MF eat your heart out.

no not another mf bashing session, but....seriously....

check out this monster. great price.

http://www.etronics.com/product.asp?stk_code=crepro10001&rpc=4047&catid=4049&store=

drool...

 

Just a typical 'mega-watt' amp built for the DJ/Sound System people. Anyone who's DJ'd as long as I did or has spent anytime in a club know's what kind of sound they produce!

 

I know where you are coming from.


SCIDB

 

Someone told me the Jah Shaka sound system was driven by valve pwr amps - anyone corroborate this?

 

Jah Shaka and valves? - Absolutely! He used them for years, and may still do...

 

Its not a dj amp, its a serious concert touring amp, one of the best amp makers in the world.(just happens to be in a dj store)
dj amps are cheap, couple of hundred, this has a list of £6000 in rip off britain.

I bet ya its as good as most hifi amps, if not better

Having studied amp design a bit, even cheap ones use very similar design, I have heard cheap dj speakers and they are the culprits,muddy sound dreadful bass, prob. along with the acoustics, not hugely the amp to blame.

I tell you what impresses me about pro audio amps is the warranties they give them..sometimes 5 or even 10 yrs

 

Trouble is - you won't get to home demo pro audio stuff unless you work in the trade.

I think Data is right, that some are definitely better than others. Some Samson ones have been favourably reported. I have tried:

Harrison
Burman
HH
Turner
HiWatt

all were good at the time..years ago

The difficulty is getting to hear Crest, QSC, Crown, Hafler etc in a home setup.
Also, I notice the models that are claimed to be built for sound quality by big pro names, are not such good value as the cooking models.
I did wonder if we could persuade a pro shop for a bake off demo. After all, the expectations are zero from the audionuts, and it would not cause any loss of pro cred.

 

Well I'm not convinced Data, from the description, specs or price tag! But like you say it would come down to testing, or home 'bake-off'.

If there is a particular item you want to test maybe I could contact my friend who's very closely connected to the trade to see if we could get something to test.

As for the Jah Shaka setup, this is not the only sound-syetm that used valves. If you talk to many of the old-school Jamaican sound guys you will find that many of them built their own amps around valves. I have seen some where the amp has been built out of an old milk crate!

Being married to a Carribean myself, I have been to and played at many parties and they certainly like their 'byace n trebill'!!

 

Dillinja has a several killawatt valve system he uses when he plays as far as I know. My friend went to see him and apparently they were handing out ear plugs at the door!

I'm sure...well actually I know pro amps do sound very good (I use Bryston myself) but a P.A. amp is just not designed for the job of Hi-Fi. It's impractical, who needs 3500watts in their home? I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't actually work properly with such a small load as a pair of average hi-fi speakers!

Anyone know what amps Wembley use? They have a 60KW system IIRC!

 

60kw is nothing,weve had a couple of shows turn up with that sort of size rig for a theatre seating olny 750, festival rigs are nowerdays often in exess of 100kw,one event i work on at donnington had 330 kw a side.
As for home demos not a problem,just dry hire them from the likes of sse,wigwam,concert sound ect.

 

To reference earlier posts, I think that Dillinja has started a record company called 'VALVE' in homage to Jah Shaka's old system.

 

I know wigwam, hippy, my bro got his ev s200s repaired there once

 

Reading uses 100KW, not sure what the Pyramid at Glastonbury uses - certainly the rig the Other Stage uses there looks similar to Reading's.

The Stratford Rex in London uses 50kW - but doesn't push it. You'll hear the difference - very clear sound, with none of that horrid midrange cracking-up-squeal most crappy nightclubs have. Why clubs feel they always have to play everything so loud is beyond me - and no, I've always felt this, since the first time I went clubbing at 17. IF their rigs could handle the volume without going all crappy and shouty, the excessive volume would be fine, but most club PAs can't.

 

Hi,

Ignoring at the moment such issues as Fan Noise with PA Amp's, they have other problems. Modern "High Tech" switching (Class D) type amplifiers for PA use often have sub-ideal sound quality for the genre (they can be quite good) as few are based on the latest "audiophile grade" chipsets from TI or Tripath, but come usually from earlier designs by the individual companies.

The calssic Analogue PA Amp's are invariably Class B with often very material crossover distortion and gm doubling effects in evidence.

I once build a number of truely massive PA Amp's based on industrial three-phase switching transistors (something silly like 200A collector current and dissipation in the Kilowatt range with suitable heatsinks) and the circlotron design, which where class A to around 20 Watt into 8 Ohm and put out around 500-600 Watt into 8 Ohm and something silly (never found a test-load to do sinewave testing) into 0.5 Ohm (we used to run on average 8 - 16 Bass Bin's of each).

Suprisingly the early prototype, which operated without global feedback loop (we added one later when the original design prooved a little intolerant for really low load impedances due to excessive base current) sounded smashing as "HiFi" Amp. But the Fan's that kep thing running reasonably cool made noises like MIG-29 jetfighter taking off.

Ciao T

 

For good, cheap power, the latest Alesis amps are easy to recommend.