Which is more efficient class gh or class d

[cleansoundzz 10+ year member]

Which is more efficient at 1/3, 1/4, 1/2, & 2/3 of power when used in a ca audio setting, class D or class G/H? I hear that class G is more linear across the board.

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[Kangaroux 5,000+ posts]

What amps are you referring to?

 

[winkychevelle 10+ year member]

class d is almost always more efficient but the sq suffers to some point, class a/b on the other hand generally power hungry but the most accurate in reproduction, class g/h in the arc audios and re-badged arcs and the class n in mtx amp are designed to be the middle ground.

but with new technologies class d amps are super efficient and are nearing class a/b's ability at accurate reproduction

 

[CrossFired 10+ year member]

I'm running a class D with ICE technology, and it sounds every bit as clean as my past LinearPowers, Soundstreams and CrossFires, they were all class AB.

I still think class A has the best SQ, but there real hard to come by. I dont even know what class GH is.

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

I was looking into arcs g/h a while back. Linear power chimed in on the topic.

Class G/H has its issues, two main ones really.

1. There has to be a peak detect circuit to tell the amp when to change voltage rails, the problem with this is that there is no detection circuit with a high enough slew rate (speed) to swap voltage rails quick enough(it would have to be virtually instantanious) to respond to dynamic peak musical information so what happens is the peak musicical information gets clipped off before the amp can switch to the next voltage rail to supply the needed power to reproduce the dynamic peak.

2. As you approach the limits of the first voltage rail distortion increases, when it is swapped over to the next rail the distortion is lowered until you near the maximum of the next voltage rail and distortion starts to be increased again. This is almost always noticable and un-natural.

The idea of Class G/H was a good idea to increase the efficiency of a Class A/B amp but it does mess with the SQ of the amp, and that was the whole idea of staying with the Class A/B design was to still have better SQ than Class D. Class G/H is trying to minimize "power under the curve" by tracking rail voltage as close to the signal and not have as much wasted voltage not producing the music, as this extra voltage has to be dissapated as heat if not used to produce the audio signal.

There is a give and take, or compromise in electronics, you don't get something for free. The trade offs have to be analyzed and determine whether the gains out way the losses.

 

[cleansoundzz 10+ year member]

What amps are you referring to?

Alpine M 12 vs Arc Audio KS 1000.1

 

[cleansoundzz 10+ year member]

I was looking into arcs g/h a while back. Linear power chimed in on the topic.


Class G/H has its issues, two main ones really.

1. There has to be a peak detect circuit to tell the amp when to change voltage rails, the problem with this is that there is no detection circuit with a high enough slew rate (speed) to swap voltage rails quick enough(it would have to be virtually instantanious) to respond to dynamic peak musical information so what happens is the peak musicical information gets clipped off before the amp can switch to the next voltage rail to supply the needed power to reproduce the dynamic peak.

2. As you approach the limits of the first voltage rail distortion increases, when it is swapped over to the next rail the distortion is lowered until you near the maximum of the next voltage rail and distortion starts to be increased again. This is almost always noticable and un-natural.

The idea of Class G/H was a good idea to increase the efficiency of a Class A/B amp but it does mess with the SQ of the amp, and that was the whole idea of staying with the Class A/B design was to still have better SQ than Class D. Class G/H is trying to minimize "power under the curve" by tracking rail voltage as close to the signal and not have as much wasted voltage not producing the music, as this extra voltage has to be dissapated as heat if not used to produce the audio signal.

There is a give and take, or compromise in electronics, you don't get something for free. The trade offs have to be analyzed and determine whether the gains out way the losses.

This is good information.