Capacitor Upgrade (Plate Amp)

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I have a Parts Express 120W sub amplifier driving a Blueprint 1001 woofer and I'm looking for ways to lower distortion and give the amplifier more control over the woofer because it is a long-excursion design. When I run the amp with the gain at maximum, I think it's clipping because it's all boomy and mushy. If I add the 10,000uf capacitors to the power supply like it was suggested to Griff not long ago, will I eliminate clipping induced by the power supply?
 
bigger caps will improve the bass performance, and they will keep the voltage the same all the time, so clipping -occured by a fall of voltage- will be eliminated. If the clipping still resists, the voltage of the amp is too low for your needs, in this case you can power up the amp (if the components can handle this !!!) by placing a transformer which provide a higher voltage or you have to look for another amp.


Best regards,

HB.
 
Hi there,

Just to clarify a something Hugo said, clipping will not go away. It will just not happen sooner than necessary.

In other words, with your current set up (no pun intended), at full volume the draw from the power supply exceeds the capacity. So good ole Ohm's law comes into play(V=IR). The only thing fixed, so to speak, is the impedance of the power supply, so the thing that must change as current is drawn is voltage. With a big load, voltage drops. With more capacitance, you have more current reserve so voltage doesn't drop. Therefore clipping doesn't occur sooner than it should. But it will occur with peaks, and with todays CDs and DVDs that can happen often. But it may not sound too bad because 1) the speaker will grossly distort even a pure sine wave at a certain level anyway, and 2) it will be too loud to tolerate, let alone notice distortion.

My 2 cents.

Gabe
 
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