ICE amps need cooling?


I've been looking for an amp to power my Maggies and was doing some research on these ICE modules from B&O. While reading the data sheet I saw that the model 1000 that puts out 525 watts into 8 Ohms and 1,000 watts into 4 Ohms it gave a specification of Power(FTC) of 80 watts continuous. Now I remember back in the 70's during the receiver wars the FTC mandated that power ratings be standardized to something like "100 wpc continuous into 8 Ohms with no more than X% distortion" This was to stop all the unrealistic power claims of huge power output for a brief time under tremendous distortion. It made the playing field level so consumers could at least get what they were expecting. So I see that the ICE module has a power rating of only 80 watts continuous! Now that is a far cry from the 500 watts they are bragging about. Have all amplifier specs abandoned the FTC ruling, or is the ICE module just blowing smoke? The B&O site also stated that with heat sinks or fan cooling the power rating could go up. Most ICE amps I see on the market don't have any heat sinks or even ventilation for that matter. So are we all buying ICE amps that can deliver their stated output power for only brief times, and actually put out only a fraction of the power for any sustained period of time? I'm no expert and I just saw this today so I am asking the the members with lots of knowledge in this area to respond and please clear this up. Thanks.
koestner
For some reason my reply did not get posted. I am using a PS Audio GCA 250 on my mid/bass panels. I will move it to the ribbons. I am expecting to get Wyred monos for the mid/bass panels. Underwood HiFi is selling a multi-channel version, which would be great if I didn't already own the PS.
No, the 80w is the power it consumes in "standby" mode, i.e. leaving it on all the time without use is like burning an 80w bulb for energy consumption.
The specs of 500w are accurate in that module for those amps, if you take notice, the power output of all the ICE amps are almost identical, 100-125w for the smaller, and 500-550w for the larger, all in 8 ohms.
They control bass very well.
They run very cool, even after heavy use, all 3 I had have done this, both the smaller and larger power amps.
They would work well for Maggies, or any other low efficiency speaker.
It is not standby power. Smaller module 200ASC has FTC power listed as 55W (standby is about 10W). Icepower cannot run with maximum power for a long time but you don't need it because "average music power" is in single percents of peak power. Also B&O spects are very conservative - please read what I found on another forum:

"Originally posted by dmfraser
I operated a sample 1000ASP on the bench delivering 350W average of pink noise into a 4 ohm load for over one hour with no additional heatsink and the metal case stayed below 55°C.

However, higher levels would make the power supply voltage go down to act as a thermal compensation. Much nicer than just shutting down.

However, with 1214W of sine wave, partly into clipping, after about 35 seconds, the output level would drop to about 600W by the protection circuitry. Remember this is with no additional heatsink.

The 200ASC, I was able to operate with sine wave at 100W into 4 ohms continuously. Turning it up, with sine wave, the module would shut down at about 214W.

However, with pink noise at 100Waverage and a 6 db crest factor, the 200ASC would run all day without shut down, until I was tired of tying up one of my Audio Precisions with it. It would also run all day with music, driven hard where the output limiter was set to a peak limit of 210W maximum. That is, the limiter would allow small amounts of clipping. Driven so the limit light in our external optical limiter was on essentially continuously."

Icepower has even more serious limitation of maximum power at higher frequencies (to protect output chokes) but again it's not important since high frequencies in music carry very little power and the tweeter (and your ears) cannot take more than 10% of the speakers maximum power anyway.