The good thing about these new kids on the block is that they are absolutely, absolutely silent when no music is playing. The cons are
I seriously doubt the output capacity. It just doesn't have the slam of a real commercial amp.
I have lived with some of these mighty midgets of the Class D world and I've found the performance of these amps to be admirable, especially the newer crop. Some of the Amps i'm currently running are: (1) SMSL DA9 (2) FX Audio D502 (3) SMSL DA8S (4) Aiyima T9 (5) Fosi Audio V3 (6) Aiyima A08 Pro.
I've compared these amps to some of my mainstream amps such as the (1) Willsenton R800i (2) Willsenton R8 [PSVane KT88 tubes] (3) Cambridge Audio CXA81, (4) Marantz PM6006, (5) Marantz SR6013.
Insofar as power output is concerned, the Willsenton R800i has 48W x 2 of Class A power (
the unboxing process nearly broke my back as the amp in itself weighs 45kgs without packaging) but cannot go as loud as the Fosi V3 and Aiyima A08 pro when powered by the 48V 5a brick i got from Fosi. However, while not bad by any stretch of imagination, the watts produced by these Class D amps lack the quality of higher priced designs as mentioned by
@amrutmhatre90.
What i believe is that the slam in commercial amps is often engineered into the sound by the designer to provide that extra oomph - something which has been done in the Aiyima T09 as opposed to the Aiyima A08 pro and Fosi V3.
Right out of the box, the two Aiyima A08 pro and Fosi V3 do sound a bit flat and lifeless but a bit of EQ magic can work wonders and get quite a bit of that "slam" back (i use the PEQ in the RME ADI- DAC FS).
Amir (drum roll to eye roll) from ASR did run some tests on these amps and verified output to match/better the claims with the requisite power bricks (32v, 36v 48v etc).
No. They are justing taking the TI Chip max specs for power output and printing that. The actual output all depends on the implementation of the AMP and not just on the chip. The chip has thermal protection and will cut off the output long before the stated specs based on the flimsy heat sink implemented by these aiyma, fossi, smsl amps. IIRC, someone from ASR has already demonstrated this.
Thats right, i had come across the test some time back before getting the Fosi V3. According to the test, a link to which I'm posting below, thermal protection kicks in for the Aiyima A07 at approx 8 minutes of the stress test while it never does for the Fosi V3. The power figures as claimed by these manufacturers has also been found to be accurate in this vid.