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Going crazy. Just need a 200x2@4

8K views 65 replies 20 participants last post by  khlae 
#1 · (Edited)
Hey all. I'm looking for a middle of the road, decent brand, 200x2@4ohm A/B. I don't know what brands are good these days. I remember some of the crap brands like pyle, crunch, etc. Don't want to totally break the bank hoping to spend around 300.

I have a Cadence IA2 which was a real nice amp back in the day. Now it has been 11 years and it's giving me problems. My eyes are going to fall out of my head from searching!
 
#3 ·
Hey all. I'm looking for a middle of the road, decent brand, 200x2@4ohm. I don't know what brands are good these days. I remember some of the crap brands like pyle, crunch, etc. Don't want to totally break the bank hoping to spend around 300.

I have a Cadenxe IA2 which was a real nice amp back in the day. Now it has been 11 years and it's giving me problems. My eyes are going to fall out of my head from searching!
JL Audio RD 400/4, 75x4 @ 4 ohms, 200x2 @ 4 ohms bridged, $300 retail. The XD 400/4 is $400 retail with the same power and a smaller chassis and better quality potentiometers for gain and xovers.
 
#4 ·
Thanks guys! Maybe that's my issue is I was filtering for A/B. I'm old school and that used to be the standard. I've been reading how a lot of people are jumping on the class D train. Never heard of an A/D, that's interesting. Am I thinking into this too much looking for an A/B? The rest of my setup is nice, if that matters at the end of the day.

Head: kdc-x994
Components: CDT ES-620

Can you convince me that class D or A/D or NexD is okay? :D
 
#5 ·
Class D amps have been around for 15 years...so noone is "jumping" on any train. You need an amp to power some comps and you have $300 to spend. You can get by with 100x2 if that helps. Maybe find a JL audio slash 300/4 on sale used? That would be a good solution.
 
#6 ·
Sorry, talking about quality. I have an old class D 1000W RMS that I'm using for my sub but I was under the impression that the quality of a class D is not good enough to use for your main components.I'm ready to jump on any of the recommendations, since you seem to have no issue with class D for quality then I'm inclined to believe that the technology has evolved over time.
 
#13 ·
I have read several people say that class D has evolved into a viable solution for component speakers or full range. I would like to do a comparison to see if there is an audible difference. I can't imagine with a lot of reputable companies making class D full range amps that I'd be covering my ears and saying, "Oh, the horror."

I bought my first class D amp back in January, which it is a sub amp. But I can't believe how cool this thing runs. I had been running a 200 watt A/B Sony that got so hot it would burn you. I have yet to feel this Rockford even get luke warm even playing it at high volume the whole time on my drive home from work.

If there's not a lot of difference in sound quality, I'd go with a class D just on the temp factor.
 
#15 ·
The Rockford amp suggested in post 2 is $230 on eBay...nice small footprint option...
 
#17 ·
You said 300 right?
well how about something from Audiotec Fischer
270005

Cont. power rating RMS/Max. power at 4 Ohms/13,8V bridged: 2 x 220 + 1 x 700 Watt (1 Ohm Woofer)

Oh and this is on sale...Refrub ..But..139 and 170 x2 (conservative)
270006



This amp won CES and so far does not have any complants on sound. 127.
270007


Also a $117 and prety sure A/B JBL model called the Ugly Ferengi


this does 4x100 Its sort of a kappa... And so is this both for less then 130 bucks.

Also this Focal. Not sure if its up to snuff.
270009



You could also just buy 2 of these for 99 bucks. so you have monoblocks and will do 150+ that way.

However, this will do 200w easy.
270015

270016


Price and performance? I would pick this one.
 
#26 ·
Take this for what you will. Does anyone remember Air-wolf? I had the Nintendo game and loved it. But I really loved the show.

There was an episode of a Japanese Pilot was having an all out aerial fight with the High tech Air-wolf. In the end, the Skill of the Airwolf won. But the thing is, the Low tech Japanese plane with the Pilot that knew how to control his craft gave one HELL of a RUN for the Airwolf's Money. It must be like almost 30 years, and I still remember that episode on TV. It aired in 1987. But I think I saw a rerun latter on.

270407
The Quote from the movie is barely in my mind. But it went something like its not the machine, but the skill of the pilot that makes the machine.

I can still remember the Amazing shots they made. It was a TRUE masterpiece. It really drove home an important lesson that can be applied here today.

Just like Bob Carver is a Wizard with his soldering Iron. Its not the Amp. It is the man behind it. (Or woman, Hi Ms Manley! ) that makes it come alive.

You could tell me all day long that an 8 track studder or a 24 track AMPEX machine can not be as good as digital. And I will tell you that Film will still feel more real then digital ever can.

Its the fact, I can hold that photo. Its real. Its in my hand. And it is real. I can clutch my hands around it and never let it go.

The thing is? I have a Greeting card that sounds like complete ****. But you know what? When I found out I could have it play back music I recorded to it? It was the coolest thing I have ever bought. I still have it today.

Thing is? Class D, A A/B T. Whatever. If the maker gave it a soul?

It will sing.






 
#27 ·
Take this for what you will. Does anyone remember Air-wolf? I had the Nintendo game and loved it. But I really loved the show.

There was an episode of a Japanese Pilot was having an all out aerial fight with the High tech Air-wolf. In the end, the Skill of the Airwolf won. But the thing is, the Low tech Japanese plane with the Pilot that knew how to control his craft gave one HELL of a RUN for the Airwolf's Money. It must be like almost 30 years, and I still remember that episode on TV. It aired in 1987. But I think I saw a rerun latter on.

View attachment 270407 The Quote from the movie is barely in my mind. But it went something like its not the machine, but the skill of the pilot that makes the machine.

I can still remember the Amazing shots they made. It was a TRUE masterpiece. It really drove home an important lesson that can be applied here today.

Just like Bob Carver is a Wizard with his soldering Iron. Its not the Amp. It is the man behind it. (Or woman, Hi Ms Manley! ) that makes it come alive.

You could tell me all day long that an 8 track studder or a 24 track AMPEX machine can not be as good as digital. And I will tell you that Film will still feel more real then digital ever can.

Its the fact, I can hold that photo. Its real. Its in my hand. And it is real. I can clutch my hands around it and never let it go.

The thing is? I have a Greeting card that sounds like complete ****. But you know what? When I found out I could have it play back music I recorded to it? It was the coolest thing I have ever bought. I still have it today.

Thing is? Class D, A A/B T. Whatever. If the maker gave it a soul?

It will sing.

Someone put some time/emotion into this post. You okay? 😅
 
#34 ·
I think this is a "technically speaking" kind of conversation. Technically class A/B may, or should, sound better for whatever scientific reason. Can the average person hear the difference? Probably not. I'm not saying there aren't those who can, but I'd bet in a blind test most would be just guessing.
 
#37 ·
Don’t fret Sam Spade!

This debate has been going on for decades. Haha I’m definetly not ending it anytime soon. It’s like religion

I’m well aware of how polarizing the debate is. I’m actually referring to audiophile crowd at large (not just car audio). And you stated exactly ‘selling’ HiFi in the 90’s. Were those free from any agendas to sell more?
 
#39 ·
We always warnted to sell more 😄But Whever I've worked in sales its been about meeting the customers needs. Bose used to sell itself. Even the products that had no midrange. In fact they were the most popular but they made people happy.

What do you want to achieve? What's your budget? What features deliver the benefit you want. What products meet those criteria. Which ones do you like best? What makes you happy? That's what sales is.
 
#41 ·
“Audiophiles” with mega buck home systems can’t reliably tell the difference in a $25000 amplifier and a $700 receiver at normal volume levels, in a controlled environment with very revealing speakers that cost $50000.

I doubt most people in this thread can tell the difference in a car environment with most available equipment.

The AB vs Class D amp is not a factor for 99.99% of car audio enthusiasts.

Crappy installs and poor tuning is a real problem.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#42 ·
“Audiophiles” with mega buck home systems can’t reliably tell the difference in a $25000 amplifier and a $700 receiver at normal volume levels, in a controlled environment with very revealing speakers that cost $50000.

I doubt most people in this thread can tell the difference in a car environment with most available equipment.

The AB vs Class D amp is not a factor for 99.99% of car audio enthusiasts.

Crappy installs and poor tuning is a real problem.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
A citation of that research would be nice. In my experience most $700 recievers will do a **** job of driving super expensive speakers. They just dont have the dynamic power to control such difficult loads. And if it is an easy speaker to drive and super revealing then there will be differences. Hell i could pick the difference between $600 50wpc marantz rotel and yamaha amps with $1000 speakers
 
#46 ·
I'm a trained scientist. Ecology but i also majored in psychology as an undergrad. Ive taught 3rd year uni studets in experimental and survey design and data analysis. I'm all for double blind randomised experiments.

I also think there's so much nonsence in audio. So many claims are ouurageous.

And we are all subject to bias. Confirmation bias in particular.

But this experiment just isnt a good test. Let's artificially match amplifiers as closely as possible and see if they sound different. The hypothesis doesn't match real world use. And the criteria for sucess arent well explained
 
#47 ·
I guess my point is this:

There are so many factors in car audio that can contribute to very poor sound quality.

You are in a moving car with different levels of road noise

The speaker driver locations are almost always compromised

There is a lack of available space for the drivers and a lack of space to distance yourself from those drivers.

There can be electrical noise in the system

The driver’s parameters may be misunderstood by the installer

The gain structures could be wildly off

The crossover settings may not be optimized

And so on...

It seems to me that it’s very hard to then point to amplifier technologies as a critical part of the sound quality equation in MOST of the audio systems we’re talking about on this forum.

Is there anyone on here who can get in a car or truck of one of the forum members, listen to a piece of music and immediately guess what amplifier(s) are in the car without knowing the equipment list beforehand?

Anyone?

Or are people saying they can tell the difference in their own system when they switch amplifiers from class d to class a/b? Because if that’s the case, I can 100% guarantee you that way too much time has elapsed between listens to form a non subjective opinion at that point. Our memory for sound doesn’t work well enough to do that.

Way too much bias, purchase justification and pride in ownership to be objective about how these things “sound”.

This is a hobby. If we remove amplifiers as a source of spec analysis, brand loyalty and owner satisfaction, we then have removed one more thing to obsess and deliberate on, which is contrary to the whole “hobby”idea.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#48 ·
I guess my point is this:

There are so many factors in car audio that can contribute to very poor sound quality.

You are in a moving car with different levels of road noise

The speaker driver locations are almost always compromised

There is a lack of available space for the drivers and a lack of space to distance yourself from those drivers.

There can be electrical noise in the system

The driver’s parameters may be misunderstood by the installer

The gain structures could be wildly off

The crossover settings may not be optimized

And so on...

It seems to me that it’s very hard to then point to amplifier technologies as a critical part of the sound quality equation in MOST of the audio systems we’re talking about on this forum.

Is there anyone on here who can get in a car or truck of one of the forum members, listen to a piece of music and immediately guess what amplifier(s) are in the car without knowing the equipment list beforehand?

Anyone?

Or are people saying they can tell the difference in their own system when they switch amplifiers from class d to class a/b? Because if that’s the case, I can 100% guarantee you that way too much time has elapsed between listens to form a non subjective opinion at that point. Our memory for sound doesn’t work well enough to do that.

Way too much bias, purchase justification and pride in ownership to be objective about how these things “sound”.

This is a hobby. If we remove amplifiers as a source of spec analysis, brand loyalty and owner satisfaction, we then have removed one more thing to obsess and deliberate on, which is contrary to the whole “hobby”idea.


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Reednatron, I absolutely agree with so much of what you say.

But I come from a homehifi and headfi background. I have three preamps at home at the moment and I'm sure they all sound different. it is subtle and it's about the level of detail, dynamic response and the emotional connection that I feel listening to them. I'm chasing the emotional feel of a live concert with all my hifi setups.

When I was selling home hifi the biggest problem we had was people spending too much on speakers and not enough on the amp. it's like haven't a car with too small an engine. especially if you clip the amp and fry the voicecoils.

I'm running some floorstanding dalisuite 3.5s at home. I swapped out an absolutely sensational Marantz PM80 100wpc integrated amp that you can switch to run at 20wpc class A and dropped in a musical fidelity Xpre100 and a rotel RB1080 200wpc power amp. That made the Dalis sound like a different speaker. They are supposed to be -3db at 32 hz. Despite how good the Marantz is, I don't think it ever ran the dalis at -3db at 32 htz. I'm sure the Rotel does. The marantz never ran out of volume, it isn't that. And the improvement was apparent at moderate and hi volumes.

Now I have a MTK1 microphone and REW I can check the 32 db perception if I can be bothered unplugging the marantz from my upstairs system and taking it downstairs.

Still that difference was small compared to when I replaced my Dynaudio image 1 two way book shelf speakers with the Dalisuites. Speakers is absolutely where you get the most difference.

When the Marantz PM80 went upstairs to run the Dynaudio bookshelf speakers it replaced a marantz PM30SE. Great little amp, but the PM80 is significantly better.

In my car I've got three Hertz SPL show HP802 stereo amps. Hertz HP 802 spl car audio amplifier Class AB, 330 watts RMS into 4 ohms. They are monsters and completely fricking awesome. 7.5 kg each, damping factor 500. They sound sensational and have more power than I'll ever need. I don't think I'll ever replace them. They are so solidly built and overengineered they should last forever. The gains are dialed back so they don't fry my speakers if when we are sitting around a campfire some drunken idiot friend jumps in the car and turns it up to 11. They have so much power on tap the chances of clipping them are zero. They are running
  • helix ultra DSP
  • front speakers Hertz Mille MLK 1650.3 legend -2Way
  • rear speakers Hertz Mille MLK 165.3 legend - 2Way
  • subs are two Hertz EBXF20.5 - 8" Enclosed Subwoofer boxes run parallel off one of the amps
There's no substitute for enough dynamic power on tap to capitalise on your speakers performance. I believe that small underpowered amps make quality speakers, especially difficult loads, underperform.

I'm reluctant to buy class D as Im not sure they have the dynamic response of class AB. That is essential to recreate the feel of a live gig. I've never AB tested. I've never bought a hi quality class D amp. I could be completely wrong. The easiest test for me would be to take a 200wpc class D home power amp home and swap it in.

But I've said before, for 95% of my friends wanting to upgrade their OEM systems i'd recommend a class D/DSP combo. KICKER | Key 200.4 Smart Amplifier

The thing I suspect that causes the biggest problems with amps and makes them sound different is too many people buy amps that are too small and not well built and they don't deliver the power they want to get the SPL and dynamic response they are seeking.

And you are right that cars are difficult environments for audio. But I have now this year installed a hi end system in my car for the first time. I can't believe how good car audio can sound.
 
#50 ·
I haven’t used any of the new class D full range amps yet. However, I suspect they are “good enough”, especially with people using phones as head units, etc. Things have changed.

however, this is interesting- from the kicker amp’s advertising material:

“If the temperature reaches the threshold, the KEY200.4's dynamic power-management algorithms kick into gear! Instead of hearing the amplifier's volume “pumping” or blowing a fuse – KEY technology engages a nearly inaudible limiter/compressor, applied only to the peaks of the music for as little as milliseconds at a time. The amplifier quickly cools, which deactivates the compressor. Music returns to its full dynamic range without a moment’s interruption!”

“nearly inaudible” is not ringing praise. And that’s from the marketing department!
 
#54 ·
Yeah, I just thought it was interesting that kicker was trying to spin the fact that their amp can’t deliver dynamic power as a feature. But that’s not class d amps, that’s kicker’s design.

I can’t think of any reason that, in general, modern class D amps would have issues with dynamic power. As others have mentioned they have more headroom so they should have less issue. Curious about what happens when driven into clipping and how the new designs handle the switching speed technical challenges, but I’ve been away for 10 years and I’m sure advances have been made.
 
#59 ·
I think the dynamic power capacity of an amp is mostly affected by the amount of built in capacitance. Tiny class d amps just don't have the internal space for a lot of capacitors.
I made the switch from a really nice sounding class A/B Memphis Audio MC4.75 to a class D JL Audio XD400/4. The major differences were a huge size difference, a huge temperature difference, a slight lack of rms power from the JL, and a moderate lack of dynamic power from the JL. There was absolutely no audible difference at moderate listening levels. I needed more power anyway, so I added another 400/4, bridged channels to drive the mids, now I have plenty of power AND dynamic power. The 2 JL's still take up less space and produce less heat.
You just have to remember, the smaller amps just physically can't contain as much capacitance.
 
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#60 ·
To my knowledge every amplifier topology is capable of having a rated RMS value and a rated PEAK value for those short transient dynamic bursts.

Some schools of thought will say amplifier capacitance is uniquely linked to the individual amplifier requirements. Class A and Class AB require larger capacitors or more capacitance than class D counterparts due to the larger current demands of class A and A/B by design. Class D doesn’t need too draw as much current to reach or exceed rated output. Your electrical system is able to keep up with music transients much easier forgoing the needs for excessive capacitance reserves. Also while many class A or AB designs will use expensive larger low inductive capacitors, many class D designs opt to utilize small capacitors in parallel which also achieves increased capacitance, decreased inductance, and decreased ESR.


I am far from an amplifier engineer. I have gone down the rabbit hole and all I can conclude to truly compare amplifier topologies involves more than most (including myself) can measure or comprehend. Notice how since I first poked the bear of this topic on this thread the posts (including my own) entail a lot of “I think”, “I feel”, “is probably”, “for some scientific reason”, “has something to do with”. I haven’t seen one data points, published papers, measurements or experiments to confirm a claim yet.

Facts get removed from context or marketing propagandas get indoctrinated and both are reworded, rephrased, and recycled..

Sorry I derailed the original thread topic OP. I merely wanted to advocate for people remembering to dig deeper and search for the credible evidence for debates like these. It’s harder to come by than you would think.
 
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