It was with great anticipation that I entered the AXPONA venue in the Chicago, IL, suburbs for the first time in three years. Would it be as exciting and illuminating as the Before Times? I needn’t have worried. Everyone, whether dealer, manufacturer, or attendee, was as stoked as I to be at an in-person gathering. After all, the whole point of a hi-fi show is to hear the differences that each system brings. Zoom simply cannot convey that nuance.

At AXPONA 2019, there was one. Now there are at least four and I predict that, no surprise, the number of manufacturers using Gallium Nitride field-effect transistor (GaNFET) output devices will grow rapidly over time. At this year’s show, both hollow-state stalwart Atma-Sphere and digital dynamo Mytek were demoing GaN-based prototype amplifiers to very good effect. As I’ll mention again in my full show coverage, the Mytek room’s combination of an Empire streamer feeding pre-production but still attractive GaN FET Empire Monoblocks via Transparent Audio cabling coaxed the best sound I’ve heard from the, to me, rather uninviting and quite spendy Wilson Sasha speakers.

Michal Jurewicz, Mytek’s founder and CTO, began strategic work on Class D amplifiers several years ago when they made their first Brooklyn AMP, followed by the improved Brooklyn AMP+. Jurewicz says that Class D circuits are similar in both architecture and design challenges to their core expertise of DACs and ADCs. Their new generation of GaNFET-based amplifier is about 20 times faster than the fastest silicon MOSFET transistors used in prior Class D designs. “In Class D amp topology, an ideal output of perfectly square waves will result in 0% distortion with a transfer characteristic that is a straight line, unlike elliptical curves for Class A/B. The main problem with Class D to date was that slow switching MOSFETs corrupted the square waveform, (which) directly translates into ugly distortion, especially for low level signals where there is an effect similar to 16-bit truncation resulting in a disappearing or flat sound stage. All the low resolution signals, rather than being buried in distortion, are now audible, resulting in a detailed and realistic soundstage with a hint of ‘tube sound’ because of the straight line characteristic of the amp."

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This article is an exclusive inside account of Composite Sound's efforts for the loudspeaker industry, detailing the company's journey that led to the extensive use of TPCDs for loudspeaker applications and the company's second-generation Metamodal technology. The recently created company is a spin-off from Oxeon, the Swedish manufacturer of the TeXtreme brand of advanced carbon reinforcements now successfully used in multiple industries. Composite Sound Metamodal introduces a new engineering approach that allows designing loudspeakers tailored for an intended purpose, realizing a physical representation of a TPCD computer-simulated model that is only achievable through the company's unique proprietary production process. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, February 2022.  Read the Full Article Now Available Here