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RE: Relentless

Posted by tomservo on August 10, 2024 at 15:45:47:
The funny thing is, most of these elegant amplifiers appear to be made like an old Crown amp (the old ones are bullet proof), that is it could put out what ever it's rating was 24/7/365.

They might be able to put out say 1/2dB more at significant distortion but there was a hard limit to how much Voltage the output stage can swing...set by the power supply voltage.

There is no "peak" that is significantly above the continuous.

Class D, obviously it's very different but it is a breakthrough in another way, most of them are designed around music as a signal. not a sine wave 24/7/365.

An analog rms volt meter like a Simpson 260, or a sound level meter reads the rms or average value integrated over some short time.

So what does music actually look like?
Well dynamically you have a signal that constantly changes, nothing like a sine wave.
The most compressed FM music would usually have a peak value that is about 10 times the average value that one would read with the meters I mentioned. To be clear, these peaks are short, very short and are best seen looking at the microphone or amp voltage on a storage oscilloscope or other to capture the peaks and read the voltage.

Some sound level meters have slow, fast and peak hold as these peaks go to the loudspeaker too.
Good recordings usually have a peak to average ratio of 20 to 30 dB, the short peaks can be 100 to 1000 times larger than the average level.

The weird thing is, "clipping is obvious" and yes it is....BUT only if it lasts long enough and this is how one can have a low power amp that easily handles the average level but is also clipping instantaneous peaks..

You can't hear that...until you A / B with something that isn't clipped, then the un clipped sounds the same except it's more dynamic.

Here is where many class D amps stand out. they are not designed to put out a sine wave 24/7 at rated power, in fact, most can only deliver rated power for some shortish period of time.
What some can also do is put out peaks that much larger than the continuous power rating and are built around the demands of music.
They are not all the same, i am only familiar with the ICE power blocks and a few others.
Tom