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Red Dragon S500 stereo amplifier Review

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Harsh music to tame

I intentionally play some tough music with new amps, and by “tough” I am referring to mediocre recordings and/or irritatingly bright recordings. 1980’s music is perfect for such a task, and among my selections are “Tonight, Tonight” by Genesis, “Nothin’ At All” by Heart, “Elemental” by Tears for Fears, and “Seven Deadly Sins” by Simple Minds. Why play such pop-rock schlock? Well, it’s just plain fun, but mostly I use it as a gauge of how potentially irritating the system may be. If the top-end energy is too intense these pieces of music will cause more consternation than enjoyment.

As one moves up the chain of quality in amplifiers a change takes place with such music; it goes from sounding raw to refined. Having grown up listening to radios in the 60’s and putting my first systems together in the 70’s, I used to think that rock music was supposed to sound “uncomfortable,” that is, edgy and sometimes more than a bit irritating. I thought screechy lyrics, piercing guitar licks, and jabbing keyboards came with the territory. I remember thinking, “Who would pay money to go hear a band that sounds as awful as this?” I was inexperienced as an audiophile and didn’t realize how far afield the sound quality was from live performances.

As my systems became better over the decades, rock and pop music have undergone transformation from palatable to immensely enjoyable. Amps play no small part in that change, and the S500 is superb at it. It is so competent that it reveals peculiarities previously unheard in speakers I know well. I recently set up the Kingsound King III electrostatic tower omnidirectional speakers with my Mac Mini running HQPlayer software, the Exogal Comet DAC and TEO Audio Liquid cables. This was the same setup that performed exquisitely with the Vapor Joule White 3 speakers. The King Tower, however, uses a cylindrical ribbon tweeter that radiates 360 degrees and draws the listener’s attention.

How much attention that omnidirectional tweeter draws is revealed by the S500. With high power and high precision the treble beams from the King Tower like a lighthouse beacon. There is no correcting for this high-end energy issue by toeing it outward, as it is an omni. One can only recess the speakers from the listening chair, but that also influences the other characteristics of the sound field, such as sound wave reflectivity from the walls at the front or sides of the room. It is the high power with exceptional cleanness which reveals the King Tower’s Achilles’s heel.

One might not experience the tilt in the speaker’s performance toward the top-end with lower-powered solid state or tube amps, but then the speaker’s overall performance would suffer from anemia due to its being lower efficiency as it is 85 dB sensitivity with 8 Ohm impedance. This puts the King Tower closer to electrostatic speakers in terms of difficulty to drive. By providing robust power to open up the speaker’s performance each driver’s outside limits becomes clear. In the case of the King Tower, the dynamic midrange and bass drivers oriented vertically do not disperse their energy indirectly, and thus sound less impactful, resulting in a sense of top-end excess energy.

These things can be addressed by component and cable selection, but being able to hear them with an outlier amp prepares the owner to understand the design principles and potential system development necessary to address any concerns. Using the S500 allows me to hear a speaker at its most extreme performance, not its average performance.

RedDragonS500-4

Blowing things up

The phrase “blow up” is usually avoided in audiophile descriptions, however, when it pertains to scale it is an apt phrase. I obtained similarly splendid results when I moved to the Legacy Audio Whisper DSW Clarity Edition or the Kingsound King III electrostatic speakers. In both cases one of the most notable improvements the S500 offered was “blowing up” the soundstage, with appropriate population by full-sized instruments and vocals, over the classic amp designs. These speakers are known for scale, yet amplifiers often hold them back in that regard.

Two pieces of music that have become standards in reviewing for me are “Jazz Variants” by the O-Zone Percussion Group and Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble’s “Bop.” Both employ a wide range of instruments. In the case of both groups drums, bells chimes and other percussive instruments predominate, however the recording venue varies significantly. The acoustic space in which “Bop” is recorded is much more intimate while “Jazz Variants” is recorded in what sounds like an outside venue. Both feature densely packed instrumentation ranging across the soundstage.

The acoustic space in which these recordings are rendered can vary substantially and every component or cable influences the acoustic envelope. The sound field can be particularly easy to note as it changes with different system configurations. Also obvious are the perturbations of air around each drum or bell as they are struck. When the S500 is in Mono mode the O-Zone group is so spread out that it sounds like the recording was done on a football field. Dropping down the power to configure the pair of S500 in stereo mode shrinks the scale, but also improves the warmth.

I had a few days with the Sonic D amplifiers, a monoblock design at 1,500Wpc. I attempted to ignore a pesky ground loop hum that rears its ugly head when power amps are used above 500Wpc. At 1,000Wpc, the Red Dragons had an easily heard, but still ignorable noise output through the speakers. Note that this hum disappeared entirely, and the amps were stone silent when using XLR interconnects at either 500 or 1,000Wpc. I could not tolerate the hum as heard through the 1,500Wpc Sonic D amps through RCA interconnects, but once again, the noise was banished by XLR interconnects.

My gracious audiophile friend who brought the amps to hear them – he was curious as well to see how his amps stacked up against the Red Dragons – concurred with me that the Sonic D sounded thinner and somewhat less warm. The Sonic D was more tipped up and the Red Dragon was tipped down relative to each other. Overall, we both felt the Red Dragon was the richer sounding amp, despite the traits associated with higher power being more pronounced in the Sonic D amp. I did not find the Red Dragon S500 to be a noisy amp, as class A/B high-powered amps have exhibited similar sensitivity to the ground loop hum.

 

Macrodynamics or smoothness?

There are four variations to play the class D game with a pair of S500. One can select between XLR and RCA interconnects, and also select between stereo or mono operation. This allows for far more opportunity to mate the amps well with a variety of speakers. The feature set of the S500 is ideal in that it offers the most flexibility to the audiophile for future systems. In terms of design, this makes the S500 a more valuable product to me than a class D amp that is less expensive, but with limited configuration.

In use of the S500, I leaped to Mono operation to experience the thrill of the 1,000 Watts per channel. Bass especially undergoes a radical revision when heard with a kilowatt versus 25 Watts, or even 100 to 150 Watts. Rock, electronic and pop music pulsate properly when transients are tight and while the tonality of the bass may be in question with any given higher-power amp, the sense of speed typically is not. I turn to Owl City’s “Galaxies” as an example of LF extension to test a system’s ability to handle big low-end. If the bass line comes out indistinct and without fullness, then the system is sub-par on the low end. Through the Vapor Joule White 3, the weaker J2 offers the powerful bass line as a recessed burping without much impact. The S500 in stereo captures some of the drama, but the Mono mode propels the notes at the listener.

I found a favorable blend of macrodynamics, smoothness and timbre when switching interconnects from the XLR Clarity Organic used in Mono mode to a set of TEO Audio Reference Liquid Interconnects and placing the S500 in Stereo mode. The midrange bloomed nicely, and the bass kept most of the impact without overriding the rest of the spectrum. This was confirmed by turning to female vocals such as Joan Baez and Allison Krause.

What would happen if I switched speakers to the Legacy Audio Whisper DSW Clarity Edition or the Kingsound King III electrostatic? Surprising to me was the discovery that with these speakers, I enjoyed holistically the sound of the S500 more when in stereo mode. Especially when driving the Legacy Whisper, the midrange had warmth and presence not heard in the mono mode. The bass lost some of the impact, but it did not distract from the midrange.

Sixpence None The Richer’s vocalist Leigh Nash’s “Dancing Queen” has a very distinctive fairy-like voice. Her voice sounds more like a cartoon character when a system is too hot from the upper midrange on up. Other class D amps I have used make Nash sound so unforgiving I want to gnash my teeth! The Red Dragon added softness to her singing, showing the amp can be configured to avoid the fabricated, cold sound of which class D is accused.

I was surprised that the King III did not change character dramatically when moving from mono to stereo mode, aside from a reduction in macrodynamics. This would stand to reason as the King III has its own power supply. I did, however, hear a similar shift in emphasis from bass overweighting to equal weighting across the spectrum. The vastness of the soundstage played particularly well to the King III’s line source, multi-driver design.

 

Dinosaurs and dragons

I caught myself gawking at a recent TV show reporting on a paleontological dig in Patagonia in search of the largest dinosaur, perhaps the largest land animal. The largest rear leg bone looked to be the length of a full sized car, and the estimate of the dinosaur’s weight was approximately seventy tons! It seemed like something out of a fantasy, like a towering, fire breathing dragon.

While dragons are fantasy creatures, the Red Dragon S500 is no fantasy. It puts out very real, very respectable sound for any class of amp. That a class D can sound that good begs credulity. It reminds me of the story my in-laws told of driving in Manitoba when it began to rain frogs. I thought it was a joke, but have come to learn that tornados can lift smaller ponds and “redistribute” the fauna that are picked up.

Yes, it can literally rain frogs. Perhaps nearly as shocking, class D amps can have audiophile quality sound; the Red Dragon S500 certainly does!

 

 

Associated Components:
Source: Macintosh Mac Mini; Sonos Digital Music System; Musical Fidelity M1CDT Transport
Playback Software: HQPlayer; Amarra 2
NAS: Buffalo Linkstation 500G
DAC:  Eastern Electric Minimax DSD DAC Supreme with Burson, Dexa NewClassD and Sparkos Labs Discrete Opamp Upgrade; Exogal Comet DAC and upgrade power supply; ifi Micro USBPower and Micro DAC
Preamp: TEO Audio Liquid Preamplifier; VAC Renaissance Signature Preamplifier MkII; Cambridge Audio 840E
Amps: Red Dragon S500; VAC Phi 200; First Watt J2 (two)
Integrated Musical Fidelity M6i
SpeakersKingsound King III; Legacy Audio DSW Clarity Edition; Kings Audio King Tower omnidirectional; Vapor Audio Joule White 3
Subwoofers: Legacy Audio XTREME HD (2)
IC’s: TEO Audio Liquid Cable Splash-Rs and Splash-Rc; TEO Liquid Standard Mk II; Clarity Cable Organic RCA/XLR; Snake River Audio Signature Series Interconnects; Silent Source “The Music Reference”
Speaker Cables: TEO  Cable Standard Speaker; Clarity Cable Organic Speaker; Snake River Audio Signature Series Speaker Cables; Silent Source “The Music Reference”
Digital Cables: Clarity Cable Organic Digital; Snake River Audio Boomslang; Silent Source “The Music Reference”
USB: Verastarr Nemesis; Clarity Organic
Power Cables: Verastarr Grand Illusion; Clarity Cable Vortex; MIT Oracle ZIII; Xindak PF-Gold; Snake River Audio Signature Series; Silent Source “The Music Reference”
Power Conditioning: Wireworld Matrix Power Cord Extender; Tice Audio Solo

Copy editor: Laurence A. Borden

6 Responses to Red Dragon S500 stereo amplifier Review


  1. Terry says:

    After hearing how a well executed class A amp sounds, (Luxman L550AII) I’d be hard pressed to even audition an amp like that. Maybe I’m missing out???

  2. Dan says:

    Greetings,

    I recall reading your glowing review of the Wells Audio Innamorata amplifier. Within the review it sounded as if it was your amp of choice and would become a benchmark. With that said, how do you now compare it to these class D amps?

    Best Regards,
    Dan

  3. Dan,
    God’s peace to you,

    Well, that’s what demo of products is for; Red Dragon offers a demo plan. I did demo with no commitment to buy. That is the ideal scenario if one is looking for a change.

    The situation with the Wells Innamorata was influenced by reviewing. There are situations where I require four or more channels of amplification and I wanted bridgeable amps to do so. I hadn’t reviewed a larger actively crossed speaker in a few years and I plan on it, so that factored into why I switched. The Innamorata is a gorgeous amp, and I still love it. But, in my rationing of money for components and speakers a second Innamorata was costlier and would throw off my allocation for other elements of the system. In addition I had speakers to pay for at the time. I was not able to conduct a head to head comparison between the Innamorata and the Red Dragon S500, but I do know I can build gorgeous systems with both. The Innamorata is more relaxed and supple, and the S500 is more aggressive and intense; different flavors of excellence.

    Blessings,
    Douglas Schroeder

  4. Mark White says:

    This a brilliant and informative review of a great new class D amp. Thank you very much for your efforts. Class D is the wave of the future, I am certain of that. I have Spatial Audio speakers and the founder, Clayton Shaw, recommends Red Dragon amps. Cheers, Mark

  5. Mark,
    God’s Joy to you,
    Thank you for the complement; it is encouragement such as yours that makes reviewing a joy.
    I believe the Red Dragon and the Pascal module is gaining traction. It’s a sweet class D sound.

    Blessings,
    Douglas Schroeder

  6. Robert says:

    I just don’t agree with your comments about N-Core class D amplifiers being over priced in comparison with Pascal class D. Take Nord for example at around £1700. Or the world class contender Mola Mola Kuluga’s at £9,995. I’m not saying RD is not good, because I haven’t heard them, but my experience with Pascal based amps so far leads me to conclude they are not as good as the N-Core amps I have used.

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