The turnaround time was lightning fast, within one week. A new module was installed and the amplifier was bench tested and passed every test. The test page was included inside the box. Having it back in my system within a week from California to Ohio and back is nothing short of a miracle.

I have been in this hobby for as long as I can remember 40+ years now and I have run the gamut on audio gear from Class A Krell to BAT and ARC gears, both tube and solid state. I listen to records mainly and I own power hungry Magnepans. I’ve tried all the major brands and have loved many. But I have never been more engaged, more drawn to want to listen and constantly blown away by what this amplifier does with my all tube balanced front end for my music than any amplifier before it. I have never been more satisfied. That says a lot considering the massive amounts that have been spent over the years.

When I discovered Class D tech it was after going down the battery operated tripath road. I’ve literally done it all. I’ve had Ice Power, Class-D Audio’s Two channel balanced designs and their new Gallium Nitrade (Mini Gan5). To my ears the amp I chose, the VTV Hypex N-Core NC-502 beats them all. Although there are now much higher end and multi channel designs with various other buffer options offered by VTV, I have no desire to explore them. When was the last time you felt that way? For me it was once or twice over many years. But now it’s an everyday occurrence.

If your curiosity is piqued and you’ve been wanting to try one of these, you should pull the trigger and experience the magic for yourself. These are without a doubt the best bang for your buck in all of Audio.

Received my amp in 5 days from order. Chassis is classic, modern and clean. Sounds really nice with solid bass control and natural midrange, treble. Soundstage from the combo is very large and deep.

Everything is working fine. I opened up both cases before powering them up, just in case they were accidentally left at the 120V setting (they weren’t).
The build and assembly quality is excellent.

I ordered the standard binding posts and the VTV Buffer option with Sparkos discrete op amps.

The standard binding posts are not spaced for the standard banana plugs, but they have large holes for the insertion of thick, high quality cables. Once tightened, I think that the connections would have lower resistance than when using banana plugs. This keeps the damping factor high.

My speakers are a pair of custom designed (by me) 6 foot tall line sources with an array of 12 mid/woofer drivers next to a custom built tall ribbon line source in each. They are heavily acoustically damped and use a phase coherent electronic crossover that allows them to accurately reproduce square waves.

The sound is better with the VTV Purifi amps. The transients seem better, and I notice more ‘heft’ in the lower mids. To my ears, it wasn’t a day and night difference from my old ‘professional sound reinforcement’ power amps, but the difference is indeed noticeable and indeed an improvement.

Technically speaking, my guess is that the majority of the differences are probably due the the extremely high damping factor of the Purifi amps over the whole audio range. They simply control the speakers and ‘make them behave’ better.

As an engineer, I’m a fan of AB comparisons. Ideally, it would have been ideal to reasonably rapidly switch back and forth between the old and new amps several times while carefully listening for the differences.

But given the wiring and connector differences, easily and quickly switching back and forth between the old amps and the new VTV/Purifi amps was not practical.

So for now, I’m content to conclude that they do indeed sound better and leave them in place.

An additional positive difference is that my old power amps had fans which were somewhat audible. The VTV Purifi amps are completely quiet.

I wasn’t absolutely convinced that the VTV Buffer option with Sparkos discrete op amps is audibly superior. But the VTV Buffer option allows experimenting with different op amps in place of the Sparkos ones. I plan to experiment with this in the future.

But for now, I’m content to go through my sound library, including some recordings I’ve made myself, and enjoy the music.

All in all, a great purchase from VTV!

I’m not into all the audio poetry so I’ll spare anyone who reads this all that and come at it with a practical angle. Put simply – this amp is an incredible value in high end amplification. At the time I’m writing this, Warren sells this thing cheaper than I can source the components and do it myself. If you have the need, I’m confident one of Warren’s units will absolutely meet and likely exceed your expectations.

I’ve resisted the urge to experiment with the various buffer implementations because I wanted to live with the standard offering for a while first. At this time I don’t feel one is “settling” with the standard configuration. That said, it is a fantastic option that Warren will work with you to tune your amp to your preferred sonic presentation with the various buffer options. I bet the tube buffer would be fun to compare.

Buy with confidence and expect not only one of the best values but also one of the best examples of high end amplification available with today’s technology.

since i had to open up the amp to try out the array of input buffers warren sent me, i had plenty of time to look inside the chassis. it is a clean, sparse internal layout that is obviously high quality engineering work. i also set the gain jumper while in there to the higher gain setting.

one thing i did learn, which i didn’t appreciate at the outset, was how much a difference the input buffer makes. one option sounded bad to me, exactly the sort of sound class-D detractors describe. another sounded too rounded and lacked transparecny. another was pretty good and hard to fault. and the one i ended up with, i would challenge anyone to listen and tell me the difference between this and a class-A amplifier.

I have have had both the Hypex buffers and the VTV buffers with Sparkos SS3602 op amps. I don’t recommend the former: I heard some weird distortion during load passages with high-range instruments like brass, strings, and woodwinds. I took the VTV’s with Sparkos to remedy this. Accordingly I recommend only the latter, (or maybe the Purifi Eval but I haven’t heard myself).

However there is some downsides to the Purifi. If you like a “warm”, “organic” sound, forget the Purifi. Also the Purif is highly intolerant of overly-bright or otherwise not-so-great-sounding recordings. If you use a nice tube preamp it may mitigate these negative to a significant respect.

So in conclusion the Purifi offers SOTA sound in several major respects but it isn’t necessarily for everyone.

I tried all three op amps, and my experience is that they all require 25-50 hours break-in, so be prepared to run pink noise on them. You cannot understand them with a few hours listening per day for a week. They change their characteristics by becoming more mellow sounding but also more deep around 36 hours. My favorite is the Weiss, which has stunning accuracy and a powerful, musical sound. They come from the $25k Medeus DAC and are a steal at this price. I upgraded my studio cables to the Furutech DSS to be able to handle it. The middle of the road was the Sonic Labs. A good all around choice, very detailed still, but a bit dry. The Sparko is the least detailed, but has a relaxed sound for people on lesser cables or want a relaxing hi-fi experience.

I also went with Furutech pure copper binding posts over the WBT, but I heard both. Again, these take around 200 hrs to break in, like all Furutech/WBT products. The WBT are tubey, sweet and euphonic, and the Furutech are less sweet, but more accurate. The great thing about this amp is the transparency – you can really hear what changes in the signal path do like never before.

My only complaints are that the chassis puts the XLR under the posts, making a hard time for spade users. It would be nice to find a better chassis, maybe even one more compact as well, but its not a deal breaker. Thanks for the great amp. I highly recommend it!

I purchased my unity with the Sonic Imagery 990, but I’ve never heard any other opp. amp so I really can’t comment on its sonic signature other than it sounds great in my setups.

If you saddle this amplifier some sort of tubification, your speakers will take on a more analogue breath in both tone and timbre.

I’ve been waiting and testing Class D for a loooong time and finally believe that its arrived. Thank you BRUNO!

VTV’s customer service is fast and responsive. I asked several questions (some NOOBish) over the course of a year or so and they were patient, never selling me.

I ordered the unit on a Sunday morning and I was listening to it from Raleigh, NC on Wednesday afternoon. Smiling my ass off 😉