t.amp d3400 review

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   Hey, needed to put together a budget rack so i thought i'd try one of these badboys out and give it a run for its money. heres a quick review

First impressions:

PROs
Solid case, nice useful blue vu meter lights
very light
1u
nice solid dials and switch etc. 
Internally there are two ETD59 transformers which means that there my be a power supply for each amp? 
Big heatsinks inside, good fans and fat transistors well mounted
PFC. Whether its active or passive i'm not sure.
nice pro layout and quality pcbs. 

Cons
No signal limiter
No signal throughs, filters, bridge function or binding post output
didn't see many capacitors inside - especially compared to the powersoft amps. But they may be hidden beheath the heatsinks
no earth lift
some dodgy looking mounting of the through hole components and soldering.
Fan started making a funny noise straight away. 
too deep for our amp rack! only just fit in. 

So how did it perform? 

test 1 - 2 labs on one channel, 1 usb on the other

pros
Ran the whole night without getting warm!
Solid bass, plenty of power, tight. the usb was very loud and hit hard. Labs pushing out lots of air. 
didn't trip or blow the 13a fuse

cons
When the lab channel was turned up, it would run nice until you were starting to light to highest blue led called -10db. At this level, a big kick would then TRIP THE PROTECT CIRCUITRY! this would happen before i ever saw the clip led light. the channel would then turn off for about 20 seconds before starting up again. did this about 4 times then i just kept it at a low volume. The usb side never tripped. 

test 2

Next day we ran it up with 2 usb's on one channel (2ohm). Again, it would run up and make LOTs of noise. Loud tight bass, sounded good. BUT only until you were starting to light the -10 blue led. As soon as a big kick came along, it would trip the protect circuit and turn off for 20 seconds. 

Same when we hung 4 v1200 in loony bins off one channel. Again, these sounded great until you turned it right up. I never saw the clip light come on, it would trip before this. 

With 1 usb a side it would go all the way up to clip and never trip out. very loud. 

with 3 loony bins on one channel (2.6 ohms) it was very loud, nice bass, and would go all the way up to clip and not trip. 

test 3

ran up some tops at high and low volume. Very little unwanted noise when turned down, when turned up it sounded good, didn't notice any difference between it and a class a/b amp. 

VERDICT

I'l be calling thomann and telling them that they shouldn't advertise this amp as 2 ohm stable because it obviously isn't! All these test were done loading just one channel so it could get worse when both are loads but i think they are seperate. So yea, it WILL NOT DO 3300w into 2ohms a side for any length of time without tripping. 

Apart from this it seems fairly decent. only time on the road and more use will tell you about its reliability. Really need to get a multimeter out and measure the volts its giving out to a 4 ohm load to see if it is infact getting up to 1700w as quoted. Seemed like it was powering them up nicely though. somewhat more than the plx3402's.

so it looks like the amp has an overcurrent protect circuit on each channel output. When a big kick comes along with a 2ohm load which may have been enough to send the amp into clip, it will trip the protect circuit. 

so its more like a 4k amp maximum i guess if you run it with 3 8ohm bins off each side. But for the money, it definitely beats a 30kg 3u beast. 

I haven't decided yet if i'm going to return it or not......