Solid State Power Amp Reviews

"Oh goody!" thought self, to self: "Another Gryphon component to review." As eloquent and revelatory as that statement may be, there's an even more illuminating backstory.

I had been aware of Denmark-based Gryphon Audio since the advent of the Gryphon Exorcist, a now-discontinued demagnetizer that cost far more than your average break-in CD, but I only began to encounter Gryphon electronics at audio shows a few years ago. While at first they seemed available for review only as a complete package, Jim Austin was able to arrange for me to review the Gryphon Ethos CD player–D/A processor ($39,000).

As much as I admire Belgian amplifier designer Bruno Putzeys's accomplishments, I have harbored some misgivings about class-D amplifier sound. I do not believe it represents the future of perfectionist audio. Despite the fact that today's active loudspeakers depend entirely on class-D's free horsepower, light weight, and low-temperature operation, I think it sounds vacant compared to class-A.

If I've read it once in mainstream audio magazines, I've read it a hundred times: "The most important component in a system is the loudspeaker, because it is the loudspeaker that makes the sound." Putting aside the obvious illogic of this statement—that without other components in the playback chain, even the perfect loudspeaker can't make a sound—my experience is that it just is not so. Yes, it is true that changing from one loudspeaker to another makes the greatest overt changes in a system's sound.

The Aleph Null, or 0, represents Nelson Pass's maiden product under the Pass Laboratories banner. When he left Threshold several years ago, Pass had the luxury of starting over with a clean slate, and decided immediately that he wanted to design a single-ended MOSFET amp. The result is aptly named after Georg Cantor's first transfinite number: Aleph Null, the gateway to higher-order infinities. Just as Cantor's transfinite mathematics stretched minds with its novel conceptual view of the infinite, the Pass Aleph 0 tantalizes the imagination with a new dimension in the future of solid-state amplification: a single-ended output stage.

Soon after I took over preparing Stereophile's biannual Recommended Components listing from the magazine's founder, J. Gordon Holt, in 1986, I ran into a problem. With so many products listed, the magazine was running out of the necessary pages to include them all. To solve this problem, I looked at how long a typical product remained on the market before being updated or replaced. The answer was 3–4 years. I therefore implemented a policy that unless one of the magazine's editors or reviewers had continued experience with a product, it would be dropped from Recommended Components after three years.

Classé Audio's DR-3 once again brings to the fore the issues of class-A vs class-AB, weighty vs small and efficient, and brute-force expensive vs clever and inexpensive.

A well-worn, if unproven, audiophile rule of thumb says that a small, quick amplifier will sound better than a very powerful one. Among low-powered amps, those that operate in "pure" class-A are thought to be sonically superior. Pure class-A means the amplifier must run a constant high bias (more than one ampere), so the output devices never turn off.

My writing desk looks out over a large garden with chickens, bees, and feral cats. My chair sits only six feet from loudspeakers, playing softly on my left. Between the speakers sits whatever painting I am working on. That painting hangs no more than 10 feet from the oscilloscope and drill press in my kitchen. Best of all, my desk is only six feet from squadrons of ravenous sparrows attacking the suet cage on the fence outside my window.