fincaman Posted May 22, 2015 Posted May 22, 2015 Hello All, I have recently repaired some TAMP powered speakers and guess what on the back it says that their output is 1100 watts but the mains input wattage is only 250 watts they must be magic speakers !!!
Mystic Posted May 22, 2015 Posted May 22, 2015 easy : you consume 250W over 4 seconds and load your capacitors with the power. you play 1KW of music for one second and then you cut off for 3 seconds while lighting up a red light (limit/overload/etc). Works fine, no power creation :) It all depends on how you measure power and power consumption is easy to measure because it;s a sine at 50Hz but music power is a bit more tricky as many marketers have looked at this technical problem :)
fincaman Posted May 23, 2015 Author Posted May 23, 2015 Hello All, and thanks for your replies, I do hope you didn't miss the fact that my post was very much tongue in cheek, I have been an electronics engineer all my working life and know how modern power specs are calculated. The idea of having oversized smoothing caps is not new, various amplifier manufacturers have done this over the years although now it's far more sophisticated using electronic compression/limiting techniques on the front end of the amplifier. I first came across this a few years ago when after using the heavy Peavey CS 1200s for some years I decided to treat myself to a Crown XTi 4000, 1600 watts per channel and weighing only 7 KG WOW. The first thing I did was put it on the bench and do a power check and found that as soon as I drove it, it only delivered full power for a few milliseconds. All amplifiers used to have an RMS continuous rating and everyone stuck to this then one day one manufacturer decided to "redefine the watt" which effectively made their amplifiers seem twice as powerful as the rest for the same price, since then it seems that anything goes. What good is full power for 20ms when a vocalist holds a sustained note for 5 secs, sorry if my views are somewhat dated but it seem to me that a manufacturer can come up with their own way of measuring power and put any rating they want on an amplifier
kerry davies Posted May 23, 2015 Posted May 23, 2015 This homage to the Russ Andrews' of this world is always worth another looksee.
benniferj Posted May 26, 2015 Posted May 26, 2015 Point well made Fincaman, but if you're actually requiring your amp to hold at full power for any duration during a transient peak, you're probably better off having a larger rig with a lot more headroom... headroom is king I find in running a stable and good sounding system. Nothing is quite as horrible as having an underpowered PA and thrashing it all day long within an inch of it's life.
fincaman Posted June 5, 2015 Author Posted June 5, 2015 Point well made Fincaman, but if you're actually requiring your amp to hold at full power for any duration during a transient peak, you're probably better off having a larger rig with a lot more headroom... headroom is king I find in running a stable and good sounding system. Nothing is quite as horrible as having an underpowered PA and thrashing it all day long within an inch of it's life. I agree, in the days when 100 watt amps were king I built one that was 300 per channel and was regarded as mad !!!
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