Taramps efficiency Question

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dragon.breath
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I am currently running a smart 3 at a 2 ohm load. I did some trading with a friend of mine, and I will be getting a md5000.1 1 ohm version from him next week sometime. I originally was just going to either sell the 5k or put it away for a possible build next year.
Ok, here’s the question, would I gain anything from using the 5k instead of the smart 3 at my current 2 ohm load? The 5k is rated at 3200 watts at 2 ohms. Where the smart 3 is 3000 watts at 2 ohms. I know the extra 200 watts is not going to be noticeable, but what I am wondering about is the efficiency. I know that due to the design, the smart 3 is not super efficient at 2 ohms. (69% efficient @2 ohms according to YouTube) On the other hand, a 1 ohm amplifier is generally more efficient at 2 ohms.
 
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Can't tell you anything you won't find in a Google search. Big D dynod a Taramps Smart 5k and got 82.2% efficiency @ 2 Ohm (see link). The Youtube vids that came up dealing with the MD5k directly are pretty uninformative - they dyno it without a current reading (or even a steady voltage...) or just hook it up and play I guess.
 
Rather meaningless since class D operates at peak efficiency at maximum unclipped power and at higher impedance. Your impedance is never standing still and it is unlikely you're going to be running it at maximum unclipped power for very long. Idle current draw should be around the same and normal music listening the difference either way should be negligible.

It's not like you're building a deep space probe where your battery needs to last 50 years on the way to Mars or something, and outside of test bench scenario I do not believe you'll ever see anything close to published efficiency numbers on an amplifier.
 
Kind of what I was thinking as well. It’s not something that I would go out and buy looking for an improvement. It’s one of those “I have this already, I wonder if it would be worth swapping them out?”
 
This raises an interesting question regarding how you'd even compare the efficiency of one amp to another on music. One way: Measure the output power and input power over the whole song (as a function of time), then divide the two totals (the same as average output power divided by average input power). It's hard to make it apples-to-apples...one way is to adjust gains until the two amps under test have about the same total output power. None of that necessarily tells you exactly what you want to know and there's a dozen ways to do it depending on what you're after. I've never seen anyone do anything like this on Youtube and I don't even know what instruments you'd need - none of the common ones output a recording, usually just a max reading. You'd probably need actual lab instruments.

Edit: Another way is to measure the efficiencies at different frequencies (something you can do with available tools) then do an FFT of the song you're playing and try to do some math from there. This'd work only if the whole song is played at whatever level you took your per-frequency readings at.
 
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The ds has more power...it's rated at 12.6v and the ts at 13.8v... I had the the ts400x4 though and it a good little amp
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