hi all , New to FSP but thought i'd put mt 2p in here...
ive had limited experience with SMPS powered amps but the 1 i have used was a peavey tour 450 bass head, 450 watts at 4 ohms, 300 watts at 8 ohms.
i had a problem with this head shortly after joining my current band on bass guitar, they are LOUD! , some may say TOO LOUD, the amp is 100% fine when not driven to its limits, once it gets to its limits tho it just gives up, nothing in reserve whatsoever, i am now using a 1000 watt Warwich bass head, HEAVY bit of kit it is too, massive transformer, copes alot better at higher volume levels.
ive looked quite alot at the newer generation of power amps, ones ive looked quite closely at are the behringer inuke series, peavey IPR, crown xti, and the thommann TSA series of amps, the main factor i have noticed with these new generation amps is that they go down to 2 ohm operation, and when bridged go to 4 ohm, on the surface this seems great, i was thinking of going the seperate preamp/power amp route for my bass rig, so to drive my full rig at 4 ohms bridged at the amp seemed like a great option.... a bit more research later, lots of reading up on other peoples experiences i discover that some of these amps really dont like being driven that hard and give up when you need that lil extra grunt.
another factor is the power ratings manufacturers put on their products, eg, the behringer iNuke amps, lets take the iNuke 3000, specs are;-
Delivers 2 x 1500 Watts into 2 Ohms; 2 x 880 Watts into 4 Ohms; 3000 Watts into 4 Ohms (bridge mode) and weighs less than 7 lbs / 3.3 kg
sounds great dont it! then you see the price, seems like perfection, cheap, powerfull and lightweight, well 2 out of 3 aint bad i spose but...the numbers are total BS and do not represent true RMS ratings, they might represent the output just before the thing blows up, but what good is that to us when we have the rest of the show to complete
in reality 2 x 8 ohm loads is actually getting less than 300 watts RMS, and when bridged with a 4 ohm load your lucky to get 1k watts, the worrying part here is that many manufacturers are starting to use these stupid specs in an attemp to impress the (unknowing) consumers, i have to say at this point however that peavey and crown are giving true specs (assuming my research is correct) however they are still basing their specs on a 2 ohm load, so when replacing an old heavy amp with a newer lightweight SMPS amp driving 8 ohms per channel you really arent getting alot of the power from the amps.
so my conclusion to the heavy v SMPS amps - stick with the older heavier amps, if you do want lightweight SMPS amps aim for the most powerful 1`s available or lose all headroom.
what is interesting with these newer generation amps is the DSP functions that come in some of them, definately worth a read. eg peavey ipr DSP, iNuke 6000DSP and crown are also doing a DSP version of the xTi
