the FCC stamp for proper EMC performance though. For example, Nuforce junk is FCC certified, supposedly. Though I wouldn't be shocked to find that TranH (inventor, ceo, and happiest customers) put his FCC hat on for a day while he printed the sticker himself..... he's wacky that way.

I'm guessing there are just no rules that what gets tested is anything like what ends up hitting the market, bait and switch thing with no random tests of production models later on down the line. Once you win the stamp you're homefree.
 
Thanks again for the input, helps me a lot. Do you have firsthand (first ear?) experience with any of these brands?
 
Good question. The answer is no, non whatsoever, so I'll tell ya how I draw such a conclusion. Some of this almost made it into other replies but I wanted to keep them short and to the point so... here it is now.

First I assume that we're all after the most accurate sound reproduction possible, not some euphonic garble that lays the same veil of effects over everything played, but actual, accurate re production.

One thing I can tell you is that bad class d amplifiers can sound amusing, for a short time! Having odd properties of being euphonic in odd ways. For example, like modulating the signal with RF noise giving you a perception of wider soundstage because in effect it's like adding some level of reverb ... creating it's own "ambience" which is not that of the recording..while the true ambient carrying micro detail is blurred out in the mess. That's an effect you can't turn off when you get sick of it.

Taking pre filter feedback with a peaky frequency response introducing gobs of second hardmonic distortion, and then "correcting" for that wicked peaking response with a bastard of a zobel network that starts to roll off at 10khz if not sooner leaving with you a rolled off high end, horrible group phase delay, but it wouldn't even be stable without it, stands every chance of taking out your speaker, and every chance of blowing up if the speaker cables get ripped out..... sound quality becomes a distant goal in the face of that, and more importantly, a distant memory. "but non of our customers complain..."


So to listen to them initially can be pleasing, because that kind of mess is "different", perhaps even to those with "trained ears", however the longer you endure them the more tired you become of it, physically, emotionally..draaaaaining. You'll eventually reach a point where you're so sick and tired of it that you can't bring yourself to turn it on again and then it's time for dumping it on ebay.

What was euphonic eventually manifests itself as serious flaws. How fast that happens will depend on your taste of music and the like. It may take hours, may take months, but eventually you're left to wonder why everything you play on it tends to sound the same, why the ambience you used to enjoy in your old favorites is somehow... not there? Why everything played has the same character, like listening to the same recording over and over. Once you get there... ah.. "I think I like my tube amp better so.. ".

Consider that if you do a little diggin, you'll find statements by nufarce saying such things like "we chose high EMI over some type of distortion.. it sounded better with high EMI", and then see above. I've been around this long enough to know who's who and what's what. Like you don't need experience behind the wheel to know that a town bus isn't going to beat an F1 in a race, subjectiveness aside, one has a clear technological advantage over the other and no level of marketing BS, awards, patents, reviews, changes that.

In order to get accurate sound, an amp has to have certain characteristics in order to be neutral and transparent. If you were to compare some of the very best high end amps out there, well regarded for excellent sound quality despite their class or compisition, you'd see they all share certain characteristics.

You don't get that when THD is strongly frequency dependant, that's heavy coloration, nor do you get that with a load dependant frequency response, far from transparent, nor do you get that with an amp that doesn't even have a flat frequency response across the audio band, especially when combined with the above two frequency dependant characteristics. This is largely what rules out the others, even before EMI becomes a factor with them.

BTW I made a mistake, some IcePower modules do actually have SMPS as well, much of their newer line includes a smps, but I don't know which ones the bell canto uses, it may or may not have them. The thing with Icepower stuff is that back in the day loooong ago when they first came to pass, they were cutting edge revolutionary, and then they got outdone right quick, and never stepped up to the plate with a real amp. As recent as last summer, they "updated" their line (sprinkles)... and it still shows all the same poor characteristics because the core of their design (modulator) remains unchanged.

Then there's the whole EMI thing, which completely rules out the one, and is a slight thorn in the other, but no where near as bad. The only one that meets every criteria is the UCD based amplifier. That is why I can recommend the CIA of the three, without ever having heard any of them.

As an example of this, I'll link you to an article from an italien magazin that did extensive testing on a variety of such amplifiers, including nufarce, one that contains the IcePower motor drivers (rotel), flying mole, Tripath based Sonic Impact (see what a joke that is.. bbbrrrrr), a high end class A/B amp with the correct characteristics for high end accurate sound reproduction (the other rotel), and a Hypex UCD.

You don't even need to understand the language (I don't), just study the graphs very carefully. You'll see they even included a really good comparison of them all with a variety of real world speaker loads. Even a quick glance at page 6 should make this all painfully obvious who the pretenders are and who's the real deal. If they all shared proper characteristics, theeen maybe we could get into the subjective discussion side of things, but as it stands, there's no point in that whatsoever.

http://www.hypex.nl/docs/classeD_394_lores.pdf

Having said that:

I do not vouche for the CIA monoblock sound quality (subjectively), nor can I comment on it (never heard them myself), merely the underlaying technology within, that I am extremely familiar with in every respect.

The earlier UCD modules like CIA uses had a few areas that needed massaging in order to unlock their full potential in sound quality. Hypex told everyone what those areas were, but the final, subjective result, would be a product of the guys skill, experience and preferences doing the work.

Whatever Dusty did with those amps, unless he screwed them up royally and I doubt he'd gone and done that, they will behave with all the characteristics of a proper amplifier because it is intrinsic to their very design topology, because as I said before, they were designed to be high end amps from the ground up.

So the little things like choice of caps (subjective to a large degree), op amp, resistors in feedback path, input stage regulation, etc, are all that it comes down to. It can still make a drastic difference. That's why I can't at all comment on the sound itself of the CIA stuff. If you trust Dusty's experience and reputation you shouldn't have a thing to worry about. Consider that your risk factor, but I can and do assure you that the underlaying technology is the real deal, robust as all hell, risk free, and with all the right characteristics that make up an accurate, high end amplifier, that your other choices lack entirely.

I do have extensive first hand and ear experience with those modules, even having designed my own. I've owned 180ST's, 400AD's, modified the hell out of both of them, now using 400HG (absurd sound quality, needs no modifying), 700's that are collecting dust until I design a proper SMPS for them, my homebrew ~35 watt UCD amp wired in point to point, designed by me with a few tips from the inventor, based off the patent, copied by all. I did that without even owning a scope, (retarded, desperate), and a big box of junk parts, and it works great, but obviously doens't meet low EMI criteria. It was done for learning though, not the best sound ever, and well, cuz I'm poor, and wanted a good amp.

All my UCD modules that I didn't design myself were free samples except for the 700 which was a gift from someone that let it sit in their drawer for a year and decided it was too big a project. I run them off an unregulated RAW DC supply of my own making that is extremely high end, but just in stereo to keep costs down.

I have most of all the parts here I need to turn my 400HG's into monoblocks though, just need to gather some odds and ends.

I also own a newclassd amp hand assembled prototype, sent to me for evaluating (also free), which is a complete joke as per the first few paragraphs in this reply, and emulates a jet engine extremely well, when it's not slamming my speakers with 40Vdc+ because something went wrong or .. just its extremely poor transient response at power up.

I can turn my radio on from across the room and tell you exactly what the switching frequency is by tuning into the noise on it and listening to the amp hunt for steady state, that it never seems to reach. Put two abortions like that side by side and the heterodyning/beat frequencies between them will be such that while listening to audio, you'll swear there's a flock of birds chirping at your window.

Just to say if you think free samples might sway my opinion, secure my friendship or loyalty.... nope!! Newclassd doesn't give me samples anymore, for which I am most grateful. I only have respect for good engineering, and good people who aren't con artists. I can, have, and will continue to cut the nuts off anything else, simply by conveying the truth about it.

So that's it, in a nutshell. You know where I come from and why I say what I say. You have all the info you need to make an educated purchase with the least risk of wasting your money on pure garbage. If your subjective ear doesn't meet with Dusty's, (which is a risk you have with any of the amps anyway, except for nufarce which lets you return them within a month..[not really long enough to grow weary of the euphonic RF modulating noise]..) and you don't tremble at the sight of a soldering iron or SMD components, you might even email me for the odd tip, but I wouldn't jump into that boat too quickly.

Cheers,
Chris
 
Don't know a lot about CIA but at first glance they kinda resemble the old Carver cube amps.Any relation?
 
Back
Top Bottom