Your information seems to be out of date. The latest is that Audium is bought by NXT, and NXT does not mention any AS1001 at all! So forget the fancy stories about that incredible amplifier, now they are making 2x25W out of USB connector rated at 4,5W (USB3.0). This is indeed a first class order perpetuum mobile, so now they do not speak about 90% efficiencies, they are speaking about 900% efficiencies, capish?
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Erare humaum est! Every one knows this one! But just few knows that this proverb does not end here. The continuation is: Persevere erare, diabolicum!
Oh dear Zola....
NXT has bought all of the IP and assets of Audium ... therefore the AS1001 and probably the yet to be releasaed AS2001 etc - capiche?
Audium Semiconductor
The AS1001 is merely the embodiment of Audiums state-of-the-art technology - capiche?
If you would like to understand a lil more try this:
Exploding the Efficiency Myth of Class D Amplifiers | ECN: Electronic Component News
NXT has bought all of the IP and assets of Audium ... therefore the AS1001 and probably the yet to be releasaed AS2001 etc - capiche?
Audium Semiconductor
The AS1001 is merely the embodiment of Audiums state-of-the-art technology - capiche?
If you would like to understand a lil more try this:
Exploding the Efficiency Myth of Class D Amplifiers | ECN: Electronic Component News
Thought that the board might be interested to see the first commercial incarnation of the Audium Class D amplifier; a USB powered 30W PC system announced at IFA 2010 Berlin:
SoundScience QSB
Enjoy the future of efficient sound driven by NXT's Audium and balanced mode radiator technology!
Oh, also just announced, the new Bentley Continental coupé fitted as standard with NXT balanced mode radiator speakers as used by NAIM in the Ovator S600 and with the option of NAIM for Bentley Infotainment featuring 14 balanced mode radiators ... the future of sound is NXT! Do you doubt it?
The New Bentley Continental GT
You saw it here .... almost first!
SB
SoundScience QSB
Enjoy the future of efficient sound driven by NXT's Audium and balanced mode radiator technology!
Oh, also just announced, the new Bentley Continental coupé fitted as standard with NXT balanced mode radiator speakers as used by NAIM in the Ovator S600 and with the option of NAIM for Bentley Infotainment featuring 14 balanced mode radiators ... the future of sound is NXT! Do you doubt it?
The New Bentley Continental GT
You saw it here .... almost first!
SB
Yes.
I read a review of those USB powered speakers. The reviewer noted that on anything other than tame music tracks the setup would run out of steam rather quickly, automatically lowering the volume level.
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I don't remember the source exactly. I use mippin.com on my phone during my work breaks to read science and technology news from various sources. It might have been Popular Science.
It was about a week ago that I read it. I'll have to see if I can find it again.
Wow this thread dident only peg my ** meter, it blew it upThis is some serious BULL****
100W from 1.5V, eehh ???
Tekko
If you want to try to understand this try reading here:
Exploding the Efficiency Myth of Class D Amplifiers | ECN: Electronic Component News
It's probably safe to say that anyone professionally specifying any kind of audio amplifier in some sort of commercial product has always been well aware how to interpret the published power efficiency data for the chip.
Not many people on this forum really care what the power efficiency is at 5mW output, even if they're driving headphones. And it's pretty well known that you are Not going to rock the house with a pair of loudspeakers powered by a USB port.
Period.
Not many people on this forum really care what the power efficiency is at 5mW output, even if they're driving headphones. And it's pretty well known that you are Not going to rock the house with a pair of loudspeakers powered by a USB port.
Period.
Andrew
You are wrong the QSB speakers WILL rock the house!
Although of course it isn't possible to obtain 30W from a USB port the QSBs will perform as if they were 30W due to the way they use the power available. It really is a very simple concept of storing power and discharging it when needed for peaks which actually occur very seldom.
The power efficiency of this chip is unlike any other before it so those specifying such amplifiers had better wake up or miss the boat!
You are wrong the QSB speakers WILL rock the house!
Although of course it isn't possible to obtain 30W from a USB port the QSBs will perform as if they were 30W due to the way they use the power available. It really is a very simple concept of storing power and discharging it when needed for peaks which actually occur very seldom.
The power efficiency of this chip is unlike any other before it so those specifying such amplifiers had better wake up or miss the boat!
Sam, check this out.
That stuff isn't hi-fi, not even in a budget sense. The manufacturer of the chips pretty much admits that up front. The only thing they do is limit idle loss and arrange for large transient output.
Unfortunately, none of this technology (and yeah, you can call it that) scales or translates very well to high power systems capable of serious continuous average output and very high fidelity. The modulation schemes have lower signal performance than others intended for maximum fidelity. It's something like a class BD/G amplfier, which on theory alone sounds bad enough for most of the people here to just ignore. Although that might possibly be improved in the future I can't see how and you should be prepared to wait several years at least. I have a huge interest in extreme efficiency circuits and machines. However, right now, if you want power efficiency "magic" in audio you'd be better off dreaming of a little 40% efficient speaker, because most speakers are under 2%. When high performance power amplifiers are already 90% efficient you're kinda wasting your time on the amp unless you're dealing with piddly power limitations and don't care about great sound.
These might be alright for a "laptop party" or maybe one of those boominator projects, but that'll be about the end of it. In the latter case you'd only get some advantage if you kept the volume very low, which doesn't usually happen there. If you were to drive a piezo horn with one of these I think it might sound Terrible.
That stuff isn't hi-fi, not even in a budget sense. The manufacturer of the chips pretty much admits that up front. The only thing they do is limit idle loss and arrange for large transient output.
Unfortunately, none of this technology (and yeah, you can call it that) scales or translates very well to high power systems capable of serious continuous average output and very high fidelity. The modulation schemes have lower signal performance than others intended for maximum fidelity. It's something like a class BD/G amplfier, which on theory alone sounds bad enough for most of the people here to just ignore. Although that might possibly be improved in the future I can't see how and you should be prepared to wait several years at least. I have a huge interest in extreme efficiency circuits and machines. However, right now, if you want power efficiency "magic" in audio you'd be better off dreaming of a little 40% efficient speaker, because most speakers are under 2%. When high performance power amplifiers are already 90% efficient you're kinda wasting your time on the amp unless you're dealing with piddly power limitations and don't care about great sound.
These might be alright for a "laptop party" or maybe one of those boominator projects, but that'll be about the end of it. In the latter case you'd only get some advantage if you kept the volume very low, which doesn't usually happen there. If you were to drive a piezo horn with one of these I think it might sound Terrible.
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Andrew
"or translates very well to high power systems capable of serious continuous average output and very high fidelity"
That is the point ... this is a class D amp forum -not a hifi one! Go back to tubes if you want to float to that rarefied level .... This is a commercial mass produced product designed to be sold for every day applications in the millions of devices currently limited in their performance (ie volume level at acceptable fidelity for the users that buy them) by available power (USB) or the length of time that power can be supplied before the batteries have to replaced. As for conventional class D amps being 90% efficient, in real world use if they are 10% efficient they are doing well as that article so elegantly demonstrates..
"or translates very well to high power systems capable of serious continuous average output and very high fidelity"
That is the point ... this is a class D amp forum -not a hifi one! Go back to tubes if you want to float to that rarefied level .... This is a commercial mass produced product designed to be sold for every day applications in the millions of devices currently limited in their performance (ie volume level at acceptable fidelity for the users that buy them) by available power (USB) or the length of time that power can be supplied before the batteries have to replaced. As for conventional class D amps being 90% efficient, in real world use if they are 10% efficient they are doing well as that article so elegantly demonstrates..
Dude, class D amps have been widely demonstrated hi-fi capable for a decade already, and if you're listening at moderate levels they routinely hit their advertized ratings (as opposed to published, because that includes curves, which tell the Whole picture excluding power supply loss). It doesn't matter how much power a real 30 watt class D power amplifier burns with a 2 mW output, because most people would rather shut the amp off than listen that low.
I'm not sure how to explain this another way, but I think your enthusiasm for this series of parts is not based on much more than some text, maybe a little hokum (elegance?) on the side.
If you look at the graph in one of those write-ups you'll see that the "100 Watt" Audium chip actually loses more above 1 watt, so if you ever plan to listen much above one watt, which Most people do, you're losing.
I'm not sure how to explain this another way, but I think your enthusiasm for this series of parts is not based on much more than some text, maybe a little hokum (elegance?) on the side.
If you look at the graph in one of those write-ups you'll see that the "100 Watt" Audium chip actually loses more above 1 watt, so if you ever plan to listen much above one watt, which Most people do, you're losing.
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It is normally accepted for pro-audio amplifiers that a 100W (continuous sine wave rating) amplifier will only be producing around 10W average power when driven to the clipping level on peaks with a normal music source. So a combination of an efficient Class-D amplifier, with adequate reservoir capacitnance, coupled with normal class-G or class-H variable voltage supply rails supplied from an efficient switch-mode dc-dc converter, will give an effective loudness much higher than might be expected from the continuous sine-wave rating.
The manufacturer's claims may be overblown, but the idea makes a lot of sense. It's not anti-gravity science after all.
The manufacturer's claims may be overblown, but the idea makes a lot of sense. It's not anti-gravity science after all.
"Absolutely, and it's been done already, before Audium" Show me! And not in some specialist application ... as I said, the whole point of this is the efficiency of the ubiquitous amps found in millions of portable or low end devices, PC speakers, wireles speakers, etc - in these applications, which admittedly are of little interest to a H-Fi buff, the advantages are enormous. I raised the launch of a commercially available product using this technique on this board as I assumed it would be of interest to people with an interest in developements in real world amplifier technology from a technical perspective. But maybe not ....
It might not have been done in a chip or even a commercial product before. If so, there's a reason for that too, because the theory is well understood by any degreed power amplifier designer. (Any.)
By the time an audio power amplifier goes to chip, unless it needs monotlithic IC construction to survive, you can generally say it's been built by hand by many people already. Maybe when 3D printing can cough out a new IC on the fly you wont be able to say that anymore.
Even the weirdest class BD modulator depends on the characteristics of a single switch in full conduction to acheive maximum efficiency and minimum distortion. Another switching stage in series, even if just two level, is going to practically ruin that for a lot of the amplifiers major power consumption range, and indroduce an added level of reliability problems for pro amps. So you probably wont see any higher power versions of this design without futher semiconductor development, and even then a circuit without the class G or any other rail modulation scheme will outperform it, especially at high power where people who really like music tend to listen on a daily basis. Your product can really matter for extremely high dynamics music when set to a very low volume level and driven from batteries. Outside of that limited case it doesn't do much. The problem is worsted by the fact that for the last 20 years popular music has experienced what has been termed the "loudness war" where everything is recorded so that it pounds you with a continuous assault of sound power. Check Wikipedia. The flipside is, people who know what dynamic range is and demand it in the sound and music, are often fidelity nuts, and therefore everything else about this chip will bother them.
I don't mean to bum you out just for the sake of it, but I look for this series of chips to fall by the wayside. Even Tripath got sold to a software company.
By the time an audio power amplifier goes to chip, unless it needs monotlithic IC construction to survive, you can generally say it's been built by hand by many people already. Maybe when 3D printing can cough out a new IC on the fly you wont be able to say that anymore.
Even the weirdest class BD modulator depends on the characteristics of a single switch in full conduction to acheive maximum efficiency and minimum distortion. Another switching stage in series, even if just two level, is going to practically ruin that for a lot of the amplifiers major power consumption range, and indroduce an added level of reliability problems for pro amps. So you probably wont see any higher power versions of this design without futher semiconductor development, and even then a circuit without the class G or any other rail modulation scheme will outperform it, especially at high power where people who really like music tend to listen on a daily basis. Your product can really matter for extremely high dynamics music when set to a very low volume level and driven from batteries. Outside of that limited case it doesn't do much. The problem is worsted by the fact that for the last 20 years popular music has experienced what has been termed the "loudness war" where everything is recorded so that it pounds you with a continuous assault of sound power. Check Wikipedia. The flipside is, people who know what dynamic range is and demand it in the sound and music, are often fidelity nuts, and therefore everything else about this chip will bother them.
I don't mean to bum you out just for the sake of it, but I look for this series of chips to fall by the wayside. Even Tripath got sold to a software company.
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Andrew, 9 months later not fallen by the wayside ... :
SoundScience QSB - 30W USB Desktop Speakers with NXT: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics
SoundScience QSB review from the experts at whathifi.com
UFi Products
HiWave: sensation innovation
HiWave: sensation innovation
SoundScience QSB - 30W USB Desktop Speakers with NXT: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics
SoundScience QSB review from the experts at whathifi.com
UFi Products
HiWave: sensation innovation
HiWave: sensation innovation
Just a clarification (in case no one said this before, I haven't read the entire thread): stating that some amplifier is 20x times more efficient than a 70% efficient amplifier does not mean that it is 1400% efficient or that it creates energy!
It means that it wastes 20x less power, that is, 30%/20=1.5% (=98.5% efficiency).
(With this comment I am not saying that I believe the initial statement or that I have even had the time to look at the amplifier in particular)
It means that it wastes 20x less power, that is, 30%/20=1.5% (=98.5% efficiency).
(With this comment I am not saying that I believe the initial statement or that I have even had the time to look at the amplifier in particular)
I'm sure you are correct and that is what was meant, but it is also an abuse of the English language. 20x more efficient means exactly that, 20 times more efficient. It really doesn't mean 20x less far away from perfect efficiency.
Let us say you produce an amplifier with just 10% efficiency and replace it with one that is 20% efficient. I am pretty sure you would describe it as twice as efficient and not just 12.5% more efficient
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