High Current Monoblocks

I'm a believer in hearing components for oneself at home, however that can
be accomplished. You can easily listen to the CI Audio and NuForce amps in
your system with the home trial periods offered by the manufacturers. TRL
offers home auditions to some customers.

In addition, you can always buy a used version of whatever you want to try
and resell it.

Clayton amps get high praise from owners, but I personally stay away from
products with limited distribution, and Clayton's distribution appears to be
extremely limited. It's virtually impossible to hear one before buying unless
you happen to live near an owner.

There are options if you seek them out.

i recently had the rotel rb-1092 in my system. delivers the power you are looking for at 500x2watts. i thought this was a very nice sounding amp with my B&W 804S. you could always get a pair of the rb-1091 rated at 500x1 if you must have mononblock(s) :)

several of either amp for sale on AG and ebay.

Hi Everyone.

I'm with Dodgealum - I get glazy too when I read all this tech stuff. But, I try to learn.

I read on another Forum that "headroom" can be described as the difference between RMS (continuous power) and dynamic (peak) power. Like, 100w RMS vs. 150w dynamic. He then went on to say that in some applications lower headroon is preferable and in other applications more headroom is better. This totally confused me.

Mike

I would followup on Mofimadness by saying that I have one of the Sanders Sound Magtech amps. It is stereo but has 500 watts into 8 ohms. I have never had such a powerful and clean sounding amp. There are mono block versions with 1600 watts into 8 ohms briefly before your mains are drained. I cannot imagine why anyone would ever need such power, however.

I kind of get it. Someone correct me where I'm off in my metaphor. The single most difficult task in the system is the transfer of electrical energy into mechanical energy at the speaker. The amp/speaker interface is critical as a poor match can absolutely ruin an otherwise fine system. The energy that it takes to move the speakers parts may vary over the spectrum of sound from high to low (at one point it may take very little energy to move them, while another may demand tremendous reserves from the amp). This can otherwise be seen in the impedence curve of the speakers in question (where it dips down low the amp will have to put out significantly more power). An amplifier with a specific amount of power to offer can deliver that power, or rather make that power available, in different ways. To make it simplistic for anyone to understand, lets say the demands of your speaker are that of a burning building that can go from a trickle of smoke to a raging fire and back again. Lets say the amps we compare both have 10 battalions of fire fighters to offer up, no more. A high current amp would have all ten battalions at the scene of the fire at all times, even if the fire were just smoldering. A different type of amp would only send a single battalion to that smoldering scene, and send the others there as needed and they would leave immediately back to their stations once their need was filled. Of course going to and from the station takes time, whereas the high-current version has all its resources right there at the site of the fire at all times. I guess this is also a metaphor for a Class A amplifier. Can someone explain to me in simplistic terms the distinction between a "high-current amp" and a Class A amp?