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Post by cullenhall on Apr 1, 2018 22:30:44 GMT -5
I found a heck of deal on some Behringer NU3000 Amplifiers that I could not pass up. I already had two of them in my theater, one for each Ultimax Sub, and enjoyed their performance in that application. Now that I had three more of these amps I decided to give them a shot in a full range application driving my 5 channel Airmotiv speakers. I have had them racked up for a few days now and while I had my concerns about using very budget friendly class D professional amplifiers in a home theater application I am very pleased with the sound, quite neutral, and with claimed 680W RMS per channel into 4 ohms headroom is UNREAL. I thought perhaps there would be some harshness in high frequencies due to the class D design but I certainly cant hear any. All in all I am very pleased and while the kind of potential power is just ludicrous in this application (15kW) its kind of fun. I guess we shall see if I can trip the dedicated 20 amp circuit feeding the amplifiers - it should for any length of time "only" be able to supply 2400W. Before the NU3000 amplifiers I was using three Alesis RA-500 amplifiers. Being of a traditional class A/B design they left little to be desired had plenty of power for a modest home theater application. Attachment DeletedAttachment Deleted
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Post by boomzilla on Apr 2, 2018 1:02:22 GMT -5
Hi cullenhall - I've never owned any Behringer gear (except for 18" passive subs for live music). I have, however, used lots of Crown XLS series "pro" amps. I found them somewhat glassy sounding in the midrange and treble. Have you heard any of the Crown amps and how would you think they sounded compared to your Behringers? Do the fans on the Behringers run continuously? Are they noisy? Thanks - Boomzilla
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Post by cullenhall on Apr 2, 2018 9:27:26 GMT -5
Behringer is a funny company, 15 years ago when I was more involved on a day to day basis with live audio and some studio stuff if you had any of their equipment in a system is was a "scarlet letter" and generally nobody took you too seriously. Fast forward to today and their parent company now owns a legendary mixing counsel company, Midas, and they have really stepped up their game with the X32 series mixers by incorporating versions of Midas preamps into their mixers. I use two of them every Sunday in my Church and make no excuses for the sound - they are simply wonderful mixers. My experience has been similar with their amplifiers the ones from years ago were poorly constructed and the sound was passable but little else. The iNuke series amplifiers have impressed me and while I have to admit its hard to take a amplifier that has essentially NO weight to it (~8 lbs) and essentially NO heat sink seriously these amps have impressed me enough that I am going to use them in my main theater for some time. Here is a picture of my front of house rack at church with 2 X32 rack mixers: Attachment DeletedAs for the sound, if I had to compare it to another amp I would say these sound reminiscent of the Crown K2 amplifers from a few years ago. I know what you mean about some professional amplifiers sounding glassy or perhaps somewhat tinny when asked to deliver so little power when they are often designed to push out much more. These are a touch brighter than my old Alesis RA-500 amps I was using. I have not heard the latest crown XLS series amplifiers so I cant comment there, however, I have used many amplifiers for my PA systems over the years from Crown, QSC and LAB GRUPPEN and have always found them to be wonderful amplifiers put together by very competent individuals. Would I put any of these "professional" amps up against the Mark Levinson's of the world or our own XPA-1? certainly not - they are intended for VERY different applications. For this room and these speakers I have had three amplifiers connected to them, the Alesis RA-500s, an Emotiva XPA-5 Gen 2 (from the lakehouse while we are moving out of the old one and into the new one) and now these iNuke amplifiers. My favorite is XPA-5 but there is just something about these Class - D amps that are more fun. Perhaps its something to do with the ribbon tweeters on my Emotiva speakers that these amps like. I should perhaps hook my SVS ultra towers to one of these and see if my feelings are the same... stay tuned and ill report back when I get that done. We close on the new lake place on Friday so then the fun begins on setting up the new house. Ill create a separate thread on that project.
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Post by cullenhall on Apr 2, 2018 9:28:59 GMT -5
Oh and yes the fans a quite noisy and do run all the time, the ONLY way I would dare use these in a home application is with the equipment in a separate room as I do.
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cgolf
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Post by cgolf on Apr 2, 2018 9:35:53 GMT -5
I'm running an XPA-2 for my fronts but I use QSC amps for the center and rears. I think they sound fine and can't really tell any difference between them and the XPA. Not saying there isn't, just that I can't hear it if it is. Fans are evident but when anything, music or movies, are playing, the fans disappear.
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Post by cullenhall on Apr 2, 2018 9:50:44 GMT -5
I'm running an XPA-2 for my fronts but I use QSC amps for the center and rears. I think they sound fine and can't really tell any difference between them and the XPA. Not saying there isn't, just that I can't hear it if it is. Fans are evident but when anything, music or movies, are playing, the fans disappear. Agreed! for the most part when I think I hear a difference between amplifiers its because one just has more gain than another. for what its worth Dirac could not tell the difference between the three amplifiers, when comparing the native room response so from a frequency response standpoint there is VERY little difference.
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Post by boomzilla on Apr 3, 2018 5:09:26 GMT -5
Thank you kindly cullenhall - Exactly what i needed to know. I was thinking of buying one of the Behringer amps for the rear channels of a surround system, but I don't have the luxury of a separate closet to isolate the fan noise. So my number two thought was that I could substitute a (specially-designed, low-noise) aftermarket fan for the Behringer original. Such fans are common, inexpensive, and easy to install. The replacement fan might not move the air that the original did, but I shouldn't be running the amps at high output, either. And even at worst case, the amps do have thermal shutdowns for output protection. The issue is temporarily sidelined, through because I found a Carver five-channel amp that will handle all the surround duties in a single box (and without the need for a cooling fan). But you're totally right - Behringer gear used to be frowned on by "real" musicians. But their Euro series kind of broke that particular prejudice. Thanks again for the info - Boom
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