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Higher Power Amplifiers

897 views 12 replies 7 participants last post by  fatbottom 
#1 ·
Hello all,

I am new to this forum. I quickly read over the stickies in this subforum hoping to find an answer for my question but did not have any luck.

Are there any manufacturers that make "higher" power amplifiers? By higher I mean, greater than what a normal 15 amp IEC connector can carry 120VAC at. Obviously, this would require a different power supply scheme. Perhaps, 220VAC at 30amp? Or maybe flying leads straight to a 220 distribution?

I guess at this point I should probably make clear my idea of "power". If I say I need 4000W of power to one transducer, I mean, the amplifier should be able to hold a sinusoidal signal at 4000W without clipping for time=infinity (in other words NOT for just a few milliseconds). What I do NOT want is an amplifier to claim 6000W or 12000W with a caveat. This is only during the few milliseconds the capacitor bank is discharging and at 5% THD (probably more). What use are these ratings?!

I will make clear what I want to do. I wish to power a single subwoofer in the range of 20hz to about 200hz. This subwoofer is rated for 3500W continuous power (meaning 3500W constant for many minutes ATLEAST, so an amplifier of 3500W to 4000W will do). I wish to know if anyone sells an amplifier that performs within the constraints I listed. No price constraint, however, a budget amplifier that is reliable will do. I do not need .001 THD, I would be happy with 1% or less.

Thanks
-B
 
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#2 ·
You should be looking at pro amps for that much wattage. Consumer amps might be able to deliver that much wattage but the price will convince you to go pro. Crown and QSC are decent amps. Pyle is junk. Behringer is ok but not on-par with Crown or QSC IMO. Some of their amps are designed to drive low impedances down to 2ohm without drama. You can get a Crown XLS series amp for $300-500 depending on model. The 2500 in bridged mode outputs 2400w into 4ohm loads. It weighs all of 12 pounds.
 
#4 · (Edited)
Your power is limited by the power source. If you had 220 volts ( Euro) at 20 amps, that would be over 4000 watts, I guess. In the US, with 120 Volts and 20 amps (if you could continuously draw 20 amps) that would be limited to 2400 watts.

But you could not push that kind of power into any single speaker continuously, so why the need for continuous 1000 watt power? You are not going to listen to sine waves at 1000 watts, are you? Sounds like a bad way to go deaf

If you simply want the most power you can buy, buy a pro amp. Crown makes good amps, and some might bridge to 2000+ watts. I don't see the point to much more power due to diminishing returns.

If you are rich, there's this-
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...fIlb8Acr3XdcSENhsIhEu3PG2Q5hOznzcaRoCcjvw_wcB
 
#7 ·
Your power is limited by the power source. If you had 220 volts ( Euro) at 20 amps, that would be over 4000 watts, I guess. In the US, with 120 Volts and 20 amps (if you could continuously draw 20 amps) that would be limited to 2400 watts.

But you could not push that kind of power into any single speaker continuously, so why the need for continuous 1000 watt power? You are not going to listen to sine waves at 1000 watts, are you? Sounds like a bad way to go deaf

If you simply want the most power you can buy, buy a pro amp. Crown makes good amps, and some might bridge to 2000+ watts. I don't see the point to much more power due to diminishing returns.
I thought someone might challenge why I am wanting to do this. Allow me to explain. There are some car audio subwoofers capable of taking 5000W continuous power to a single subwoofer! I am looking at doing this. I am looking at inserting a subwoofer in the mix to be an absolute powerhouse. Audio quality is not high on my list. Long sustained bass notes are prevalent in electronic music and other bass heavy music. So, a good test for robustness of a system is to test its upper operating limits. Thus, playing a sinusoid for a long time and hope the amp does not go into protect/thermal mode. As for input power sourcing, I was not sure if there were any companies that made custom solutions. (IE flying leads, or no connector at all, that has the proper gauge wire to carry the amperage at 120VAC). If every company uses the standard 15A IEC connector, I may be out of luck!

As far as going deaf... you are going to have to type louder! I can't hear you... :)
Now that I think about it, all my hobbies are loud! Loud LS motors, loud music, guns... music to my ears.
 
#5 ·
I am glad someone mentioned Behringer. They claim to have an iNuke NU12000. Turns out their number of 12000 watts is a bit... off. If you do the math based on their input power connector ratings (31A*120VAC=3720W), they are physically bottlenecked at 3720*80%.eff=2976W. A far cry from 12000W. It is the huge capacitor bank that gives them 12000W for maybe 10 milliseconds... then they are capped at 2900W at most for sustained notes at that power.

I will check out QSC and Crown.

Thanks for the advice,
-B
 
#6 ·
You really should be somewhat realistic about the crest factor of real sound. 10 to 1 at least. So as long as the peak power can handle a short term 10 to 1 peak in the signal, you are good to go. Anyways, I am not sure how good people are at detecting some clipping in sub 200hz signals
 
#8 ·
I admit I have my doubts ANY subwoofer can handle a continuous 5000 watt sine wave.

Also assuming 4 ohm speaker, 5000 Watts = v*v/4; v = 141 Volts. That is insane. That is not much different ( in fact worse I think) than simply hooking your sub directly to your AC output, and outputting the 60 cycle AC as sound. The heat dissipation would be insane as it's not near 100% efficient.

I seem to recall power handling uses pink noise with a 6 dB crest factor (there are a variety of standards). That is a different thing than a continuous sine wave with a power of 5000 watts.
 
#11 · (Edited)
I think you were really asking about car audio, was not sure, but here's some high power amps. Note, that as expected they are mainly talking peak power here, because the power supply caps can only allow the magic of exceeding power source for a short period of time.

I don't get the desire to connect something that can power a welder to a speaker, but I guess countless people wouldn't understand many of my hobbies either.

Anyway, this link might be of interest for high power amps connected to wall power -

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/155-d...b-gruppen-fp14000-gets-spanked-plate-amp.html

Seems to me that to power up something to 5000 watts, you have entered into the realm of very dangerous and deadly power sources. What would a person do, use multiple 20a supplies or get into 3 phase 240 volt supplies? Madness I think
 
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