Are 90% Of Today's Car Amps The Same

[swat2380 10+ year member]

I am a firm believer that the internet could have been a factor into cheap overseas "ampstamping". The price points for all car audio are in the shitter due to the internet. My father owned a shop in the early 90's, no internet mega warehouse competition just the guys up the road. We sold Lanzar, linear, Orion just to name a few. I currently own my own shop, I get all kinds of crappy chrome plated stuff brought in for installation all the time bought from......the internet.

I sell great brands, I can stock a set of components that resale for $699 and a day after I show them to a guy, he will call and say he found them at a .com for $399.

Handcrafting, designing is expensive. Changing the design of an amplifier is expensive due to tooling of assembly lines, parts change etc.

Just buy an amp from Korea and make a profit?? Why not??

 

[MakeshiftAudio 10+ year member]

You seem to know a little about engineering so I will ask you a question too. What do you think about these heat sinks that are just solid chunks of aluminum/cast/whatever that function more to look cool versus allowing heat to escape from the surface?
My Crossfire BMF 1000 has the crappiest heat sink in all the amps I currently own for dissipating heat. That little fooker runs HOT but it looks cool!//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

I dislike them personally, I havn't dealt too much with such amps like Sundown, but I have used a similar heatsink in a previous project, and it sucked balls like no other compared to the one I replaced it with that had tiny fins on it, pardon my usage but it was quite needed, cost me about $200 in new silicon. I decided to switch when it died twice due to thermal runaway each time. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif The ones that have little (1/16") triangle ridges do better than the solid flat ones I have to admit, but I have to say something that has fins would be far superior to it.

I personally would like to see a company use an extruded aluminum sink that used the U channel design, but on the outer bars of the U, have a square about an inch wide by tall even, fill it with about 6-8 thin fins, and have a fan on each side blowing in with a cut in the middle section of the amp that can be squares or slits to act as an exhaust. I used a similar design, but using CPU thin fin heatsinks which I made a small enclosure around the fins to pump water through. It could easily handle about 400W of dissipation from my 5kW motor controller output bridge. (Isotop igbts mounted on each side of the enclosure, which was directly attached to the fins via a hot-cold press fit. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif )

The point is, these flat 2 tone heat sinks with minimal fins are more susceptible to heating under a (dissipative) load with no dedicated active cooling, compared to the ones with more fins. I think the designers had in mind things like "Oh, well the fins might get bent if we put them on there." Which can easily happen, even to 1/4" aluminum fins. One of my favorite 1/2 properly heatsinked amps was the xsite xad2k. The only problem with the design is that the heatsinks are aligned to the surface it's being mounted to. I say they should use long heatsinks, with a small fan on the end, or the user could install it. Fans make a world of difference, trust me. Just a simple tiny fan running the same direction of the fins will keep it cool. I could tell another story about this, but I will not, since this is already quite a long post.

Final Summation of the post:

They are for design.

Fins are quite understandably superior by far.

Active cooling makes a world of difference.

Pardon my little typing errors, since I do not really go back and completely read it, it might contain tiny stupid errors.

Edit: Something like adding active cooling to Memphis ST series would make it run extremely cold. I used to have a few problems when running it for hours, didn't shut down due to it, but I decided it was getting far too hot for my liking, installed a 90mm case fan with 1.5" standoffs that arched to the side of the amp, directly into the MDF. That thing ran extremely cool.

 

[mrogowski 5,000+ posts]

Oddly, my local Memphis dealer told me about Lunar Amplifiers after I told him that I wouldn't run another piece of shit Memphis Car Audio amp. Just to recap what I have said before, I went through two Memphis amps purchased authorized in a 6 month period under warranty and had two transshipped Memphis amps that were DOA out of the box.

Wow. Did you by chance break a mirror in the last 7 years?

 

[MakeshiftAudio 10+ year member]

The only Memphis amps I want to deal with are the ST series(ST500, 500W@2, but can run 800W@1 unclipped, verified via oscope while benching) and the PR series, and possibly the 4k personally.

 

[gunz4me 10+ year member]

Wow. Did you by chance break a mirror in the last 7 years?

Personally, I think it was a design flaw of the Memphis Car Audio Amplifiers. Two were from the Power Reference line and one was a M class. Regardless, all of them had minimal support for the circuit board resulting in a board that was held in place by the FETS. That makes for a bad design on these crappy Louisiana roads The common issue in ALL of those amps was either the FETS snapping at the mounting end or tearing loose from the solder on the circuit board Horrible design:verymad:

 

[mrogowski 5,000+ posts]

http://www.formulaxaudio.com/

Those sure look familiar //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

*DO NOT* underestimate the Walmart monster and other big box stores. Things are slow and they are constantly looking for profitable products and product brands. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif

 

[MakeshiftAudio 10+ year member]

No comment on my post? xD

I havn't opened my PR 1k yet, no need to, thought I might need to now and make some sort of stand off.

 

[gunz4me 10+ year member]

No comment on my post? xD
I havn't opened my PR 1k yet, no need to, thought I might need to now and make some sort of stand off.

I agree with you on the heat sink part. I think the currently available sinks are useless blocks of aluminum or whatever material they are constructed out of. I actually prefer the heat sinks found in my old school Linear Power amps because they are effective at dissipating heat! I'll take function over form any day!

 

[DBBOOM 10+ year member]

I agree with you on the heat sink part. I think the currently available sinks are useless blocks of aluminum or whatever material they are constructed out of. I actually prefer the heat sinks found in my old school Linear Power amps because they are effective at dissipating heat! I'll take function over form any day!

I agree too. I'd rather have tall fins over the current popular heatsink designs. Form should follow function......................not the other way round.

 

[MakeshiftAudio 10+ year member]

I really hate posting long posts for the fact no one has the will to read them. :|

But I have to get information out.

Yeah, but along with my crazy ideas, people should use isotop package mosfets in class D amps, rather than use 5+ parallel TO220 fets.

 

[Johnny Law.Lulz 5,000+ posts]

Wasnt there some old water cooled amps back in the 80's or 90's. Couldnt this debate be had about some higher end subs. I dont know much about it but couldnt you apply this to the Konaki/DD 9500 thing. I agree about the amps and im glad atleast in this thread Hifonics is getting more recognition than hate. I think the 90's touch for car audio is gone from 99% of companies and they are all about the money now. Things were different back then in many different regards. I think its sad where we stand today as an economy and car audio industry.

China is getting ready to pass us in world economic trade. China is doing the same thing we did from 1875 to 1900, in 25 years we went from 6thi n the world in economy to first and you couldnt add up 2-5 and equal what we were doing. We controlled like 38% of the worlds economy back then. And now china is doing that exact thing now. They are taking our Panama canal that we payed for and worked and they are making the improvement nescessary for todays ships and such because we cant afford too.

Its sad but that same thing can be applied to car audio too.

 

[gunz4me 10+ year member]

Wasnt there some old water cooled amps back in the 80's or 90's. Couldnt this debate be had about some higher end subs. I dont know much about it but couldnt you apply this to the Konaki/DD 9500 thing. I agree about the amps and im glad atleast in this thread Hifonics is getting more recognition than hate. I think the 90's touch for car audio is gone from 99% of companies and they are all about the money now. Things were different back then in many different regards. I think its sad where we stand today as an economy and car audio industry.

Craig Romero ran a water cooled setup in his IASCA competition vehicle! Not long after, SAS had adopted his innovation into their amplifiers. Maybe we should see if we can convince chase007 to water cool his amp That would be one way he could relate his computer skills to car audio:laugh:

I'll stay out of the whole world economy thing but I will say that we brought it on ourselves as a whole by becoming a disposable society! In doing so we killed off a large portion of the service industry because it is cheaper to replace many things than it is to repair them

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

I'll stay out of the whole world economy thing but I will say that we brought it on ourselves as a whole by becoming a disposable society! In doing so we killed off a large portion of the service industry because it is cheaper to replace many things than it is to repair them

So where's the balance between that and wanting "technological progress" //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

Another carbon copy company. The outside of the amps resemble RD Audio.

From the info I've seen/heard, Formula X isn't a carbon copy......they are the house brand for Zenon. Zenon, selling their amps under a branded name.....competing directly with their own customers.

 

[gunz4me 10+ year member]

So where's the balance between that and wanting "technological progress" //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

It is a tough call to make by going with a product that has an indefinite life through service or one with a finite life that is almost guaranteed to need replacement in 5 years or less.

Onto another topic, I remember when the Chinese stole the electrolyte formula for capacitors around 1999/2000 and they didn't get the complete formula. You were lucky if their capacitors lasted 9 months without oozing out fluid or popping like a Cherry Bomb. Computer motherboards and various electronic circuit boards all died a premature death because of these capacitors.