Subwoofer Amp Recommendations

I'm using one channel of an older 250wpc Bryston 4B to drive my 12" NHT subwoofer and it's much better than the NHT SA-3 amp/crossover made for it.

If your amp is like the Carver Pro PM700/1200 which use XLR and 1/4" TRS input jacks for PA and guitar set ups and you only have RCA cables, you could get XLR to RCA adapters for it and avoid buying new cables.

Something like the NAD 208 might good as well.

The Crown CT series are great subwoofer amps.

If Aragon is in your list, dont even consider the others, I feel Carver and NAD are poor choices to even consider. Aragons are truely flat to 5hz with a great damping factor and excellent slew rate. Their design is also top notch and they are also a great amp to upgrade internally too if you ever felt the need. 8008BB or Palladium's would be the top 2 choices, both are balanced designs and accept xlr inputs. Palladium's are incredible amplifiers and excellent bass module amps being fully stable at any impedance load. And they actually put out more than their conservatively rated power fullbandwidth, both channels driven with very low THD and TIM.

Both the Talon ROC AK and Thunderbird models (the t'Bird is about $12,000 delivered with the amp) come with the new Crown CTs-600 amp with IQ-PIP interface card. This amp is digital, and has a parametric EQ built-in that you connect to and program with your PC (via TCPIP connectivity, like your Internet connection). It is a very small form-factor (19 x 3.5 x 14), rack-mountable design.

I just ordered a ROC AK, and have talked to Mike Farnsworth about this sub amp. He is very complementary of it. He has used the Crown analog 'car-battery' style amps for his subwoofers for years, and feels that this is the best so far.

The only concern I have about it is that it is fan-cooled (potential noise), though the fan speed can be programmed to vary based on thermal demand, so they probably do not run much at idle. The plus-side of this fan cooling is there is NO top-to-bottom ventilation needs, so you can stack them tightly in a rack without providing any vertical clearance.

We'll see how it sounds....

Ritteri...Why is slew rate meaningful for a SW amp? Is "flat to 5 Hz" really significant? If so, I suggest a Kenwood LO7M, or other DC coupled amp, which is flat to DC.