Thanks. I have this Sure amp module and I'm very happy with it. I'm about to finish the build using this module, but want to add a soft-start circuit that I'm waiting on parts for. I'm driving it with a linear PSU @~ +-64VDC. It's not quite as quiet as a class AB amp I recent built, but low enough for my ears.
PS. My thread with a few pics can be found here.
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These are not so new... vastly overrated power spec, because they use power at 10% distortion in specs. It's more like a 6x30W amp with some distorted headroom... There are better options, but none as "cheap" as this one! Note that the amp is rated 6x100W but the power supply is only 36V@9.7A. It doesn't add up. Use your money wisely.
-Charlie
-Charlie
Depending what you want to compare. price ? they are definately cheaper. built quality ? ask someone who have both of them, efficiency ? well, the moneywell (meanwell clones) are at least 10% below connexelectronic power supplies, EMI, at least 10dB above.
The surprisingly low price is achieved by using some "Cxinese innovative solution" like aluminium wire instead of copper in the transformer and inductors, and often complete transformers and inductors salvaged from distmatled similar power supplies. second-hand parts for almost everything but the cheap resistors, and unqualified labor in some hidden corners mostly in non-urban areas, villages, wherever someone would accept to work for 3-4$ per day.
All the electronic shops in china have booths selling such knock-off power supplies, at prices starting ~10 usd for a claimed 350W, yet the original meanwell ones cost at least 3-4 times than anything which look similar and claim similar performance with them. Once I was curious and bought one for tests and dismatled to see what parts they use and how can they sell them so cheap. surprisigly the complete parts BOM would cost ~15 usd each in 1000 pcs quantities. I hope that some of you won't come to tell me that they produce them in quantities of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions and they get much cheaper price, because: 1. they are produced in quantities of maximum hundreds or few thousands except if someone place a bigger order and pay in advance full quantity, because nobody here is crazy enough to invest the money in products, especially garbage, where they know that they market is sluggish and the can lose them at the first complain when police come and confiscate them. (they focus their investments into overpriced real-estate market for long time specu.... i mean investment) and 2. the price drop from 1000 to 10.000 pcs for parts is insignificant most of the times. so the question remains how they fill the gap from 15$ BOM of parts plus labor to 10$ selling price.
The surprisingly low price is achieved by using some "Cxinese innovative solution" like aluminium wire instead of copper in the transformer and inductors, and often complete transformers and inductors salvaged from distmatled similar power supplies. second-hand parts for almost everything but the cheap resistors, and unqualified labor in some hidden corners mostly in non-urban areas, villages, wherever someone would accept to work for 3-4$ per day.
All the electronic shops in china have booths selling such knock-off power supplies, at prices starting ~10 usd for a claimed 350W, yet the original meanwell ones cost at least 3-4 times than anything which look similar and claim similar performance with them. Once I was curious and bought one for tests and dismatled to see what parts they use and how can they sell them so cheap. surprisigly the complete parts BOM would cost ~15 usd each in 1000 pcs quantities. I hope that some of you won't come to tell me that they produce them in quantities of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions and they get much cheaper price, because: 1. they are produced in quantities of maximum hundreds or few thousands except if someone place a bigger order and pay in advance full quantity, because nobody here is crazy enough to invest the money in products, especially garbage, where they know that they market is sluggish and the can lose them at the first complain when police come and confiscate them. (they focus their investments into overpriced real-estate market for long time specu.... i mean investment) and 2. the price drop from 1000 to 10.000 pcs for parts is insignificant most of the times. so the question remains how they fill the gap from 15$ BOM of parts plus labor to 10$ selling price.
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Not all, just those which are sold at a price below the Meanwell originals selling price, except very few sellers anywhere else than here which really do have some NOS, but they usually offer documentation and some of them the original purchasing invoice. But don't expect to buy the same on fleabey from "hapypappynicedoll", "profosionel making prodcuts" or whatever scrambled string of characters which designates their ID. I'm sure most of you found at least one similar funny names.
You can find a close reference for prices on Mouser and other distributors. Then take the price of an average quantity of 20 or 50 pcs to make an idea of the minimum real price for which you can get an original unit. All what cost below that price are made on the knees as explained in the previous post. If you're searching on fleabey you will see tens maybe hundreds of sellers selling each single unit for 15-25 usd while the original one cost at least 2-3 times in quantities of 1000 or more. I don't expect to learn that all of them aford to buy such quantities to resale them on fleabey while the history shows that they sold 17 pcs in the past 6 months and still have 20 pcs available.
Of course there are many other power supply brands which are ripped-off. but by far meanwell is the most frequent because they offer low price power supplies, allowing them to spread easy and be popular, thus easy to sneak out the knock-offs on the market, then, the extreme simplicity, which offered the oportunity even for the less trained sanitation worker turned into "sower pupply bisuness manager" to copy-paste them without any special skills, even more, on some forums, can find complete projects of such power supplies, schematic, pcb gerbers, and information where to buy the parts, some of them including phone numbers and price list for most important item.
Meanwell original power supplies bricks are using half-bridge topology, bipolar transistors, and switching frequency in 20-30 KHz range, similar with 90% of the cheap ATX power supplies. This is a mature technology, from mid '80s and the only advantage is that is relatively simple and can use cheap bipolar transistors. but the efficiency is within 80-85% range for 24V and up and even below 80% for <24V and <150W. And of course a lot of EMI, being hard switched.
My advice is: except trying to convince anyone to buy from me dedicated power supplies for audio amplifiers, which have clear advantages, but might look expensive for one who compare them with the fakes, they can also seek some server power supplies, telecom, or even industrial ones sold on the internet for prices lower than their weight in copper and iron. I'm sure that any of them is far better than a knock-off sold for similar price.
You can find a close reference for prices on Mouser and other distributors. Then take the price of an average quantity of 20 or 50 pcs to make an idea of the minimum real price for which you can get an original unit. All what cost below that price are made on the knees as explained in the previous post. If you're searching on fleabey you will see tens maybe hundreds of sellers selling each single unit for 15-25 usd while the original one cost at least 2-3 times in quantities of 1000 or more. I don't expect to learn that all of them aford to buy such quantities to resale them on fleabey while the history shows that they sold 17 pcs in the past 6 months and still have 20 pcs available.
Of course there are many other power supply brands which are ripped-off. but by far meanwell is the most frequent because they offer low price power supplies, allowing them to spread easy and be popular, thus easy to sneak out the knock-offs on the market, then, the extreme simplicity, which offered the oportunity even for the less trained sanitation worker turned into "sower pupply bisuness manager" to copy-paste them without any special skills, even more, on some forums, can find complete projects of such power supplies, schematic, pcb gerbers, and information where to buy the parts, some of them including phone numbers and price list for most important item.
Meanwell original power supplies bricks are using half-bridge topology, bipolar transistors, and switching frequency in 20-30 KHz range, similar with 90% of the cheap ATX power supplies. This is a mature technology, from mid '80s and the only advantage is that is relatively simple and can use cheap bipolar transistors. but the efficiency is within 80-85% range for 24V and up and even below 80% for <24V and <150W. And of course a lot of EMI, being hard switched.
My advice is: except trying to convince anyone to buy from me dedicated power supplies for audio amplifiers, which have clear advantages, but might look expensive for one who compare them with the fakes, they can also seek some server power supplies, telecom, or even industrial ones sold on the internet for prices lower than their weight in copper and iron. I'm sure that any of them is far better than a knock-off sold for similar price.
Cristi - Thanks for helping to educate us on the pitfalls of buying 'to good to be true prices' on many of these knock-off PSUs from China and other countries.
Personally, I did make the mistake of by one of these Meanwell form factor SMPS because the price was very low. When it arrived I found it to be very cheaply made and lacking the quality I expect to use. Luckily, I have not used it yet, and probably will not in any of my audio projects. Just too risky I think.
For the broader audience... I can vouch for the quality of SMPS's built and supplied by Cristi. I recently purchased two of his SMPS's from Connexelectronics, and was very impressed with the quality of the parts and build. They are compact and exude precision, first rate performance. And the price - in my opinion - is very competitive and reasonable. One is currently in service and I'm very happy with it's performance. The other is waiting to be used in another audio related project.
Thanks again Cristi for making a quality, and more importantly reliable product.
Rick
Personally, I did make the mistake of by one of these Meanwell form factor SMPS because the price was very low. When it arrived I found it to be very cheaply made and lacking the quality I expect to use. Luckily, I have not used it yet, and probably will not in any of my audio projects. Just too risky I think.
For the broader audience... I can vouch for the quality of SMPS's built and supplied by Cristi. I recently purchased two of his SMPS's from Connexelectronics, and was very impressed with the quality of the parts and build. They are compact and exude precision, first rate performance. And the price - in my opinion - is very competitive and reasonable. One is currently in service and I'm very happy with it's performance. The other is waiting to be used in another audio related project.
Thanks again Cristi for making a quality, and more importantly reliable product.
Rick
Peoples, please do not make confusions and generalize the lack of quality issue to all power supplies, especially genuine Meanwell. There are some sellers which offer for sale genuine products, and I don't want to create confusion by putting them in the same pot.
I underlined above that only the cloned ones suffer from quality issues, as they are are built on the knees with poor quality, fake, substandard or dismantled components. Yet the genuine Meanwell is a respected brand and their products do the job in the applications for which they were designated. Let's take one example: A genuine general purpose brick form-factor power supply with rated power of 350W, 48V 6A which have considerably higher EMI, lower efficiency and higher output ripple than connexelectronic power supplies which are designed for audio purposes, will do a better job while used in an automation panel where has to supply motors, relays, actuators, signal lights and whatever else which require half to full output output power for several hours, and where a connexelectronic power supply might enter in over-temperature protection if full output power is required for long period of times, it's lower EMI and lower ripple wouldn't help for such application. Even the efficiency which is at least double (93% compared to 85% is more than double, half of 93% efficient would be 86.5%) won't help much if a massive heatsink and forced air-cooling is not used. remember that the brick has it's entire housing acting like a heatsink, plus a cooling fan, plus the base on which is mounted will also act like a heatsink. If we add a larger heatsink and a fan to any connexelectronic power supply, the situation changes, it will be able to work in same conditions with even lower temperature increase (less than half wasted power for the same output power) due to higher efficiency, lower temperature means longer lifetime.
We are comparing a sports car with a tractor. The only thing they have in common is the number of wheels and Hp rating, the sports cat can't pull a heavy load trailer, same as the tractor can't reach the speeds and agility of the sports car.
As everyone knows all the power supplies designed and built for audio are electrically rated to sustain the full output power with adequate cooling for extended periods of time. But they are thermally rated usually to 1/8 or max. 1/3 the rated power. I designed them to be able to sustain within 1/3 to 1/2 of rated power for extended periods of time without entering in thermal shut-down or failure. Some other available power supplies are rated to lower values, 1/8 to 1/5. For playing music content it is not necessary to be thermally rated to more than these values, even so it is very unlikely that will be used more than once a week for half hour close to 1/3 unless the application is PA audio, where there are always fans to do the job. One of the advantages of the SMPS's in audio is their light weight and small size. If we build them to sustain their rated or even peak power for extended periods of time, the size would be at least twice bigger, and the price would also rise with at least 50%, losing one of the main advantages while comparing them with classic mains transformers.
If anyone wonder why none of the large power supply manufacturers like Meanwell, Delta, Eltek, TDK-Lambda, Emerson, Murata, Lucent, and many many others, are not offering any power supply suitable for audio amplifiers, the answer is that this field is a tiny little narrow niche which would bring far less revenue than development expenses. They are selling hundreds of thousands of units per month from their product line while the global request for audio power supplies is at least 100-1000 times less, excluding the PA and OEM companies which are usually hunting the lowest cost solutions, they are definitely not willing to pay any of the named companies above to build them or buy from them, often choosing to buy a design from a third party or do the design in house, with more or less success. I know because I did and I still do such work for such companies. With the emerging of cheap PA amps which are made for less than 50-100$ overall profit (see Peavey IPR's and Berry iNuke) the price war was escalated to another level where each cent counts and a cost saving of few $ can mean the difference between conquer the market or go bankrupt. Those days are gone when Crown audio, Crest-audio, QSC, and others were pulling out heavy monsters, some of them masterpiece of engineering (QSC PL9.0, Crest audio 9001, Crown I-tech 8000 and many others) which cost a fortune to manufacture and need heavily specialized service technicians to fix them when blow up. Now we have 300-500W amplifiers with specs inflated sometimes by adding 1 digit in front or a zero at the back, with heavely undersized electronics, (see no-heatsink wave, which is one of the worst economy cut-off being made, with devastating results to come in few years) which cost much less to produce, offer few years LIMITED warranty and being so cheap ppls wouldn't cry much when one blows up beyond repair.
I underlined above that only the cloned ones suffer from quality issues, as they are are built on the knees with poor quality, fake, substandard or dismantled components. Yet the genuine Meanwell is a respected brand and their products do the job in the applications for which they were designated. Let's take one example: A genuine general purpose brick form-factor power supply with rated power of 350W, 48V 6A which have considerably higher EMI, lower efficiency and higher output ripple than connexelectronic power supplies which are designed for audio purposes, will do a better job while used in an automation panel where has to supply motors, relays, actuators, signal lights and whatever else which require half to full output output power for several hours, and where a connexelectronic power supply might enter in over-temperature protection if full output power is required for long period of times, it's lower EMI and lower ripple wouldn't help for such application. Even the efficiency which is at least double (93% compared to 85% is more than double, half of 93% efficient would be 86.5%) won't help much if a massive heatsink and forced air-cooling is not used. remember that the brick has it's entire housing acting like a heatsink, plus a cooling fan, plus the base on which is mounted will also act like a heatsink. If we add a larger heatsink and a fan to any connexelectronic power supply, the situation changes, it will be able to work in same conditions with even lower temperature increase (less than half wasted power for the same output power) due to higher efficiency, lower temperature means longer lifetime.
We are comparing a sports car with a tractor. The only thing they have in common is the number of wheels and Hp rating, the sports cat can't pull a heavy load trailer, same as the tractor can't reach the speeds and agility of the sports car.
As everyone knows all the power supplies designed and built for audio are electrically rated to sustain the full output power with adequate cooling for extended periods of time. But they are thermally rated usually to 1/8 or max. 1/3 the rated power. I designed them to be able to sustain within 1/3 to 1/2 of rated power for extended periods of time without entering in thermal shut-down or failure. Some other available power supplies are rated to lower values, 1/8 to 1/5. For playing music content it is not necessary to be thermally rated to more than these values, even so it is very unlikely that will be used more than once a week for half hour close to 1/3 unless the application is PA audio, where there are always fans to do the job. One of the advantages of the SMPS's in audio is their light weight and small size. If we build them to sustain their rated or even peak power for extended periods of time, the size would be at least twice bigger, and the price would also rise with at least 50%, losing one of the main advantages while comparing them with classic mains transformers.
If anyone wonder why none of the large power supply manufacturers like Meanwell, Delta, Eltek, TDK-Lambda, Emerson, Murata, Lucent, and many many others, are not offering any power supply suitable for audio amplifiers, the answer is that this field is a tiny little narrow niche which would bring far less revenue than development expenses. They are selling hundreds of thousands of units per month from their product line while the global request for audio power supplies is at least 100-1000 times less, excluding the PA and OEM companies which are usually hunting the lowest cost solutions, they are definitely not willing to pay any of the named companies above to build them or buy from them, often choosing to buy a design from a third party or do the design in house, with more or less success. I know because I did and I still do such work for such companies. With the emerging of cheap PA amps which are made for less than 50-100$ overall profit (see Peavey IPR's and Berry iNuke) the price war was escalated to another level where each cent counts and a cost saving of few $ can mean the difference between conquer the market or go bankrupt. Those days are gone when Crown audio, Crest-audio, QSC, and others were pulling out heavy monsters, some of them masterpiece of engineering (QSC PL9.0, Crest audio 9001, Crown I-tech 8000 and many others) which cost a fortune to manufacture and need heavily specialized service technicians to fix them when blow up. Now we have 300-500W amplifiers with specs inflated sometimes by adding 1 digit in front or a zero at the back, with heavely undersized electronics, (see no-heatsink wave, which is one of the worst economy cut-off being made, with devastating results to come in few years) which cost much less to produce, offer few years LIMITED warranty and being so cheap ppls wouldn't cry much when one blows up beyond repair.
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