Roots Lightweight Amp Shootout Southall May 2011

paulus wrote: Would have like to have heard the I tech never really had good press but seems it did the job,guess ill be sticking to my chinese 3600w amp for now as I know it can spank four scoops in a dance enviroment for good few hours whilst stayin cool

Which is funny, as I remember a lot of people bashing chinese amps, and making racist remarks towards the chinese,
yet your amp bashes 2x 1850 scoops per channel for entire "roots gigs", without going bang, and cost you approx £500 ?

Can't wait till next Roots lightweight amp test.

Yup 500 for it second hand but was mint and un abused even got rid of the vz5 crown ad on a 13amp source it sounds lots better ,always raises eyebrows,lost count of amount of peeps in bristol who were asking whats running the bass ,u goin tobristol on sun lev?

paulus wrote: Yup 500 for it second hand but was mint and un abused even got rid of the vz5 crown ad on a 13amp source it sounds lots better ,always raises eyebrows,lost count of amount of peeps in bristol who were asking whats running the bass ,u goin tobristol on sun lev?

Can't make it Sunday, trying to make BNE final though.

Big thanks to Ren for helping make this event possible
Thanks to Marvin for use of the PL380, PKN, Crest9200 & Matrix STR
Thanks to QSS for bringing down the K10 & K8 powersofts
Thanks to Matt for the Matrix setup
Thanks to Ballistic crew for bringing down the Void Inf8
Thanks to Venture Sound for bringing the Crown amp
Thanks to Ebony for the rack full of Matrix
Big thankyou to all who attended, i hope everybody was able to take something away with them (not literally)

The reason i took part in this event was to see which amplifier is able to power 4 of my Turbomax loaded scoops comfortably of a 13a power supply, each amp i tested was run at 4ohms per channel

Crest 9200: clipped way to early and definatly not able to power my 4 scoops, but i did like the tones it gave on the low notes, also very light and easy to manage

QSC pl380: exactly the same as above but not as defined on the lower notes, again very light and easy to manage

Powersoft K10, dangerous amp, heaps of power in it, i was able to clip it and keep the clip light on constantly but i turned it down incase drivers fried, definatly more power in it than the PKN, easily able to play 4 scoops, the screen on the front also showed i was hitting 3400watts per channel at some points but i dont really like the sound it reproduces, sounds a bit too digital, kinda lost the feel of the vinyl, very light and easy to manage, i would say this was the second most powerful amp i tried

Matrix 6000: for me the second best sounding amp, super light and build quality was good, it seemed to play rens stack nicely and the notes produced were spot on, when it switched off playing Rens stack it was super hot, couldve soldered 2 wires together with that heat, none of the other amps got as hot, but then this was one of the best sounding, when i tried it on my stack i was a bit skeptical after Ren had blown one so i took it easy, on the second track everybody could smell burning so i turned the amp down, tbh im not convinced it would last the whole night playing dub! Matt it was a pleasure to meet you and them tops on ur mini system sounded fantastic, really impressed with what you could get out of 8 x 8" drivers

Void Inf 8 mk2: DAM this is one hell of an amp, able to play my boxes with ease, never saw the amp meter thingy on the front go over11/12amps, loads of headroom, sound quality wasnt as good as the matrix but the power behind it was somethign serious, even had dust and bits of fluff falling of the ceiling everytime i played this amp, only draw back is the weight of it, after listing it i dont think ill be needing to visit the gym for another 2-3 months

Crown 8000: by far the best sounding amp of the night, it was Only played on Rens system but the music reproduction on it was fantastic, the power was also good and it looks the best of all the amps

All the systems that took part were powered of 13a mains supply, im not here to promote any brand names or mates equipment, simply to see what amp plays best and handles the witchcraft thats sent to its inputs

Thanks again to all who where involved and to the forum aswell, without this place this event couldnt have gone ahead

saul wrote: out of interest,

what tunes got played? and how long per amp?

from memory i played:

junior delahaye - rent man
disciples - chant of freedom
johnny clarke - young rebel
iration steppas - keep up the fire
winston something - motherless children
IOJ - dubplate (unreleased)
WSP - dubplate (unreleased)

luton_soundman wrote: "the 1850s were'nt distorting, or making the Growl of death noise." smiley36 the growl of death noise i like that! :lol: (the phrase not the noise!) Yeah i agree i think the drivers could take more. I'd still go with a pair of bridge monsters over alot of the switchmodes, especially for the money.

smiley20

luton_soundman wrote: [quote=

A good way to advertise electrical tape smiley20 after seeing that that's all i would part my money for [/quote]

:lol: smiley32

Tweeter Box wrote:

saul wrote: out of interest,

what tunes got played? and how long per amp?

from memory i played:


junior delahaye - rent man
disciples - chant of freedom
johnny clarke - young rebel
iration steppas - keep up the fire
winston something - motherless children
IOJ - dubplate (unreleased)
WSP - dubplate (unreleased)

No wonder... :lol:

Only big man amp can drive those frequenices into 4x scoops hard, without issues...



:lol:

Pasi wrote: Played with the "burning smell" amp today and no problems during our tests really. Perhaps bit smell, but some places do run hot when you push around 3kW into 2 subs. Sounded really good. Nice, clear and accurate sound when running two PUKK-218 subs, 1 per channel. We even got noise complaints from our neighbours, never had that before and they said they could hear the base whole afternoon!

well maybe you should try playing heavy bass through it instead of sinead o'conor, also a preamp might help with them extended frequencies that your management system isnt able to push, i had the Matrix amp smelling like it was going to go BANG in about 20-30 seconds smiley2

Tweeter Box wrote:

Pasi wrote: Played with the "burning smell" amp today and no problems during our tests really. Perhaps bit smell, but some places do run hot when you push around 3kW into 2 subs. Sounded really good. Nice, clear and accurate sound when running two PUKK-218 subs, 1 per channel. We even got noise complaints from our neighbours, never had that before and they said they could hear the base whole afternoon!

well maybe you should try playing heavy bass through it instead of sinead o'conor, also a preamp might help with them extended frequencies that your management system isnt able to push, i had the Matrix amp smelling like it was going to go BANG in about 20-30 seconds smiley2

Went with quite heavy basslines down to 24Hz which is -3dB point for these boxes. With pretty much full power. Lab wasn't able to do that low but Matrix did and kept the sound in one package. And don't worry about management systems, they can do what they are supposed to do.

it's hard not to get baited into these conversations...but they always appear.... IMHO the majority of other music types never push the amps and drivers as hard as roots systems, instead they just add twice as many amps and subs to equal the volume. in the venue the amp test was held at a 'hardcore' dance rig in that venue probably would of consisted of 8-12 subs....where as these sounds only bring 4 and get the full use out of them....alot of people would be SHOCKED if they went to certain roots dances and saw just how much boxes are used to get the level of sound they do. smiley2