Class D amp and integrated recommendations

[C Hart]

found the older Aiymia A80 to be a mediocre DAC—very generic-sounding

ASR found the DAC to be transparent, i.e. introduced no artifacts or distortion of any kind. What were you hearing there? I haven't heard anything bad from this amp on any of the inputs I've tried.

The Bluetooth is extremely well behaved and the sound is great to my ears, but the highest res codec it supports is Apt-X HD. It does not support LDAC, which is pretty typical. I can't hear the difference very easily so it's not a big deal to me.

 

[59volvo]

try one of these: Crown XLS 1502

 

[kyle]

try one of these: Crown XLS 1502

It might be better to get an amp that doesn't run the the signal through a DAC for processing then through an ADC to the amp section. It may not make a difference but then again, it may, depending on the rest of the system. I think the XLS amps are pretty good for sub use with the built-in cross over.

 

[BOSEblows115]

ASR found the DAC to be transparent, i.e. introduced no artifacts or distortion of any kind. What were you hearing there? I haven't heard anything bad from this amp on any of the inputs I've tried.

The Bluetooth is extremely well behaved and the sound is great to my ears, but the highest res codec it supports is Apt-X HD. It does not support LDAC, which is pretty typical. I can't hear the difference very easily so it's not a big deal to me.

yeah the Bluetooth is phenomenal not even indistinguishable.
but when I would listen use optical on my CD player(source) and power a pair of Altec Lansing 83 (Spartomatic era) speakers. the aiyimia amp wouldn't warm up by the end of the album and tire out and it only felt as dynamic as it had to be. the A80 aiyimia sounds like lazy like if it was a "father"
It would turn to heavy alcoholic drinking instead of spending any quality time with his family. Unless he's forced to but you know it's only a matter of time before he ruins the atmosphere
(sonically of coarse)

 

[BOSEblows115]

yeah the Bluetooth is phenomenal not even indistinguishable.
but when I would listen use optical on my CD player(source) and power a pair of Altec Lansing 83 (Spartomatic era) speakers. the aiyimia amp wouldn't warm up by the end of the album and tire out and it only felt as dynamic as it had to be. the A80 aiyimia sounds like lazy like if it was a "father"
It would turn to heavy alcoholic drinking instead of spending any quality time with his family. Unless he's forced to but you know it's only a matter of time before he ruins the atmosphere
(sonically of coarse)

Maybe the chip was intended to be used primarily with 24bit/192khz lossless audio streams via the USB and that's why media thats only 44.1/16bit sound empty ?

 

[C Hart]

@BOSEblows115 hmm I don't think so. This is just my gut reaction but I suspect a playback codec or source encoding anomaly, the CD player DAC, or even mastering decisions by the CD recording engineer. Many CDs are poor mixes in my experience.

One way to check is a constant volume A/B comparison of a CD vs. a self-ripped lossless file of the same CD. (Streaming can have EQ that is different from the raw CD. Sometimes it is an improvement, but sometimes a mess.)

16bit/44.1khz is extremely accurate in the range of recording for CDs and human hearing, 24bit/192khz is accurate beyond the range of hearing. So, while many on AK assert it's audible, assuming a quality codec and conversion, testing shows it should be very difficult or impossible to distinguish between the two. If your CD player has digital output you can use optical or coax into the amp to further isolate the anomaly.

The Aiyima is a high performance amp and the only issue based on tests I've seen is a small bump above 10kHz, and that is at the amp output stage and independent of the source. There is not much music up there, and lots of us can barely hear those frequencies anyway.

And sorry to be late with this but just noticed you're a "New Member". Welcome to AK!