Digital amp revolution here

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#4
Digital Amps

Hi

Lets see how long it is going to take before the high end analog amps sales plunge into despair when cheap digital amps start to outperform them at a fraction of the price.

I cannot wait for these amps to become freely available to all although I must say that a nice high end analog amps can still make my heart jump a beat or two...



Jozua
 
#5
Re: Digital Amps

Jozua said:
Hi

Lets see how long it is going to take before the high end analog amps sales plunge into despair when cheap digital amps start to outperform them at a fraction of the price.
Jozua
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I would say "soon". Take a look at the Panasonic and Sony ES digital amp and see how small the heatsinks are and how they eliminated that clunky and expensive transformer, two of the most expensive items in an amp.
 
#6
Take a look at the Panasonic and Sony ES digital amp and see how small the heatsinks are and how they eliminated that clunky and expensive transformer, two of the most expensive items in an amp.
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The use of switching amplifier technology does not per se eliminate the use of a proper PSU. The contrary is true.

If a recent implementation doesn't use a large transformer it is mainly due to the use of a switching PSU.
These however have been used for conventional poweramps for years already: www.chordelectronics.co.uk

Regards

Charles
 
#7
There is a lot of rumours going around these days concerning those cheap Panasonic receivers. Especially the XR45 is said to sound excellent - would be interesting since it does 6x100W @ 4,2 kilograms weight. Of course only as an amplifier, leaving all that digital processing aside. Maybe an interesting idea to use it for an active system.
 
#8
Lets see how long it is going to take before the high end analog amps sales plunge into despair when cheap digital amps start to outperform them at a fraction of the price.
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I won't be holding my breath. Similar forecasts were made when CDs first became available but amusingly now there is a wider choice of high-end turntables than in the eighties.
 
#9
HBarske said:
There is a lot of rumours going around these days concerning those cheap Panasonic receivers. Especially the XR45 is said to sound excellent - would be interesting since it does 6x100W @ 4,2 kilograms weight. Of course only as an amplifier, leaving all that digital processing aside. Maybe an interesting idea to use it for an active system.
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There has been a fair bit of discussion of these guys over in the Digital section - check the 'digital amplifier' thread. It's also popped up on AVS forums. I have the XR25 which is the model down from the 45, although it *looks* like the main differences are feature-related rather than sound quality related. (I suspect the 45 might have slightly better performance via the analog inputs. I've been underwhelemed with the 25 via analog in)

My preliminary take is that they are indeed very promising. I'm getting pretty spectacular results on 2-channel material when fed by spdif. I need to do more comparisons to see where it stands in absolute terms, though. For a 2-channel redbook audiophile on a strict budget, though, I think it's just silly good - $300 for a DAC and an amp?!?!

I would caution against getting _too_ carried away just yet, though. In particular the power supply is CRITICAL in digital amps, and I don't think there's any way this guy will come anywhere close to it's rated power while still delivering good sound quality. The 45 may be better in this regard, since there is a lot of extra circuitry marked out on the PS board of my 25 that is labeled 'XR45 only'. If you think of it as a 40 or 50w/ch amp with a bit of headroom, it's probably more accurate.

For the DIY crowd, the obvious application is active speakers. Since the Equibit chipset uses direct I2S input, the possibility exists to bypass everything and send I2S straight into the amp. Modding a Behringer DCX2496 to output I2S to one of these would be an absolutely killer budget active system.
 
#10
dwk123 said:

[snip]I would caution against getting _too_ carried away just yet, though. In particular the power supply is CRITICAL in digital amps, and I don't think there's any way this guy will come anywhere close to it's rated power while still delivering good sound quality. The 45 may be better in this regard, since there is a lot of extra circuitry marked out on the PS board of my 25 that is labeled 'XR45 only'. If you think of it as a 40 or 50w/ch amp with a bit of headroom, it's probably more accurate.
[snip]
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My experiences with amps with smps's are different. I feel that with even a tiny smps power supply, they can sound excellent at high levels where a "conventional" amp runs into power supply modulation due to high peak currents. A linear power supply only charges the caps at about 10% of the mains cycle. Smps's are always charging, so there is much less ripply, also because the freq is much, much higher.

I have two 80-ies SONY TA-86N's which had originally an smps, which was broken (they all broke, smps's were not mature at that time). I have one fitted with a 2A continuous smps, and it deliveres full power ON MUSIC of some 60W peak per side (I have upgraded the supply caps from 2000uF per side to 6600uF per side.). Of course, if you test it with sine waves it cannot deliver that power, but maybe we should stop this silly business to specify power amps for max continuous power....

Jan Didden
 
#11
The XR45 is rated at 100W/6R X2, I could not find an 8R or 4R rating.

Nor could I find an all channels driven rating.

The power was also spec'd at 0.9% THD, for $224 for the XR25 I might buy one to see what the noise is about.
 
#15
janneman said:

A linear power supply only charges the caps at about 10% of the mains cycle. Smps's are always charging, so there is much less ripply, also because the freq is much, much higher.

Jan Didden
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Do you mean to say that a linear regulated supply charges the caps 10% of the time with the error amp doing the heavy lifting.

When SMPS fail -- which they used to do quite frequently -- they fail spectacularly.

We must congratulate Panasonic on an amplifier which approaches the distortion levels found in tube amps of the early 1960's.

When manufacturers stop advertising continuous power, perhaps auto manufacturers wll stop advertising horsepower. It's the sizzle that sells the steak.
 
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