Peachtree Audio GaN400 Power Amplifier Redefines Class D?

Peachtree Audio are a very interesting company. Having owned two of their integrated amplifiers over the past decade, I must confess to having a love-hate relationship with the brand. Their products have always offered excellent feature sets and value for the money, but I always found the amplifier sections to be underpowered. Within their limitations, both integrated amplifiers sounded great but as soon as I moved on to more demanding loudspeakers, the sound quality took a dip. The brand new Peachtree Audio GaN400 power amplifier looks to change that issue forever.

The Peachtree GaN400 represents a new direction for the brand and the next step in the evolution of its power amplifier design and manufacturing process. It has been designed to offer accurate waveform reproduction, greater power and control, low global negative feedback and extremely efficient use of AC power.

So what’s different about it versus existing Class D products?

The GaN400 is a “class-D” stereo power amplifier that utilizes GaNFETs (Gallium Nitride Field-Effect Transistors), an 850-watt RMS regulated power supply, a fully balanced topology and a low global negative feedback design to achieve an astounding 400 watts-per-channel while achieving sound quality that is remarkably faithful to the input signal.

It has balanced and unbalanced audio inputs, a trigger input, and is compatible with speakers that have nominal impedances from 2.5Ω to 16Ω.

What is GaN?

The GaN400 achieves new levels of power and efficiency by utilizing GaNFETs instead of MOSFETs (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors) that have been the industry standard for more than 50 years. MOSFETs revolutionized the electronics industry in the second half of the 20th century and have become the most common transistor in electronics and the most widely used semiconductor device in the world. Their significance in the electronics industry and the other industries that rely on them can’t be understated.

However, over the years, the rate of MOSFET improvements leveled off as the performance got closer and closer to the theoretical limits of the materials and processes. The need for something better grew. Enter GaN.

GaNFETs started to gain attention over the last decade as audio engineers and designers realized that they were suitable for high frequency, high voltage, high temperature and high efficiency applications especially when compared to their MOSFET counterparts.

GaNFETs turned-on ~4 times faster and turned-off ~2 times faster reducing switching distortion (ringing) by several orders of magnitude. This, in-turn, allowed designers to use much less global negative feedback to achieve excellent measured results. The result is an amplifier with exceptional musicality and excellent measured performance.

The Peachtree Audio GaN400 power amplifier was designed to work with the Peachtree preDAC which is a combination 32-bit/384kHz PCM and 5.6MHz DSD DAC along with a pre-amplifier.

• State-of-the-art GaNFETs (Gallium Nitride Field-Effect Transistors)
• 400 watts per channel
• Compatible with speakers from 2.5Ω to 16Ω nominal impedance
• Balanced and unbalanced inputs with differential audio circuits
• Aluminum front panel and chassis wrapped in a real wood cabinet finished in stunning Gloss Ebony Mocha or beautiful Piano Black
• Limited Edition Ash finish available

For more information: Peachtree GaN400

MSRP: $2,999