Toroidal[Heavyweight] Vs SMPS[Lightweight] amplifiers

Hi Folks,


I want to know about what you people think about lightweight and heavyweight amplifiers. Toroidal transformer based amps put lot of weight and smps based amplifiers are lightweight.

Transportation of lightweight amps is easy but again we have speakers also which are much more heavier than toroidal transformer based amplifiers instead.

So what is the preference in terms of sound quality such as handling of low frequencies LF according to your experiences.

Kindly shed some light on this.



regards,
Kanwar

Saul :lol:

smiley36 smiley37

c'mon guys speak something :lol:

i cant believe saul got a picture in before lev......

Kanwar wrote: So what is the preference in terms of sound quality such as handling of low frequencies LF according to your experiences.

Kindly shed some light on thisKanwar

Recently impressed by "few" lightweights on sub.

However resigned to the fact that no lightweight I've heard will truly acheive specs.

So it seems lightweight needs to be rated 1.5x times equivalent torroidial to get same performance...

E.g, to match strong torroidial that truly outputs 2kwpc @ 4 ohms 40-100hz, lightweight needs to be rated 3kwpc @ 4 ohms.

And have still seen those go into clipping, well before the 2x drivers per channel broke a sweat.. :lol:

Kanwar,

i think it'd be fair to say for majority of people who just use amplifiers, lightweights offer all they need, so it's a no brainer. for example, live music application.

for some music types, this is not the case, and music material can be particularly strenuous on the amplifier, demanding sustained power output for more than a few seconds at the time.

In these situations, there are only a few amplifiers that have stood up to the tests so far - see recent thread on speaker plans regarding amp shoot out.

Also bear in mind, you haven't mentioned what areas you're enquiring about. For mids and tops, lightweight amps more than stand up to the rigours of any music type IMO

regarding sound quality, it seems this is largely dependant on output class, and overall quality.....? at the moment, Crown's class I and classic AB steal the show with quality on heavy sub application according to recent ears....

my 2p

levyte357 wrote:

Kanwar wrote: So what is the preference in terms of sound quality such as handling of low frequencies LF according to your experiences.

Kindly shed some light on thisKanwar

Recently impressed by "few" lightweights on sub.

However resigned to the fact that no lightweight I've heard will truly acheive specs.

So it seems lightweight needs to be rated 1.5x times equivalent torroidial to get same performance...

E.g, to match strong torroidial that truly outputs 2kwpc @ 4 ohms 40-100hz, lightweight needs to be rated 3kwpc @ 4 ohms.

And have still seen those go into clipping, well before the 2x drivers per channel broke a sweat.. :lol:

Thanxz lev,

Toroidal amps are capable of giving huge amount of current when pushed to the limits whereas in SMPS amps when you try to draw more current than its rating, it starts limiting the current to safeguard itself, toroids being passive don't have any as such current limitation.

Only drawback is weight.


Kanwar

saul wrote: Kanwar,

i think it'd be fair to say for majority of people who just use amplifiers, lightweights offer all they need, so it's a no brainer. for example, live music application.

for some music types, this is not the case, and music material can be particularly strenuous on the amplifier, demanding sustained power output for more than a few seconds at the time.

In these situations, there are only a few amplifiers that have stood up to the tests so far - see recent thread on speaker plans regarding amp shoot out.

Also bear in mind, you haven't mentioned what areas you're enquiring about. For mids and tops, lightweight amps more than stand up to the rigours of any music type IMO

regarding sound quality, it seems this is largely dependant on output class, and overall quality.....? at the moment, Crown's class I and classic AB steal the show with quality on heavy sub application according to recent ears....

my 2p

Saul,

yes as far as the "show must go on any how" and "ease of transportation" is solved, lightweight amps are prime choice. I have read that SP thread and Tweeter box says crown sounded the best of all.
My area of inquiry was especially subwoofer driving. Mids-Highs don't stress the amplifier PSU, the way low frequency grinds the juice out of PSU. Class of operation certainly has its merit but if designed correctly they do the real justice to reproduction of input signal.

Recently heard about the Roots preamp and all associated things with it, provoked my interest in new dimension......... smiley1


Kanwar