Hello guys,
in these days I bought a new Behringer EPX4000 amplifier, and I would like to share with You some details, photo and little measurements of it, starting from the learning I had with an EPQ2000, which I commented in another thread on this forum.
First of all a note on the way Behringer now uses on its many of its power amp specifications; whe You find something like "per channel, stereo" you should consider stereo mode but with 1 channel driver, and this has been confirmed to my by a behringer tech guys during some "hot" comments exchanged with the support.
The EPX4000 (which finally is an EPX3000) is delcared with that condition for 530W/8Ohm and I bought it thinking of having around 450W/8Ohm stereo.
When it arrived I was too coriuous and I immediately opened it to see its internals and took some photos
The first picture confirms that we are basically facing an EPX3000, with the EPX2000 marking confirming that the same motherboard is used for the two models.
The second picture show the details of the supply voltage, reported as 65 and 100; looking on the QSC website I found the CX-702 and the DCA2422 schematics reporting the supply voltage as 67 and 99. They are declared for 425W/8Ohm, so I expect this to be the right figure for the EPX4000.
The third picture is the detail of the capacitors on the mains: 4x2200uF, in series 2 by 2 like several QSCs, while the EPQ2000 has 2x1500uF.
The fourht is the detail of the supply reservoir capacitors bank: a total of 16x470uF, while in the DCA and CX we have a total of 20x470uF
Finally a detail of the cooling tunnel which is a little smaller in the front of the amplifier, reasonably in order to compensate the distance from the fan.
The amplifier seems well built, with a better assembly appearence than the EPQ2000 I have; behringer adopted another brand of capacitors, DECON (another china brand) instead of XUNDA ... but I will replace in the short term them with PANASONIC.
After this inspection I took the first measurement of the amplifier using my setup built on 8 ARCOL 50W resistors mounted on a heatsink; they are 2ohms each and I wired them in order to have 2x8Ohm loads. these resistor have a power admittance to be five times the specs with a duty cycle of 5s when mounted on a heatsink, so each channel can sustain 1000W.
I then injected a 100Hz sin wave with a duty cicle of 5s on and 10s off, with 5s being already enough for evaluating true RMS power; the EPX4000 started to show the first signs of clipping at 59.5V, which translates into 442W/8Ohm, and this is also the maximum voltage which the limiter allow to deliver on 8Ohm load.
I lately found that when I was measuring the amp, my wife was doing a bath with a 2000W heater on
, so this seems to have been like a real test.
Given this premises in my opinion this amp is already a good value for the money it costs (the were 325 at my preferred seller in Milan)
I will post additional tests during the next days.
in these days I bought a new Behringer EPX4000 amplifier, and I would like to share with You some details, photo and little measurements of it, starting from the learning I had with an EPQ2000, which I commented in another thread on this forum.
First of all a note on the way Behringer now uses on its many of its power amp specifications; whe You find something like "per channel, stereo" you should consider stereo mode but with 1 channel driver, and this has been confirmed to my by a behringer tech guys during some "hot" comments exchanged with the support.
The EPX4000 (which finally is an EPX3000) is delcared with that condition for 530W/8Ohm and I bought it thinking of having around 450W/8Ohm stereo.
When it arrived I was too coriuous and I immediately opened it to see its internals and took some photos
The first picture confirms that we are basically facing an EPX3000, with the EPX2000 marking confirming that the same motherboard is used for the two models.
The second picture show the details of the supply voltage, reported as 65 and 100; looking on the QSC website I found the CX-702 and the DCA2422 schematics reporting the supply voltage as 67 and 99. They are declared for 425W/8Ohm, so I expect this to be the right figure for the EPX4000.
The third picture is the detail of the capacitors on the mains: 4x2200uF, in series 2 by 2 like several QSCs, while the EPQ2000 has 2x1500uF.
The fourht is the detail of the supply reservoir capacitors bank: a total of 16x470uF, while in the DCA and CX we have a total of 20x470uF
Finally a detail of the cooling tunnel which is a little smaller in the front of the amplifier, reasonably in order to compensate the distance from the fan.
The amplifier seems well built, with a better assembly appearence than the EPQ2000 I have; behringer adopted another brand of capacitors, DECON (another china brand) instead of XUNDA ... but I will replace in the short term them with PANASONIC.
After this inspection I took the first measurement of the amplifier using my setup built on 8 ARCOL 50W resistors mounted on a heatsink; they are 2ohms each and I wired them in order to have 2x8Ohm loads. these resistor have a power admittance to be five times the specs with a duty cycle of 5s when mounted on a heatsink, so each channel can sustain 1000W.
I then injected a 100Hz sin wave with a duty cicle of 5s on and 10s off, with 5s being already enough for evaluating true RMS power; the EPX4000 started to show the first signs of clipping at 59.5V, which translates into 442W/8Ohm, and this is also the maximum voltage which the limiter allow to deliver on 8Ohm load.
I lately found that when I was measuring the amp, my wife was doing a bath with a 2000W heater on
, so this seems to have been like a real test.Given this premises in my opinion this amp is already a good value for the money it costs (the were 325 at my preferred seller in Milan)
I will post additional tests during the next days.
