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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
 
"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.!  
audio2design
1,351 posts
 
Oh George,

Every time you open your fingers and type about EPDR you only show you don't understand it and just continue to prove my point.

Calling me a "fused" is as laughable as your inability to understand the difference between because a fuse is not directional, AC does not matter, and because it's AC, a fuse can't have directional effects.


Keep it up George. I can claim your lack of understanding, but only you can keep proving my statement.


I don't claim to know everything, but when it comes to many aspects of audio, 30+ years of actual design experience, research, and even academia has given me a broad base of knowledge, but also the skills to delve deeper into many topics and a network of experts in topics I am comparatively weak on.
audiobrian OP
183 posts
 
I only recently viewed the additional contributions to this thread I started 19 months ago. I appreciate the additional input. From what I gather, audio2design, dedicated bridged amplifiers can be every bit as good or better than non bridged parallel designs if implemented well. Perhaps this is why Constellation, Naim, PS Audio, McCormack, Clayton, and others build dedicated bridged amplifiers to great success.
As these manufacturers use robust power supplies, the extra current required with bridged designs is not terribly compromising even with lower impedance loudspeakers? Thank you!
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