kicker warhorse

[tadej]

hello!
can anyone tell me what is the secret behind the operation of the Kicker Warhorse? why is it so compact and has less parts?

[sakis]

is that all the "missing " parts is on the other side ha ha ha ha

what you see is only pieces of the power supply .....

or may be you thing that you can built a 10000 w amp with fewer parts lo lo lo lollllllllll

[tadej]

i hear that the kicker company has a patent pending on the design of this amp. and they say it's a new class of amp. quote "it's not a class A or AB or D or H or T but it's a new class"! so are they full of ********?!

[DcibeL]

Probably. Kicker is a car audio company right? Isn't it a requirement for car audio to be full of it? Class T isn't a real amplifier class, but Tripath sure wanted you to believe it was...so that you would think their product is better than any ordinary Class D product. It's all marketing.

This Warhorse thing seems to be for sale here for the low low price of $9999.99. A fuse rating of 250A leads me to believe that this amp is not capable of continuous output anywhere near 10KW RMS. Surely the only practical use of a car amp this large is for silly "burps" at car audio shows where continuous output is required - not music!

I just noticed also that the link above where this amp is for sale lists it as Class D.

[tadej]

i looked in to the design and it seems it works like a class-d but the thing is it doesn't use a final stage but the power supply is modulated by an audio signal. So in the end it is a class-d it's logical but i wonder what is the damping factor of the amp?
yeah i know about tripath and their amps work like class-d.
Every thing comes back to basics

[EnvisionAudio]

Originally posted by tadej
i looked in to the design and it seems it works like a class-d but the thing is it doesn't use a final stage but the power supply is modulated by an audio signal. So in the end it is a class-d it's logical but i wonder what is the damping factor of the amp?
yeah i know about tripath and their amps work like class-d.
Every thing comes back to basics

Sort of. It's a synchronous rectifier modulated by audio - Manny Rodriguez of JBL car audio fame developed DAFPS (direct audio from power supply) years ago and licensed it to Harman International.

If it works like this, then the damping factor is very high - but we all know DF is a ridiculously useless measurement, anyway.

[theAnonymous1]

Interesting. I only understand the basics of how PWM circuits and class-d amps works, but the use of the power supply in a car amp as the amplifier has crossed my mind many times.

I wonder why there haven't been more designs like this? I know for AC powered equipment this would be considered the deadly "Ampliverter", but the same risks don't exist in the 12v world.

[ppia600]

I actually had some cheap amp back in high school that had a large transformer (or two, can't quite remember) and some power supply transistors. It didn't have output transistors... I don't see them like this anymore, is there something wrong with the design? I remember reading about the design in some book years ago. (sorry if I'm going too far off topic)

[luka]

Originally posted by DcibeL
Class T isn't a real amplifier class, but Tripath sure wanted you to believe it was...so that you would think their product is better than any ordinary Class D product.

Well you can say T is class of it own, since T and D are not the same, T changes freq. over wide spectrum, since D don't at all(very little)

And yes it is all marketing.
Primary side driven transformer, secondary for speaker....there is another thread here, where this was of...

[EnvisionAudio]

Originally posted by ppia600
I actually had some cheap amp back in high school that had a large transformer (or two, can't quite remember) and some power supply transistors. It didn't have output transistors... I don't see them like this anymore, is there something wrong with the design? I remember reading about the design in some book years ago. (sorry if I'm going too far off topic)

Cheap amps from the usual suspects used discrete output sections coupled to large output matching transformers. They did this to increase voltage swing without using a separate power supply. The magneto-saturation distortion was pretty terrible, though.