Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners can't make up my mind

@mojo - I took a look at the two options and picked the Sony just for the sake of it. Its $170+tax. Then I dove into what Sony had published.

- 100w / channel (love how the stores call it a 200w unit)
- The phono amplifier and transformer are positioned optimally to minimize interference from the magnetic field.

But you then look at the published graphics that Sony provides and you clearly see its a larger transformer with pure class-D amp. You know this is just a switching power supply with an pulse width modulation amp running at who knows what voltage to give you the 100w per channel. You can also speculate that is 100w fully driven to clip.

Pulling up the NAD 316bee.v2, at least they are a bit more honest about their product. It is a liner power supply inside with a pretty well sized terodal coil. I don't know if its an AB or D class amp. But more interesting they actually publish at 45w per channel @ 8ohms with IHF dynamic power of 90w @ 8ohms, giving you 3db of head room. I can get one of these off CanuckAudioMart for about $350

Then you have the Cambridge Audio Azur 350A ($175 used 4y/o). The manual specs it at 45w @ 8ohms. I have seen the unit on youtube taken apart and it has quite a well sized terodal coil power supply. There is no real spec pulling up on what or even if there is any dynamic headroom or if the 45w is to full power clip.


Now I remember that Ian had a really good posting that I read somewhere where Mojo was talking with someone else about the Axiom ADA amps and headroom, liner power supples vs switching and sound clipping. Ian had gone to say about how many amp companies.. ie Sony,Pioneer,Yamaha,Marantz.... report nice huge numbers for their amps but are giving you a number to fully driven clipping at a single 1khz tone, where music is dynamic and you bursts of power. It was something like how much dynamic head room you need and working backwords to show that a 100w amp might really be like a 12w amp with 9db of headroom. (wish I could re-find that posting)

This brings me back to the question at hand. I can get a 4 year old used Cambridge Audio unit for about the same price a new Sony. My gut tells me that the CA Azur350A will likely sound far better with the M3 as I get the feeling it likely is a better built unit with a far better amp guts inside of it. The NAD is likely the same build as the CA but will cost me double for a "NEW" open box unit that the seller says sat in its box and was intended for a man-cave garage that never happened.

What would you choose?


@Bridgman - I don't think it's a loose wire or something like that. I know there is a part of me that remembers the old NAK. I will pull it apart and see if I can see anything obvious, but I have done the logical diagnosis and think it's something bigger inside that is at fault.