ELEKTOR September article

[Pierre]

Hello all.

Yesterday I went to a press office and purchased the September'07 issue of ELEKTOR magazine. I was greatly surprised to see that there is a review of 11 amplifier modules. Among them, they compare Coldamp , Hypex and NewClassD and a number of other conventional designs.

Interesting read... although they don't publish any listening impressions, only bare measurements and some comments. (in fact they ask for feedback from readers that test them in ther audio equipment!)

[Pierre]

EDIT: Sorry, I have just read that one member of this forum had already said this in other thread. Our messages must have been crossed!

[IVX]

so what conclusion was made Elector?

[Pierre]

Basically none :-)
It is a rather aseptic study where they expose some of the main characteristic of each one and a table with some measurements of bandwidth, THD, etc.
They basically say that the three studied Class-D amplifiers are very similar in characteristics and measures, but don't provide any impression about their sound, in fact they haven't listened to all of them, from what I can read.

[Bender.ru]

http://www.elektor.com/magazines.46742.lynkx i can't find that article Pierre, what matter? Or you told about differ magazine?


ps: sorry, here it is http://www.elektor.com/magazines/200...e.227957.lynkx


but, registration procedure very boring thing, maybe anybody post article here?


Blin, they want money for article, i'm very disappointment, damn!

[jan.didden]

Originally posted by Bender.ru
[url][snip]Blin, they want money for article, i'm very disappointment, damn!

Terrible, isn't it? They ALL want money! I went to the baker today to get some bread, what do you know, he wanted MONEY for it. Thank god for a few people like you who work happily for free. And oh yes, I have a job for you. For free of course...

Jan Didden

[Pierre]

Yeh, that's normal. It is their busines after all.
The magazine is fairly cheap so you can get a copy, it worths the money, specially this month ;-)

[noah katz]

"Blin, they want money for article, i'm very disappointment, damn!"

$1.60 for the article seems very reasonable to me.

[lohk]

I just read the article (in German). It indeed seems very disappointing in the view of judging and giving "audiophile points". But it is a good overview about several modules, with different technology, and maybe for regular Elektor readers who are no rabid audiophiles probably also partly new.

I found it very interesting - especially the technical data comparision charts. You also must consider that they compared cheap kits in class-ab with chipamps and Class-D amps:

Interestingly the cheapest module (Velleman VM100, Class-ab discreet, 50Euro) has the best signal to noise ratio (100db) compared to the Coldamp BP4078 with mere 79db (120Euro). The Coldamp is much more powerful nevertheless...

The Coldamp has the worst intermodulation (4.5%) compared to the cheap Monacor IPA50 (0.14%, using a TDA7296).

The Hypex UCD400ST measured 226W (8Ohms), and did not even switch down without an extra cooling (the module is very small as you know).

etc etc, and no judgement.


Yes, I found it a very interesting read. And even without somebody telling me how good or bad the modules have sounded. I trust those individual statements very little anyhow.

[lohk]

They measured them as they were delivered, I suppose, which is definitely fair. They did not change feedback and amplifications rates, which maybe seem unfair in technical terms. They also use a very stabile power supply for testing.

Only the Hypex had an appropriate input sensitivity for professional balanced use with studio level (about 2V), most of other were to sensitive, one (Groundamp) was very insensitive. The Coldamp is 2db down already with 20kHz, starting this tilt at 5kHz, the NewClassD NCD1 had almost the same. The Hypex did not show this.