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Bridging an amplifier

I recently watched a YouTube video, a few years old, that featured Flemming Rasmussen, the highly regarded founder and engineer for Gryphon (now retired I believe). Flemming was speaking of his class A monoblock amplifiers in the Antileon Evo, Colloseum and Mephisto. Flemming was expressing his disdain for Monoblocks that are actually 2 internally bridged amplifiers, (such as DNA 500,Clayton M300s and also class A Luxman that can be used as Monoblocks in the BTL mode (bridged tied load), calling these types of Monoblocks inferior and not true Monoblocks. He claims dedicated Monoblocks where all push pull transistors are paralleled, are vastly superior to summing the two channels via bridging (antiphase summing). I’d love to know if most audiophiles and engineers agree with Flemming. I have owned and found both the DNA Monoblocks and Clayton M300 Monoblocks to sound excellent, and a friend uses two M-800A Luxman class A amplifiers in bridged tied load mode (BTL switch) with great clarity and power. Thank you for your thoughts!
audiobrian
audio2design
1,351 posts
 
I would say many comments made here are made by people without a deep understanding of amplifier design and are just parroting comments made by others without deep amplifier design knowledge.

Potential advantages of bridged amps (if properly designed for the purpose).

- inherent cancellation of even order distortion products which can be especially beneficial at low power (biggest advantage)

- reduced distortion by reducing voltage swing allowing devices to operate over more linear ranges of operation


- improved power supply rejection ratio


- related to above, better rejection of IM and THD products from audio modulation of the power supply 



georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 

All you have to do is read techs with far more savvy than you on the subject in Google, and now your even saying you’ve got more than Almarg (rip) as well, your are a genius!!! well self proclaimed one at best
audio2design
1,351 posts
 
"techs"? ... That's laughable.

I have read some of Almargs posts. Intelligent and knowledge guy and sorry that he passed before I could interact with him, but yes, on amplifier and audio technology based on his own writings I have more likely significantly more knowledge. However, as he alluded in his post George which likely went over your head is a balanced amplifier design of which a special case of a bridged design.

However, a mistake made by many, and I believe by Almarg but maybe he was just simplifying for the likes of you was the belief that you must have perfect gain matching on both channels which is not at all true. Gain mismatch shows as offset, it does not in itself make a distortion product hence why the benefits of 2nd order cancellation and power supply / power supply modulation rejection carries through as does the benefit of reduced voltage swing as it relates to distortion.
audio2design
1,351 posts
 
And George, your obvious lack of amplifier knowledge with your repeated incorrect statements WRT EPDR not to mention not understanding AC circuits does not put you in a position to judge others knowledge about amplification.
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 


You being also a "fuser" have no idea about EPDR either. 
That's why the Wilson Alexia has one of the evilest loads in the bass ever for an amp to see My friend Edgar Kramer Editor of Soundstage Australia has a pair and has proved it to himself/us and others with all kind of amps he's tried on them. As well as just about every other publication.
Take away the  -43' phase angle and you have doubled the impedance, and made it far better load for an amp to see. https://ibb.co/YPF52Mw
 But not you, you know more than anyone.!  
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