Why don't higher end amplifiers come with a separate power chassis?


Many higher end preamplifiers come with separate power boxes, but I don't see amplifiers with separate boxes, any idea why this might be?

emergingsoul

My Musical Fidelity X-A1 has a separate toroidal power supply (its X-A2 bigger brother came with one as well).

Not super high end but a very nice "tube-like" sounding SS amp from 20+ years ago.

I just need a set of metric Allen wrenches and some thermal grease to get mine up and running again (fixed a broken lead on a wire wound resistor 15 years ago, but didn't have replacement thermal grease to use it long term - tool kit with the wrenches was stolen from my car).

Thing is that placing the power supply @ a certain distance and "angle" from the main unit improved the SQ.

 

DeKay

Are the power supplies usually a lot larger than the analog piece of the equation when it comes to an amp??

Seems to me the amplifier is deserving of a separate power box and all the rational to not do it doesn’t make sense. The impact on sound could be huge if done properly. All the trouble to get everything right in the chain before the amplifier and then it hits an amplifier and for some reason a major shortfall in execution occurs.

Power amps should be designed with a separate power box. Mono blocks are good because they have separate power supplies they just need to be separated it would be interesting to know how big these chassis would be. Mono blocks can be quite large how much of this is due to the power supply.

 

@emergingsoul Wrote:

Power amps should be designed with a separate power box. Mono blocks are good because they have separate power supplies they just need to be separated it would be interesting to know how big these chassis would be.

 Pretty big. Below are two 150 watt mono block amps with separate power supplies, four chassis.

Mike

 

Cool post! After learning about B fields in college physics, I've always been wary of placing transformers close to any circuitry without good shielding (despite trafo mfg claims of low b field). I use stainless cake pans. As some have mentioned above @erik_squires  it is nice to have the dc close. One idea I read about recently which seems to be the best of both worlds is to put the trafo and the first bank of caps after the rectifier then use the umbilical cable for a pi resistor (around 0R1) then place the second cap bank in the circuit chassis. Pretty cool. I'm sure SMc has implementing something similar, since he likes his clean ops DC juice close. Really close. As do I... peace

Xs300 past labs Mono blocks for a pair are $85,000.

I think they're 300 W per mono.   Doesn't seem like much power.

really nice car or a pair of mono blocks, or better still, both.