how powerful can you make a gainclone?

[Puggie]

I'm interested in using gainclones for a set of active monitor speakers, how powerful can you make gainclones?

[peranders]

200-400 W if you bridge connect and if you use one or two in parallel you can get 50-100 W.

You could also consider an 180 or 400 W module from www.hypex.nl

[pinkmouse]

But having more than a pair of chips increases the complexity to the equivalent of building a discrete amp...

[Puggie]

Ok so how powerful can I make an easy simple to build gainclone?

I would like about 30Watts for a tweet and about double that for a midbass.

[AGGEMAM]

By careful selection of your drivers you can accomplish the same end. Choose a tweeter that is 8 ohms, a midrange that is 4 ohms, and a woofer that is 8 ohms. Now you make 4 amps; one for the tweeter, one for the midrange, and two bridged for the woofer. That way you have the most simple way of making amps that increase two-fold in power rating.

For example: If your tweeter amp is 30 watts, then the midrange is (approx.) 60 watts, and the woofer is 120 watts.

The beauty of this simple system is that you can use the same power supply for all the amps (in the above example at least 400 VA transformer, ie roughly twice the listed output rating).

[kneadle]

Originally posted by AGGEMAM


The beauty of this simple system is that you can use the same power supply for all the amps (in the above example at least 400 VA transformer, ie roughly twice the listed output rating).

Would the same principle apply if I built 6 single driver speakers for a 5.1 surround HT setup?

Not that I'm anywhere near that, but the thought intrigues.

Dave

[AGGEMAM]

Originally posted by kneadle
Would the same principle apply if I built 6 single driver speakers for a 5.1 surround HT setup?

Yes, as long as we're talking class B or A/B amps that principle applies. The reason is that the amp dissipates roughly the same amount of power into the heat zink as it outputs to the speakers usually even a tiny bit more. So in order for your amp to have sufficient dynamic headroom the general rule is just doubling the total output power rating to get the needed VA rating of the power transformer.