Genesis Reference Amplifier Owners Manual Ver 2.0
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extension and drive of high-power transistor amplifiers without the muscle-
bound sound, and the elegance, emotion and tonal colors of flea-powered
single-ended triode vacuum tube amplifiers without being weak or flaccid.
The origins of the DPDS comes from the principles of tube amplifier design –
some of the qualities of tube amplifiers were as much to do with power
supply design as the choice of tubes over transistors. Because of the high
voltages involved, tube amplifiers use relatively small capacitors and chokes
to produce smooth DC power.
Transistor amps use cheaper, larger, and lower-voltage electrolytic
capacitors to do much the same job. From this we discover a very simple
fact, smaller capacitors usually sound better. This is not only speculation,
there is good science to predict that the high frequency performance of large
capacitors to be poor.
There are lots of very small solid-state amplifiers that have excellent sound.
They all had tiny power supplies, and the smaller the power supply, the
“faster” they sounded. On the other hand, very large power amplifiers with
huge capacitors, or even large banks of smaller capacitors in their power
supplies tended to sound dark and slow.
The DPDS in the simplest explanation uses the frequency distribution of
music, and the Fletcher Munson curves to predict the required power
delivery to play back music. Then, it uses a Class D amplifier module as a
“perfect music-driven faucet” to deliver current to the connected
loudspeakers.
This is the issue of speed vs power. The sprinter is not able to sustain the
delivery of power for very long, but the marathon runner is not able to deliver
very quick bursts of speed. The DPDS is like a relay team with sprinters,
medium-distance, and long distance runners in the team. Thus, it is able to
deliver high power, as well as very quick bursts of speed.
Such a “relay team” is what gives the Genesis Reference Amplifier the
excellent micro-dynamics, tonal contrasts and timbre textures of low-
powered amplifiers, and yet is able to deliver huge dynamics and the
sustained deep bass of muscle amps.
The optional Maximum Dynamic Headroom Reservoir extends this ability
down to loudspeaker impedances of 1 ohm and below by extending the relay
team, and adds proprietary resonance control circuitry to ensure that the
“baton handover” from one team member to the next is handled as smoothly
as possible. This results in increased dynamics from having more current
