New amp

"Now let's take some bullshit and present it as reality...and hey presto our argument holds water!"

Dub bassline = 3kw average power when peak draw is 6kw? How can you present this statement as fact? Hace you measured it? Did you even do the maths?

A pure max amplitude sinewave with no breaks and no ASDR envelope (ie never happens in music as the ASDR gives the note punch)..is 1.5kw average power with 6kw peaks.

3kw average would be the same unlikely note driven 50% into clip and would sound unbearable.

Unless I've fundamentally misunderstood the means by which a musical signal translates into power drawn by the amp (and I'm perfectly open to this being the case - the science you mentioned goes right over my head)...when the waveform is at it's maximum peak, (ie the top or bottom of the wave in a sinewave), that point represents full current draw from the mains. When at the midway point, no current is being drawn, and then there are gradations between those points. (Except obviously wizardry in various forms means the mains never actually sees that current draw in these new generations of amps).

When the waveform is clipped, the current sits at maximum amplitude for longer than the sub-millisecond point it would be there with a clean sinewave, and so at the maximum potential of an amp, the signal clips, because that's all it can do, it can't go any louder with each cycle so it just occupies more of each cycle with a maximum amplitude signal instead (or clip).

We had this discussion a while back about Powersoft amps (and about a million other times by all accounts), and I did some close analysis of the waveform of a heavy dub track at it's apex, and it seemed to fit with what I expected based on the reasoning I just outlined, which I admit is not otherwise founded in a firm understanding of the underlying theory.

If what you say about sinewaves is correct and my understanding is wrong then the Powersoft X Series on particular would be totally crippled for use on some music genres - they would crap out very audibly when pushed, except they don't, so there you go.

Edited by Hemisphere - 21 November 2017 at 12:03pm

Also remember that the PSU rail condensers are there to smooth out the bumps and help when there is a peak in the signal. So a sudden heavy bass line might not result in a sudden large rise in the current draw. The average power in will obviously be greater than power out, but only if integrated over time.