D-Sonic peak current output compared to other

Thanks guys for your thoughts.

I am starting to check the specs of some Class-D amplifiers, and I first checked Spectron, as originator of this type of amplifier, but your are correct, if we consider the upgrades, price is somewhat an issue for me. Anyway, at the Spectron website they explain the importance of headroom, so I check this spec in the others.

I will consider the Veritas by Merrill Audio, although I'm unable to demo it or others, as I live far away :)

Cheers

Djug, Merrill Audio and D-Sonic appear to sell directly to end users. Therefore your location may not matter. You may want to contact them and determine what arrangements can be made for you. Here is Merrill's site:
http://merrillaudio.net/

Cjug - FYI, the price difference between the Merril and the D-Sonic is big enough to drive a truck through. I know Merril personally, trust him, and will be auditioning his amps this year. However, I doubt I will be able to afford them anytime soon. If you think you can spend 10 large on a pair of amps, email Merrill. Perhaps he can arrange a home trial for you. D-Sonic has a 21 day return option, but you lose round-trip shipping costs and a 10% restocking fee. An expensive home demo if you don't keep it. IIRC, Wyred 4 Sound has a better return policy, but I am not sure.

I recently borrowed a pair of Arion RS-500 Class D amps from Mike at MK Audio. Great amps that took my rig up a big notch. I do not know much about them, but I think they put out 35 amps peek current. They sounded far more powerful and dynamic than my solid state Class A/B amp, which has a peek current output of 45 amps. So, there ya go. I am not affiliated with MKAudio. However, Mike did mention he had some B-stock units available at a discount from the regular $4K/pr price. You can ask him about it. www.arionaudio.com

Let's do the math!

We have three values mentioned so far. 30A, 45A and 65Amps.

Exactly what does that mean? I suspect it is not having anything to do with the power output of the amp. Let's see if I am correct.

The power formula is P=Isquared x R. P is Power, I is current and R is the load of the speaker.

Let's assume that the speaker is one ohm, which it isn't in most cases, but one ohm means that the power is equal to the current squared; 30 amps is thus 900 watts, 45 is 2025 and 65 is 4225.

If the speaker is 4 ohms the power level becomes 2700 watts, 8100 and 16,900 watts respectively.

Do any of these amps make power like that into 4 ohms? No? (sorry to be a bit flippant, but this is an often misunderstood spec).

The actual spec is the amount of current measured when the power supply is shorted out for 10 milliseconds.

By that measure, our MA-2, a 220-watt tube amp, has as much current as the most powerful amp mentioned on the is list so far. But its really the amount of *power* that the amp can make into the speaker load that is important.

The current spec is really a measure of the size of the pool of electrons that feeds the amp. But the amp is a bottleneck for that pool. It has been shown that amps with more power supply reserve do sound better- this is often simply because you get less IM distortion.

One other bit of math. Let's say the speaker is being fed 400 watts. What is the current? If a 4-ohm speaker, the current is 400=Isquared x 4. Solving for current we get 100, taking the square root we get 10. Ten amps is all that is needed to drive a 4 ohm speaker with 400 watts. Note: it does not matter what kind of amp is used, if its 4 ohms and 400 watts the current will always be 10 amps.

Amplifier manufacturers like to use that current figure to inflate the idea that their amp is more 'brutal' or something, I hope this rather simple math allows you to see what is really going on.

Very helpful, Atmasphere! That explains my experience perfectly.