Why Don't We See More High Current Electronics?

Foster,

The Class D/icepower BC ref1000m monoblocks I am using meet all your criteria except for price and power exceeds your stated range at 500w/ch into 8 ohms, which is generally more of a boon than a problem with most large full range speakers built to run all out at higher volumes.

The bass is absolute top notch in my opinion with any kind of music, have not heard anything better in terms of proper weight along with refinement/articulation, at least in my two well tuned rooms (one larger and one smaller). In the sunroom, anything I use that sounds balanced and right in those two rooms tend to go a bit boomy and bass heavy, which clearly indicates that the room is the thing that brings the performance level of an otherwise nicely balanced rig down a notch or two, at least in my case.

I think this is one of the amps that Tvad mentioned above that he has tried and found to deliver properly balanced sound.

I've tried every "good" speaker and amp combo I've owned current and past in that room and always similar results, OK but not great.

I haven't tried my realistic Minimus 7s taht I use over the summer on the deck though! THat might be worth trying! Smaller may be better in a case like this with overzealous room acoustics!

Tvad writes:

Well, I'm of the opinion that it matters based on what I've experienced in my system using speakers that had an uneven impedance curve.

Relating back to what Unsound stated in his previous post, the reduced power output into higher loads (lower impedances if I'm reading Unsound correctly) from an amp that does not double down (double power as impedance is halved) resulted in a sound that was always "bright" because less power was being delivered by into the mids and bass frequencies than the treble frequencies. Therefore, there was a higher decibel level in the highs than in the mids and bass. The difference was not large, and it probably wasn't noticeably measurable on a Radio Shack decibel meter, but the results were clearly audible on my speakers that had an uneven impedance curve.

Once I drove them with an amp that doubled down, the sound was evened out and the speakers no longer sounded "bright".

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Sorry, but this is pretty basic misunderstanding of how amplifiers work. An amp with a low output impedance does not have a frequency response that varies with a speaker's impedance. The key parameter that varies is potential current delivery by frequency before clipping occurs. So for a good voltage-source amp with 100w into 8ohms, if the speaker has a peak impedance of 16 ohms into 4KHz the amp will clip at 50w, and if the lowest impedance occurs at 40Hz with 4ohms the amp will clip at 200w, but the frequency response at 50W will still be flat (within the amp's spec) across the entire spectrum up to 50w.

Trick question - what happens if the speaker is reproducing 4KHz and 40Hz *at the same time*?

As a former owner of VK1000 mono's and many other Pass 600 sized monster blocks I for one don't miss having to place amps of that size any more.

95dB and above speakers driven by an 8 watt 300B SET is as good as it gets for truly refined sound. But if you're not listening to acoustic music, and are of the RR family, then quality of sound isn't what you're after as much as volume of sound. Dare I say it...acoustic rules!

Isn't clipping an even worse consequence than unbalanced frequency response alone?

"But if you're not listening to acoustic music, and are of the RR family, then quality of sound isn't what you're after as much as volume of sound."

That's a very biased perspective.

There is high quality and lesser quality non acoustic music as well. Volume is part of it because that is the nature of the beast but not the whole story by a longshot.

I would argue that it is more costly and difficult to reproduce music that is meant to be loud and powerful accurately and convincingly than it is to reproduce acoustic music that you liten to normally at lower SPLs.

It's a mistake to discount music forms that one does not care for just because one does not care about them. They are forms of music people listen to as much or even more so in practice than others.

That kind of attitude is one way how audiophiles get a bad name.