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Post by tatentoby on Aug 23, 2014 10:12:13 GMT -5
Currently looking for an amp upgrade and have been reading about energy storage in SS amps. Is this just sales hype or is it relevant to the power output of an amp? If one amp can store 100
joules of power vs another which can store 400 joules of power, can I as a user tell the difference? Thanks
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Post by lionear on Aug 27, 2014 21:41:39 GMT -5
This is a bit of BS.
I've been told that audio amplifier power supplies are a bit of a "black art". In any case, a great deal depends on the rest of the circuitry.
A huge amount of energy storage is no guarantee that the amp will sound good - it's just one approach. Goldmund amps do not use a hefty power supply - they claim that will "slow down" their amp (whatever that means). Judging by the capacitors, Emotiva amps don't have "hefty" power supplies, either.
The best advice I can give is to get an amp that sounds good to you. I'd forget about all the design specs, etc. - just about all amps have THD below 0.1% and are flat in response from below 20Hz and up to about 50 kHz.
That's not to say that all amps sound the same. Absolutely not.
It's probably very hard do better than amps from Emotiva. They're really, really good. And they offer huge amounts of power, at very reasonable prices.
Good luck.
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Post by garbulky on Aug 28, 2014 0:16:09 GMT -5
Well it's good but it doesn't necessarily make or break an amp. An amp needs just as much energy storage as it needs to sound as good as it does  For instance, an XPA-1 L does 500 watts @ 4 ohms. However it has a 400 VA power supply. Hmmm.... what that means is that the energy has to come from somewhere to be able to acheieve that rating for the time it is needed to be officially rated as such. I can only imagine it comes from capacitance. The good news is that in real world performance where nobody ever sees a continous power draw in music this rating would hold up to a real world expectation. For comparison a Parasound JC-1 does 800 watts @ 4 ohms but also has a 1900 KVA power supply (as well as capacitance) and has a maximum power requirement of 1280 watts of power when doing full power into four ohms. Here it appears that the JC-1 has a hefty power supply and should be able to sustain those power ratings for quite some time. But even it uses capacitance. Granted this is significantly pricier! Basically in the end does the amp sound good? If it does, then that's all you need to think about. I don't think there is a massive correlation between capacitance and sound quality. There is SOME. But it's not necessarily make or break. |
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Post by Gary Cook on Aug 28, 2014 0:28:31 GMT -5
It's a reversible question, if a power amp has an adequate power supply then it can sound good (all the way up to its rated volume).
That doesn't mean that it will, just that it can.
Looking at it in reverse, if a power amp doesn't have an adequate power supply then it can't sound good.
Cheers
Gary
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Post by tatentoby on Aug 28, 2014 7:18:02 GMT -5
I agree with what everyone has said. Emo amps do have the power to drive whatever you own, and have the power supply needed for those times when a demand is put on an amp. However, if a smaller amp (usually cheaper) is able to store unused power/energy and only use it when needed, could it then step up and compare to an amp with a larger more expensive power supply at those times? Or is this only what the makers want us to believe? Thanks
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