450 Pound Monobloc Amplifier


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The Boulder 3050 monobloc weighs 450 pounds, 1500 wpc.

A pair of monoblocs weighing right at a half-ton...amazing.

The Pass Labs XS 300 monobloc weighs 300 pounds, 300 wpc.

With all of the advances in amplifier design, does an amp really have to be that big to get the results they're after?

The 1500 wpc D-Sonic monobloc weigh 12 pounds...I love it!
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128x128mitch4t
The bandwidth limit causes phase shift in audible range possibly affecting harmonics summing. My amp, for instance, has -3dB at 65kHz causing 20deg phase shift at 20kHz. Mentioned Rowland model 725 has bandwidth of 350kHz.
I'm interested to see if Stereophile or some other independent publication puts the new Pascal Class D amp from D-Sonic on the measuring bench to see how it compares to recent better Icepower based amps in terms of frequency response/bandwidth.
I don't believe that an amp has to be heavy to sound good. But, I do know to get rated power over the specified bandwidth, you need a serious power supply supply. you can't get around it. Which means that the tranformers must be huge and heavy. Large storage capacitors aren't cheap for the higher rail voltages necessary and they are heavy also. There are "tricks" that some manufacturers use, but they are just that, tricks. However, that is not to say that lower powered amps aren't wonderful. They are. One just needs to be very careful as to what they will be driving and what amount of consistent power is required. I read a review about the Dan D Agistino momentum amps and I would love to hear them. This guy, knows his stuff. I bet they are really great.
Mapman - this question should be addressed to more experienced Audiogoners who have chance to compare them at shows. I can only comment on technical merits.

Minorl1 - no tricks, just different technology. Transformer operating at high frequency can be 10x smaller. For the same reasons capacitors don't have to be large. Smaller caps work great for filtering of higher frequency while voltage stability is handled by regulation. In comparison traditional supply doesn't have any regulation (line or load) and operates at 60Hz. Both conditions require huge amount of capacitors to keep voltage steady under momentary load and to filter out low 120Hz.

One review of my class D amp praised it composure during music peaks (orchestra forte) - that's what load regulated supply brings. In addition so called linear supplies are in reality primitive switchers operating at 120Hz and polluting with high current spikes. Rowland switcher has power factor correction and presents resistive load with smooth current. Jeff Rowland perhaps explains it better:

http://jeffrowlandgroup.com/kb/questions.php?questionid=144
Mitch4t, the 54Lbs per chassis amps from Rowland (M625 and M725) are running in class A/B rather than class D.

Mapman, there is starting to exist rumbllings that recent amp implementations based on new modules may constitute entirely different kettles of sonic fishes. Definitely, some formal comparative reviews of some such creatures would be welcome.