Planar Speaker Asylum

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Planar Speaker Asylum

power rating Sunfire

70.171.198.154

In Reply to: RE: A very interesting conundrum! :-)) posted by pictureguy on September 25, 2010 at 19:20:43

The Sunfire spec, right from my owners manual says, "405 watts continous, per channel, all channels driven into eight ohms from 20Hz to 20KHz with no more than 0.5% T.H.D. Power clipping at minimum 810 watts per channel in to four ohms..." Unfortunaltely this is not a direct answer to your question but is likely as close as I can come.

Follow Ups:

RE: power rating Sunfire - pictureguy 10:06:31 09/26/10 (2)
Thanks for checking the book for me......
Imagine, somebody who reads the directions! good.

It says 'all channels driven'. I'll take that at face value...but assume they had a variac on the line to keep it close to 120vac.

This implies quite the power supply. A typical A/B amp is about 50% efficient at turning electricity into power, so just imagine how much juice this guy will draw when pressed!
Can a normal outlet do that? I don't know.

Buy yourself a 'kill a watt' meter....they are DIRT CHEAP at maybe 25$ and watch your line voltage as you crank it up. I'll bet you can induce quite a sag in the line.
Too much is never enough
- RE: power rating Sunfire - dromney 18:03:15 09/26/10 (1)
  Without going into the advertising jargon of Bob Carver, the way it is done is with a very efficient power supply. Much better than 50%, which would be typical of a class A amp. Bob calls it a downtracking power supply. My understanding of it is that it tracks the input signal and swings/adjustes the amplifier bias voltage to track the input signal. So it puts out a lot of power but has a much smaller bias voltage delta to be wasted as heat. It stays pretty cool all the time. But, as I mentioned, I have decided to buy the McIntosh MC402 to replace it. Not that I don't like the Sunfire, but because I have always wanted a McIntosh and this is my chance.
  - RE: power rating Sunfire - pictureguy 20:28:40 09/26/10 (0)
    I owned an M400t 'cube' for over 20 years. It gave good, powerful service but eventually began to fade.
    It had even been repaired after a power glitch take-out. ZAP.
    
    The way I was taught to measure efficiency was from plug to speaker.
    
    While Carver has used variations of the 'tracking' power supply....the Cube was an early version, he still uses a conventional A/B output.
    
    However, you can think about power out VS total available from the wall and see what efficiency would be required for that to work. I doubt anything over about 60% is possible, but some physics / engineering type may chime in with a better number.
    
    Too much is never enough

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