Vitus Audio RS-100 Stereo Power Amplifier

Depth. That’s what you get with a good A/B amp that you just can’t quite touch with even the most excellent Class D.

Sorry, it’s the truth. Most Class A/B amps on most loads at most volumes stay in Class A anyway, and there’s no contest.

Sure, you can optimize the path of the power to your Class D monoblocks, use isolation bases to minimize vibration, place Shakti Stones or other EMI/RFI filters over the PCBs, put on your voodoo suit and hail the demon gods of audio to deliver Nirvana.

Or you can plug in a high quality A/B amp and never look back.

That pesky switching frequency and the usual harmonics of Class D just end up getting in the way of the sheer magic that is possible with the world’s best A/Bs.

Even if you eliminate the upper harmonics and create a harmonic structure similar to tube amps, as PS Audio does with the Stellar S300 amplifier I use for testing, you can’t quite match the subtle details an A/B brings that make up perceived depth in a soundstage representation.

Amp designers will say most tube amps offer more positive and negative second order harmonic distortion — low order as opposed to the high order of Class Ds. Sense of depth is connected to a touch of second order, but that’s not the whole story.

Signal purity, phase correctness, wide bandwidth at full power — these are other hallmarks of an amp that will expand the sound to the back walls and beyond.

I place this amp from Vitus into the same rare waters as the best Constellation Audio amps, the Aesthetix Atlas, the BHK from PS Audio, and the Ayre V-5xe.

Congrats to the lucky duck who snaps this one up!