I have one of Panasonic's all-digital class D receivers. No one is going to call it "tubey," or "euphoric," but if what you're looking for is neutrality, oodles of headroom, stunning dynamic range, lightning-fast transients, a non-existent noise floor and distortion so low that it is silly to even bring it up, it is the best $199 you'll ever spend.
Maybe the best $1999 you'll ever spend.
I'm convinced that this is the future of everything but specialty audio. High-end that strives for neutrality will eventually disappear in the face of this stuff because it can deliver the goods so inexpensively. Analog and all things colored and romantic is a completely different issue, of course.
The value of this little amp, as a headphone amp, depends on a few things -- I don't know the Yamaha D digitals. My Panny is built on the TIs. I'm sure they're fine though. How it is implemented is critical, of course, except that it is so cheap to do it right, it really doesn't make sense to screw it up. The big if is the implementation of the headphone section. If it is the digital amps knocked down by a resistor, or some other, more transparent means, to headphone levels, I want one on my desktop now. If it is a separate op amp circuit, it's probably no better than the headphone jack of a cheap CD player.
But someday, someone is going to build one of these things as a HP amp and they're going to do it right. And they are so efficient that "right" might even mean pocket-sized, battery-powered, and able to drive a pair of HD650s like a Xana Deux.
Then the world, as we know it, will change.
Tim
