PKN evaluation results

Evening. Thought it might be worthwhile for me to give some feedback on my recent experiments with the PKN amps.

Dan at PKN kindly dropped down a rack of demo amps to Blue Aran for myself and Ed to play with. We did some listening tests against my normal amp rack then he left them with us to try out.

The amps we have been playing with were an XE2500, XE4000, XE6000 and LC4004.

In listening tests against my rack of a QSC PL4.0 on sub and a Pulse 2x1100 on mid-high (both pretty good sounding amps) there was a noticable difference in the sound but none of us could exactly identify what it was or which set of amps we preferred. With the XE6000 driving a pair of twin 18" reflex subs and the XE4000 connected to a pair of 15"+1.4" passive mid-tops they sounded clean, accurate and solid. Definitely no shortage of power, especially from the XE6000. There is a little background hiss as you tend to associate with class D amps but only noticable if you're listening for it.

I had the opportunity to take the amps out on a little gig and used the XE6000 to run 4 single 18" bins and the XE4000 to run 4 Nexo PS15's as additional system in a local bar while Mr Scruff played some tunes. I have previously done this job with Camco Vortex 6's and in comparison the XE6000 on subs seemed to be hardly doing any work at all. In fact according to the built-in metering, the highest I saw was about 500W/channel whereas I would normally expect the Camco's to be running quite close to their limit. The high efficiency and active PFC meant that despite the mains supply being a pathetic 215V, the amps really couldn't have cared less.

Back in the office, I decided to try the XE4000 out on the bench as a representative of the range. Output power with one channel driven in to 4Ohms matched the rated power very closely, I measured 2.2kW, spec is 2.1kW. I also tried some class D torture test square waves which it handled very well. A little overshoot on the leading edge but very little ringing on a 1kHz square. A 10kHz square wave was turned into more of a sine wave with just the first couple of harmonics as you'd expect but the amp still managed to drive that to full power without any complaints (I only did that for a very short test just in case!). According to my energy monitor, when the amp is running hard, I actually saw the power factor at unity but mostly higher than 0.95 which is very good indeed.

We also tested the LC4004 in both listening and bench tests. It has noticably more background noise at idle than the XE amps however we had one from an older batch. I'm told there has been a revision to the design which reduces this to the same or lower than the /XE series. Power output on the bench was slightly less than the specs which was a little dissapointing. However they are still very useful 4 channel, 1U amps.

In general I am very impressed by these amps and would not hesitate to recommend them. If you need an amp to drive the big boy sub drivers like the 1851, then the /XE6000 is definitely worth considering. The fact that they are light, compact and able to extract the maximum from their mains supply makes them very good all-round amps.

nice evaluation.... ive used a pkn cant remember what model but it was one of the 8 or 10k's, to drive 4 1850 loaded cubo's, the event before we used a powersoft. out of the 2 i much prefered the pkn, price vs power vs sound make it a very good choice....

Well the same topic over on the other side kicked off a bit!

If I was still doing FOH work I must admit I would deffo give the PKN's a go. Chris (CSG) used them for a while and was very complimentary about them but in the end went back to Labs because of rider issues.

As a company they also seem to care.

Tony

p.s. any mention of amps seems to cause the "Great Debate" what a waste of breath by ALL concerned.

Bee the 6000 is the highest rated amp PKN make. If you did it would of been Ken's amp defo making it a XDE6000
I haven't had chance to A/B the amps with powersoft or the light weight Labs but from past comments it's all good. If I did see any come up I might be tempted in chopping in my infa8mk2's as they do take up alott of room and weight.

cheers ben it was the 6000 was it, was the powersoft a 10k we used or was that a 6k.....

Tony Wilkes wrote:
p.s. any mention of amps seems to cause the "Great Debate" what a waste of breath by ALL concerned.

Sorry you feel that way, but the fact of the matter is, some of us have seen that amp almost lose it's lunch driving 2x PD1850s per channel, or 2x Turbomax 1500s per channel. For some of us, setting HPF=35hz, when using 4x subs is quite reasonable, considering "our" music material.

So obviously, it doesn't output 2x3600W @4R, and isn't more powerful than an Inf8MK2, despite what the manufacturer claims.

levyte357 wrote:

Tony Wilkes wrote:
p.s. any mention of amps seems to cause the "Great Debate" what a waste of breath by ALL concerned.

Sorry you feel that way, but the fact of the matter is, some of us have seen that amp almost lose it's lunch driving 2x PD1850s per channel, or 2x Turbomax 1500s per channel. For some of us, setting HPF=35hz, when using 4x subs is quite reasonable, considering "our" music material.

So obviously, it doesn't output 2x3600W @4R, and isn't more powerful than an Inf8MK2, despite what the manufacturer claims.

Ray, It has nothing to do with amplifiers and performance etc, I feel it is a waste of breath because by now everyone has their entrenched positions and no amount of re-chewing the fat is going to change that.

I see the same old arguments being rolled out time after time and whilst I have no hat to throw in the ring I feel it is about time that this debate was closed until we have a way to put it to bed once and for all.

But if laying awake at night worrying about the last 2db appeals to some pepes who am I to condemn

Tony

Tony Wilkes wrote:

levyte357 wrote:

Tony Wilkes wrote:
p.s. any mention of amps seems to cause the "Great Debate" what a waste of breath by ALL concerned.

Sorry you feel that way, but the fact of the matter is, some of us have seen that amp almost lose it's lunch driving 2x PD1850s per channel, or 2x Turbomax 1500s per channel. For some of us, setting HPF=35hz, when using 4x subs is quite reasonable, considering "our" music material.

So obviously, it doesn't output 2x3600W @4R, and isn't more powerful than an Inf8MK2, despite what the manufacturer claims.

Ray, It has nothing to do with amplifiers and performance etc, I feel it is a waste of breath because by now everyone has their entrenched positions and no amount of re-chewing the fat is going to change that.

I see the same old arguments being rolled out time after time and whilst I have no hat to throw in the ring I feel it is about time that this debate was closed until we have a way to put it to bed once and for all.

But if laying awake at night worrying about the last 2db appeals to some pepes who am I to condemn

Tony

kinda right there tony, but these debates are just so bloody addictive. ive recently made stupid comments about the stuff that gets talked about, yet i find myself drawn into these pissing competitions against my better judgement. i dont think there will ever be a final soloution

Tony Wilkes wrote:

levyte357 wrote:

Tony Wilkes wrote:
p.s. any mention of amps seems to cause the "Great Debate" what a waste of breath by ALL concerned.

Sorry you feel that way, but the fact of the matter is, some of us have seen that amp almost lose it's lunch driving 2x PD1850s per channel, or 2x Turbomax 1500s per channel. For some of us, setting HPF=35hz, when using 4x subs is quite reasonable, considering "our" music material.

So obviously, it doesn't output 2x3600W @4R, and isn't more powerful than an Inf8MK2, despite what the manufacturer claims.

Ray, It has nothing to do with amplifiers and performance etc, I feel it is a waste of breath because by now everyone has their entrenched positions and no amount of re-chewing the fat is going to change that.

I see the same old arguments being rolled out time after time and whilst I have no hat to throw in the ring I feel it is about time that this debate was closed until we have a way to put it to bed once and for all.

But if laying awake at night worrying about the last 2db appeals to some pepes who am I to condemn

Tony

18 months ago, yes, the old debate of heavyweight vs lightweight..
However since then, a few lightweights have proven they can replace old faithful heavyweights.

This is about amp exposed as not achieving specs,yet manufacturer continues to spout spiel on the forum, about amp can do 2x3600W at 4 ohms, yet obviously can't match the output of much lower rated transformer amp on sub 35-90hz.