sundown, ppi, Amer Bass amps?

[The Camry]

Most recommended amps i see on here are the ppi, american bass, and sundown amps. Im curious if anyone has heard a sound different between using any of the 3 brands. I mean in the mids and highs, not bass amps btw.

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[jmfrb1]

Also interested in this!

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

from the competition i went, listning from from cscstang's pwx 8s on a ppi p900.4 to a few others with several pwx front stage setups on sundown, ct sounds, and b2 audio amps, I heard literally no superiority in sound quality, if anything CSCstang's pwx 8s sounded a lot better(more midbass, louder and cleaner) due to the work he put in with acoustical door treatments. Again I'd say its mainly install dependent. A super high end 4 channel should be the last thing on the list of spending.

Hell, some setups with those good amps even sounded rancid because its probably the guy's preference with ear bleeding supertweets or he lacked proper signal processing.

I gotta say though, the best sounding car at the event ran JL amps even without a DSP in his setup with 3 sets of Focal 165 V30.

 

[The Camry]

from the competition i went, listning from from cscstang's pwx 8s on a ppi p900.4 to a few others with several pwx front stage setups on sundown, ct sounds, and b2 audio amps, I heard literally no superiority in sound quality, if anything CSCstang's pwx 8s sounded a lot better(more midbass, louder and cleaner) due to the work he put in with acoustical door treatments. Again I'd say its mainly install dependent. A super high end 4 channel should be the last thing on the list of spending.
Hell, some setups with those good amps even sounded rancid because its probably the guy's preference with ear bleeding supertweets or he lacked proper signal processing.

I gotta say though, the best sounding car at the event ran JL amps even without a DSP in his setup with 3 sets of Focal 165 V30.

earbleeding super tweets. Those are god awful

 

[fly_marlin]

If amps are of equal power, you won't notice a difference. Amps themselves, for the most part, don't have their own sound signature. Having said that, if you have done proper research and know the amp performs as it claims, your next concern should be reliability. After that, size - if it matters to you, some people have space restrictions. Price is also a driving factor. For me personally, I like to go for stuff that's a little different...most of the time anyway.

 

[The Camry]

If amps are of equal power, you won't notice a difference. Amps themselves, for the most part, don't have their own sound signature. Having said that, if you have done proper research and know the amp performs as it claims, your next concern should be reliability. After that, size - if it matters to you, some people have space restrictions. Price is also a driving factor. For me personally, I like to go for stuff that's a little different...most of the time anyway.

dampening, distortion levels, Something about impedance changes depending on amps. come into play. however, ive heard that dampening is a mute point, distortion levels are usually undetectable at >2%

So its just a back and forth argument.

So your telling me that my $500 sundown amp should sound the exact same as a 100-200$ ppi 900.4. Thats discouraging to my ego..

also diff amps have diff qualities of crossovers.

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

There is more to. Mostly power. Heat management can kill power. Quality of the output section.

Most amps that actually make the same power will sound close if not the same out of the box. How they sound after a 30 minute beat down session is the question. The quality amp will be just the same.

Also cheap amps tend to clip hard very easily. You won't notice till its pushed.

 

[The Camry]

"For example: It is rare that testing is done on an amplifier's clipping performance - how the amp recovers from a brief transient overload. I have stated that a hi-fi amplifier should never clip in normal usage - nice try, but it IS going to happen, and it is more common than we might think. Use a good clipping indicator on the amp, and this can be eliminated, but at what cost? It might be necessary to reduce the volume (and SPL) to a level that is much lower than you are used to, to eliminate a problem that you were unaware existed.

Different amplifiers react in different ways to these momentary overloads, where their overall performance is otherwise almost identical. I have tested IC power amps, and was dismayed by the overload recovery waveform. My faithful old 60W design measures about the same as the IC in some areas, a little better in some, a little worse in others (as one would expect).

Were these two amps compared in a double blind test (avoiding clipping), it is probable that no one would be able to tell the difference. Advance the level so that transients started clipping, and a fence post would be able to hear the difference between them. What terms would describe the sound? I have no idea. The sound might be "smeared" due to the loss of detail during the recovery time of the IC amp. Imaging might suffer as well, since much of the signal that provides directional cues would be lost for periods of time.

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The Sound of Audio Amplifiers: Can you hear a difference between Amps? | Audioholics