I have been TRL SS mono amps with battery power, M250 (250W) and M500(500W) for over a year. The huge ~200 lb battery chassis ensures the instant, ample, and sufficient current can be supplied on demand, especially while playing back a dynamic piece of large scale orchestral work. The amps enable the system to playback with the transparency, transient, weight, density, and dynamic that surpass my previous amps such as Krell KAS2 and Pass x250, and many other top amps owned by and heard at friends. To my knowledge, the battery pack serves as a current reservoir/buffer, therefore the batteries are being recharged while in use. Because of that, there is no usage limitation. I often have the system on for two or three days during the weekend. I usually just leave the amps on and only turn them off and back on when I need to turn on my tube pre.
Battery powered amps
Anybody have experience with battery powered amps? I am specifically intrigued by the Red Wine Audio products. They have a pair of 70 watt mono blocks that run totally on battery power. Six Moons has reviewed these (and RWA's 30 watters) very favorably. At 70 watts, they should be capable of driving a fairly wide range of speakers and in reading up on the technology they seem to be fairly low maintenance. Of course, recharging is an issue, but it looks like these amps will go 6-12 hours on a single charge. That would satisfy 95% of my listening requirements. Considering how much time, effort and expense that we audiophiles spend trying to tame the AC powering our equipment, battery power is very intriguing since it removes that evil altogether. It looks like RWA also has a tubed battery powered pre-amp/DAC in the works as well. Cool stuff, but I would be interested in real world experiences.