Subwoofer Amp Recommendations

I don't understand why a Carver amp would be a problem with connections. Pls explain details.

Ritteri...Why is slew rate meaningful for a SW amp? Is "flat to 5 Hz" really significant? If so, I suggest a Kenwood LO7M, or other DC coupled amp, which is flat to DC.

Ritteri...My point about slew rate is that a subwoofer signal does not involve any "sudden changes", so the ability of an amp to track such changes is immaterial.

The Kenwood LO7M is a true DC amp, with not a single capacitor in the signal path. If you put a steady voltage on the input, say +0.1vdc you will get a steady voltage say +20vdc, at the output. It is truly linear down to DC, unlike the Aragon which you say rolls off (probably minus 3dB) at 5 Hz.

Is response only to 5Hz adequate? Sure, but you are the one who raised the issue of bandwidth below 20 Hz. I am sure that your Aragon is a very fine amp, but its virtues would be wasted driving a subwoofer.

Elgordo..."One man right (or even two men) is a majority of one". In their day the LO7M were considered the best. By now they are all well burned in...and still working!

I have the service manual if anyone is interested. They are flat from DC to 50 Khz +0 -0.5 dB, and to 100KHz +0 -1dB.
Not too shabby.

Ritteri...I guess I must be lucky to have no noise problems or QC defects. (Many, many excellent products are no longer made. There is another thread about this).

I don't think that you can explain the need for high slew rate when processing a signal that has no steep wavefronts. Any rapid signal change has been routed to another amplifier by the crossover. If your SW amplifier did output a rapidly changing voltage (characteristic of midrange or tweeter signals) your Subwoofer driver would not respond anyway.

Sean...The DC blocking capacitor of the typical power amplifier (non-DC-coupled), is at the INPUT, not the output. The only power amplifier that I know of with a series capacitor output is (was) the Dynaco ST120, their first solid state amplifier, the circuit of which resembled "a preamp on steroids".

The output stage of any solid state power amp is DC coupled to the load, and can apply DC to the speaker. A pot is usually provided to trim the DC output down to a few millivolts. An excessive DC output which could damage a speaker would only result from a malfunction of the amplifier.

In the case of a DC coupled amp, dangerous DC output can be generated without any failure of the amplifier, simply by inputing a snall DC voltage. For this reason DC coupled amplifiers, like the Kenwood LO7M tyhpically include a circuit that monitors the output for excessive DC, and shuts it off if necessary. The Kenwood LO7M does this with a relay. Some AC-coupled amplifiers also include such protection...example is my CarverPro ZR1600 digital amplifier.