Clean power vs. dirty power

[danz24 10+ year member]

I hear terms such as it sounds so nice because the amp gives off CLEAN power.

And another guy blamed his sub-par performance on a DIRTY amp.

Is it a myth that amps gives off a certain quality in terms of power? Or is a watt just a watt no matter what amp is producing it?

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[IDSkoT 5,000+ posts]

It may have something to do with the Xover... or maybe I'm just talkin' sh!t.

 

[ThatChevyGuy 5,000+ posts]

clipping=dirty power.

 

[Rich B 5,000+ posts]

That usually means the quality of the power supply filtering in the amp.

The power supplies are the most expensive component in amplifiers, so lower priced amps tend to have lower quality power supplies that can allow more noise through.

 

[twisztdauthorit 10+ year member]

clipped power signal sends through a shitty sounding signal, degrades sound quality and to much will hurt your sub.

 

[benchambers80]

IDk, but I always take showers in the morning to help with that.

 

[Lakota 5,000+ posts]

People refer to a clipped signal as dirty. The signal shape itself (typically a square wave)won't damage anything, but it can make things sound like shit. Using integration (which is beyond the caring of this forum) you could integrate the slopes of the waves and figure out the rms voltage of the wave and calculate its power. Power is the key here, because only the power itself kills a sub, not the change in voltage levels (the wave).

 

[Lakota 5,000+ posts]

clipped power signal sends through a shitty sounding signal, degrades sound quality and to much will hurt your sub.

See this is where people get confused. The signal itself doesn't hurt your sub because if you put the signal on a oscillocope all that it is measuring isthe change of voltage levels. If the wave is generating more power (which clipping tends to do) it can damage the sub.

 

[danz24 10+ year member]

Well the way I see it all amps do is make the sound wave larger. In a very simplistic form, if all amps do the same job then they are created basically equal, with the only difference among them being how much they can amplify or maybe the internal quality which may or may not make an audible difference.

But others have told me the lower end amps such as pyramid send dirty signals to the subs, making them not as punchy or make restrict sound to their full potential. So to me it sounds like the wave shape will have some some bumps or something to not make it smooth, causing the signal to become unclear. gets?

btw, im not talking about clipping.

 

[Lakota 5,000+ posts]

A good little read from Rockford Fosgate http://www.rockfordfosgate.com/scripts/rightnow.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=1TxZzY*i&p_lva=&p_faqid=63&p_created=965346111&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTEwJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Y2xpcHBpbmcmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT0zJnBfcHJvZF9sdmwxPX5hbnl_JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwyPX5hbnl_JnBfY2F0X2x2bDE9fmFueX4mcF9jYXRfbHZsMj1_YW55fiZwX3NvcnRfYnk9ZGZsdCZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=

 

[cshaw 10+ year member]

an amp which doest change the signal in any way with good parts and build quality, headroom and signal to noise ratio (which are interconnected), would be clean power to me. x/o points are after this fact however, which has to do with the actual speakers them selves rather than signal amplification.

 

[n2audio 5,000+ posts]

others have told me the lower end amps such as pyramid send dirty signals to the subs, making them not as punchy or make restrict sound to their full potential. So to me it sounds like the wave shape will have some some bumps or something to not make it smooth, causing the signal to become unclear. gets?btw, im not talking about clipping.

No, it's not like that. Cheap amps just don't produce nearly the power people expect from them. They turn up the gain until they get the "volume" they want, it sounds like crap (since it's excessively clipped) and they say the amp's "dirty".

If you had a giant "2400 watt" Pyramid up against a quality 100x2 amp you could easily set the Pyramid up to sound just as clean as the other amp, but nobody wants to do that when it takes a $120 2' long Pyramid to do what a $150 ish 10"x10" quality amp can do, and the quality amp will probably last 10x as long.

Spikes in signal response would indicate a defective amp IMO.

 

[goonandbuck 10+ year member]

i think of thd when i think of like clean power, less distortion is "clean"

 

[n2audio 5,000+ posts]

i think of thd when i think of like clean power, less distortion is "clean"

Luckily for us there is no difference whatsoever between .01 and .1%. CEA2006 specs use 1% as the acceptable level of THD before any audible effect on the signal sets in.

 

[loosenutz 10+ year member]

Well the way I see it all amps do is make the sound wave larger. In a very simplistic form, if all amps do the same job then they are created basically equal, with the only difference among them being how much they can amplify or maybe the internal quality which may or may not make an audible difference.
But others have told me the lower end amps such as pyramid send dirty signals to the subs, making them not as punchy or make restrict sound to their full potential. So to me it sounds like the wave shape will have some some bumps or something to not make it smooth, causing the signal to become unclear. gets?

btw, im not talking about clipping.

fyi, a audio signal is generaly 30-3k hz (std audio) no matter how big of an amplifier you have you still don't change the freq of the audio,therefore your sign-wave does not change in any way........with that said the wattage your amp is creating is actualy a voltage (dc voltage) and your ac voltage( your audio) will be riding on that dc voltage reference........ on top of that when you have clean audio going into your amp and you amp tuned correctly you can make sparkomatic sound good....10 years ago i used to compete in 50 watt class with 2-12 crunch 15's a soundstream 5.0 and a cassette player playing music and was hitting 140db's while everyone else had cd players and bass notes(tones) so all in all it is mostly in the tuning...........