Inside pics of Behringer EPX2000

very cool, picked up a few of these yesterday for some test projects of mine. Wanted to see how they compared to the more expensive switching amps rated for around the same power. If nothing else the blue light looks cool as hell



I'm not sure they have the balls of a similar rated class a/b amps but man i don't mind the weight!

I am going to order a few of these low cost amps,they look very well built for such low cost designs!

In the worst case I will power my computer subs.Something tells me these should perform very well for the money.

greats pics man!

i've been curious about the guts of this one. the amp looks pretty darn good. i'd be interested to hear from the amp gurus where they think behringer cheaped out on this one.

mjg/kyle, any chance that if we cover the cost of two-way packing/shipping that you'd be willing to let chuck test it on his bench?

Is chuck testing again?

thats fine. i'd be happy to send one of mine out

"i'd be happy to send one of mine out"

the fans go wild!

i know that he will be testing a peavey ipr (also a smps budgete amp), so this is fantastic.

Please do, I would love to know the results!!

oh ya, you are too btw, its been decided.

mjg, you are very cool for stepping up. chuck has graciously offered to test one of the new behringers for us following his test of the peavey ipr. since kyle has offered already, and since yours are active in your ht, and since chuck may take a little time to get to it, let's go with kyle for the primary and you for the "on-deck" for this one.

kyle, did you happen to order the 3000 or the 2000? if the 3k, i think most avs folks would be interested in seeing that one tested (even though 3k vs. 2k bridged watts is only about 2db).

props again to both of you. seeing people step up like this is very cool.

yes i did. looks like another good one. the street price is a little higher on that one vs. claimed performance on some of the others though. assuming these amps all live up to their specs, there is probably little difference in practical performance. both amps appear to have the guts to support their claims. what has your experience been with them?

i have the 3k's

I have seen car amplifier guts for the past 10 years that are one piece circuit
board with really good build quality from offshore manufacturing for products
considered cheap. I'm not surprised anymore to see this type of build quality
even in home or pro audio products from the cheaper companies.

The EPX2000 guts looks good and the EPX3000 probably shares the same
circuit board, it would only make sense to do so. To get the higher rating of
the EPX3000, they probably do the same tricks as the other companies
where one circuit board is used for all the models.

EPX



Compared to the QSC PLX3402;







PLX also uses one circuit board for many models and they allocate more
heatsinking on the output stage than the Behringer EPX, thus the EPX
would have more potential to go into thermal overload.

I run my PLX's at a lower than rated impedance, the design can handle this
in certain situations; one reason is the nice heatsink design, thus I wouldn't
replace my PLX's for EPX's as the EPX wouldn't be able to handle it. But the
EPX looks good as long as you understand where it's bottleneck is and design
your sound system around it.

thy, much thanks for your input. good stuff as always.

for a home user, we'd have to have a comparo in order to see which heat sink was "good enough". my bet is on the qsc, but i wouldn't take money against the behringer. they are probably both 'good enough' for home environments. most homes have a/c and don't blast full spl all night long. i'm actually kind of surprised that we don't see more home systems with big fans running low revs in order to cool equipment, but that is o.t.

the qsc also has some crossover correction? that makes it sound better. not in the traditional sense of a crossover, but in the sense of each cross of the zero degree plane.

re: What is good enough for a home environment, AC cooled ?

I understand your point, the average person can benefit from low cost
amplifiers with good performance numbers, but the lunatics that like to
push audio to crazy levels can't use Behringer amplifiers (like me).

My audio stuff is home environment with AC but I still push the sound system to
extreme levels and need an above average amplifier for the task. When
I crank my tunes, there is no hiccups; no amplifier or array driver failure,
yet the system is operating at it's limit.

What has me thinking is that my cheap line array still hasn't had any
blown drivers in the past 5 years in spite that the cheap array is being driven
by four PLX3402. To add to the comedy, the array is very low in impedance,
yet those amplifeirs perform and I drive them into clipping.

As it stands, the PLX's are the bottleneck as odd as it may seem, thus I have
a curiousity of how much power do I need to cause line array driver failure ?
I would have to increase my PLX bank to eight amplifiers from four and
re-wire the array where each amplifier has a lighter load and more
power being delivered to the line array drivers (I'm pretty sure the lower impedance
load is cause more losses too). Most likely I won't do this because these are my TV speakers,
but that would be an amplifier rack of eight PLX, convert this crazy concept to EPX amplifiers and you'd
need eight of them to get similar performance as I see now, and sixteen of them for the driver blowing test
curiosity

This is a situation where the EPX wouldn't work for me.

thy, your probs are 99th percentile. have you thought about multiple 15's for the bass/midwoofers? :-)

well we've all been waiting for a LONG TIME for Berri to finally copy PLX - looks like the wait is over. took them what - like 15 years ?

Thy i don't agree with your assertion that PLX has more output stage heatsinking. i have a PLX myself and it's a great amp but u have to take into account that on the Berri that sink has a dedicated fan while on PLX the same fan is also cooling the PSU components.

the real question probably will be - which one produces more fan noise ? it seems both have a reasonably good layout for heat extraction.

i like the fact that HALF of the Berri is taken up by the power supply - this should be good for bass. on the other hand a bigger portion of PLX seems to be occupied by signal portion - so perhaps PLX would have an edge in sound quality.

also on the Berri it seems they couldn't quite work out the circuit board and eded up with that bunch of wire hanging in the middle. so it's not QUITE all there but close enough.

i don't think it should surprise us at all that they were able to do this. if they released it sometime in the 90s now that would have been impressive.

plus let's not forget that PLX has been replaced with PLX 2 for some time now. i haven't seen insides of PLX 2 - is it very similar to PLX ? i heard it mostly just has bigger caps ?

QSC Rep said it's the same design recycled, except PLX2 has the biamp
crossover added and simpler switches on the back, plus the obvious new
chassis and new marketing to change the watts a hair.

http://www.qscaudio.com/images/hi_re...02_rear_hi.jpg

tried to get a better look at the eq feature, its a crossover between the channels, not sure if its easily modifiable for a subsonic filter. the amp seems to have an a/b output stage or so i'm told. It sounds good, but man its ugly when it clips.

These light weight amps are great in the watts to price, are you guys using them full range or just for subs ?? Price paid not a factor would you say a Emotiva design type amp still sound better for full range speakers. Paper spec I know don't tell that story, you guys with the hardware in hand know what is what with this. Which is best with for which use?

I have you compared it subjectively against other amps with your JTRs?

I used an EP2500 (class H) to power a pair of Monitor Audio RS-1's. No problems with sound quality at all, I liked it. However, because of the large amount of gain and the fact that I used them as computer speakers 3ft from me, hiss was a problem.

But I found that nearly all of the hiss came from my DEQ-2496, with the EQ on. With it on bypass, the hiss was greatly reduced, to a level very near what I had with a pioneer receiver. Would be an excellent amp to use for powering mains.

My crown CE4000 (class I) has way too much noise to be used full range. A lot of hiss no matter what! Sub duty only. Let's hope the new Beringer units have a better S/N ratio.

Are the amps adding HISS, due to poor S/N or are are they just so powerful FULL range ??

Probably RF interference, did you use balanced inputs for any of those set ups? or test the ground on your circuit?

It could be several issues (RCA to XLR) or some power issue.


FWIW, I use the Behringer A500 with great sucess. It went head to head vs the Emotiva XPA-5, LPA-1, the Outlaw M2200s and the sunfire Sig amp.

The Behringer A500 is great IMO.

Btw, the Emotiva XPA-5 is still a great price. It will cost you as much for 5 channels from pro amps. I see little reason or need in switching unless you need > 500Watt / ch. The gain structure differences alone sometimes will give you headaches so its not worth it.

No input into DEQ-2496, balanced into EP2500. Nearly all the hiss came from the processing inside the DEQ2496, but taking it out of the equation, there was still a little more hiss than my pioneer VSX-1014. I attributed it to the larger gain structure of the ep2500 amplifying interference.

Using an old (early 90's) sony receiver produced more hiss than with the ep2500 alone. This was with no input signal and with a fan modded ep. Without the fan mod, the hiss would never be heard.

With an unbalanced input going into the DEQ from the computer, computer noise was added to the mix and would be slightly more amplified than with my pioneer AVR

With the CE4000 in place of the ep2500, hiss increased dramatically! I believe the "Binks test" put it at around 80db S/N, and chuck's test put the EP around 109db?

Never had a problem with ground loop hum on that circuit in that house.