i suspect if these units said PKN on the front you would have a different opinion...

 

Reality is, it's becoming very hard to know what power you are actually running at.

Some one please tell me that a K10 or 20 can't do bass? 

I never found a bass application for the X series anyways.. Not enough power. Marry up a X4 and a K20 and its an amazing little 2U package. 

13a sockets at that! I smash a pair of WS218X off 13a sockets all the time and my K10 always delivers. I don't notice the current limit until I go beyond a 4ohm load.

I have said it before: I would never use Powersoft on Bass. I do think it is quite an ingenious efficiency device, weight/practicality & presumed power. 

It's real quality is it's 'effect' of power, but specifically on bass as we have understood, it is not capable of genuinely holding the note(s). If you know what it is doing it's quite clear in it's tonal effect.

For me, I hear a bass guitar, or a bass tone with warmth on a production and it is a quality of the music. I am un impressed with the musical replication of bass with these amps, only a few sounds I've heard have worked on this, but generally it cannot provide musical replication of quality, just a compressed sound around 40hz where you can hear in musical terms, a struggle with tone. 

These are my reasons for not wanting to use them, specifically for the music I play. I said before that most bass sounds the same with them, analogue, sine wave, warm tone…. all lost and sounding more of the same compression struggle of the amp push pulling in milliseconds.

But… if plenty people are convinced that it is doing more, then why worry? 

Just my personal view on this.   

No, I haven't heard 'pro' boxes with applied settings, but I can only talk about bass sections on Roots/Dub Sounds. I did try to stress that I was talking for myself and around this style of music. 

I think the 'traditional' and known older amps and the odd new ones have been mentioned as tried and tested to give more sustained tone on this forum. I haven't used may of them, but heard a few. The weight of most of them is the main negative. 

Agreed; distortion is within the subject, but yet again, I did say from the very start that I am talking from my perspective and it's origins within sound/culture. 

Aesthetics is pretty key to understanding appreciation of sound, distortion is a part of this, as well as being something that can be a negative/unpleasant factor. The music made/recorded through the 60's/70's is often recognised as far more impressive (aesthetics) than that of the digital era, perhaps more papers should be written on how poor all those productions are and put the record straight. We shouldn't go too much off subject.

It really is each to their own, and the better for it.

 Not really, just use an old C Audio, they do what they say on the tin and more.

 Haha, that's mad, I just posted the same thing whilst reading the last page. ^^

The argument that people prefer heavy amps (or if you want to go there scoops for that matter) due to a distorted sound is spurious rubbish. My hifi amp of choice at the moment is a 1979 vintage Kenwood KA907 that weighs approx the same as a small moon but sounds sublime.

+1

Don't think there's anything else to add to that

I agree and disagree - ultimately the power figure is just a number, and it's manipulated to the marketing man's advantage. The end result of many of these numbers is that is makes it much harder to compare products, and for the inexperienced, very very difficult to match up the correct amplifier to the correct speakers.

I agree in that the numbers are to some extent not that important, what's more important is the performance, and with lightweight amplifiers the performance is definitely there, having lots of headroom to preserve the dynamics is a very important factor, and in most cases it doesn't matter if it can sustain that power for longer periods of time.

I disagree with 'who cares' to a small extent on the basis that it makes it very difficult to know what you are buying, and it does feel a little bit like customers are being deceived. If you bought a car that's marketed as having a 2 litre engine, you know it will be very close to 2 litres, and they will in fact make it 1.997 litres to keep it just under the tax bracket. It wont be 0.5 litres or 1.2 litres, it will be close to what is advertised. With amplifiers now, it's sometimes very difficult to know how the numbers relate to reality, if at all.

Thats what i did last summer, obtained a test unit for a while so i could see how the unit performed in real world conditions.

Anyone who buys purely off the spec sheet, without any kind of meaningful trial then to be frank deserves what they get, with no sympathy from me either. Off course in this day and age of internet based box shifters working on small margins with no demo stock then that might not always be easy - but that a bigger argument. But if you are talking about a significant investment then you need to take that decision, whether you chase the best price or factor in the service element.

Caveat Emptor

BUT

You cant always get a test unit - for some people this is easy, for some people it isnt, and for someone wanting to step up from entry level to pro kit, they may not have the contacts and would have to buy blind

There are also a lot of people in the industry, who are not as experienced or educated as others, perhaps still in the early days of their business and still learning the ropes. There is an absolute mine field of information out there, which makes it difficult for these people to make a judgement.

A lot of people buy on specs alone, as people tend to believe published information. In many cases there is legislation which governs how manufacturers can market their products, and the ASA are there to help prevent misleading advertising. With amplifier power it seems that mathematics is being used to 'manipulate' figures for marketing purposes, you could possibly argue it is verging on misleading and products are being mis-sold. 

But if an amp manufacturer plays the mathematics to make their product appear to be different on paper than it is in real life, then it's down to the buyer (who may or may not have the relevant expertise) to work out if the amplifier is fit for purpose and whether it performs as advertised.

I would prefer to see more transparency in power specifications, I know from experience that customers are confused and are finding it difficult to make meaningful comparisons.

It may well be that we are finding out more along the way, (rose tinted glasses), but certainly customers are secondary to businesses, who's main aim is to hold your money and will come up with different ways for you to pay into their accounts. Some of this is based around a system that does not so much offer an independent product, as older products were. They were better designed for use and for longevity, parts/design, that was part of the selling point and the core identity of the brand. Now we have brands who generally offer very little with their products, but will market to kill off others, regardless of product. (I am not pointing to Powersoft in this instance).

This is the most problematic issue for me, and, that very little is being done about it. The best advice given is to learn things for yourself, (regarding amps) and to test whenever possible and to use your ears.. before all this, have some idea of what you actually want, (do not simply listen to marketing & fashion of others). Better not to trust the big writing on adverts and next to products, use them as a ball park ideal.

Just my 2pennies worth.

X4 doesnt have a dirty great heat sink because it runs at 90% efficiency, it also has custom made components in the 3!! power supplies - this is what allows you to run single/bi/3 phase straight into its bum and carry on when you drop phases etc.

You cant measure on a resistive load because alot of its power is derived from back EMF energy recovery and you cant measure it with a damn sine wave!! if you dont believe it delivers the power then hook it up to a sub, do your maths and measure the SPL.

Theres a reason this is now an industry standard and rental houses have hundreds in stock; Its the most power dense unit on the market- it has 10 x the DSP of a lake processor, it has the most advanced power supply on the market and is dante capable - down the same cable unlike others who cant manage that.

if theyre not good good enough for your shed built plywood mega scoops fine dont use em...........

BOOM!!! check these shed scoops out... haha theres my shed ..bOOM hEAVYWEIGHTS!!!!

now easy yuself :-)

if they can drive inductive loads better than resistive loads where is the extra acoustic power coming from? wouldn't they have to make the speaker more efficient...

Happily for the sake of music, which is generally the main use for the amps we discuss, the main conclusion was to use your ears and to teat and care about the sound the amps provide. I have heard plenty of people play who have at least twice as much power (advertised spec) as another sound and they have not shown that they sound halfway as good… point being it is the sound produced that is the winner, music itself is quality of sound(s). 

I do agree that modern increase of social media and forums have done more to confuse and provide miss-information on many subjects, but products sold in the wider market are open to all feedback, right or wrong, that is a given that you have to accept selling anything in any market. 

I don't think Powersoft will be worried, plenty of people have said that they are using their products happily for quite some time. Generally most amps do not live up to spec ratings, and that was discussed in this thread and the variables and near impossibility to rate them specifically was also brought up, which is why i suggested reading again. 

That is why the best general conclusion was to test as many amps as possible and to use your ear… if you are simply looking for reassurance in the specs to dictate what you think might be 'better' or 'louder' then you don't have enough confidence in knowing what you are hearing. Each to there own overall, would be better to care about what you are hearing though, rather than searching for the 'ultimate', which simply does not exist, but which the great majority of selling tag lines and marketing will allude to regardless. 

Enjoy what you have and back it if you believe in it.  

Plenty of people took time and shared their experience in the field giving opinions not specifically about this product, but about rating in general. No one has told anyone to sell or not to buy the Amps, many, as i said and as you failed to read/understand have added their backing of the product. 

You aren't really representing anyone apart from the interests of the company, it's pretty obvious. This forum is good because it allows many people from varied backgrounds to share thoughts and experiences. You are not engaging, and to my mind should not be on this forum unless you can respect and appreciate how it works.  

The thread speaks for itself and anyone with half a brain can understand the points raised. Since you appear to only have one agenda, i'll re-affirm the need for all people involved in Sound to trust and use your ears… no amps mentioned, nothing to be offended by with that. 

These are'nt very clear copied onto here but some old amplifiers (only use these:o) that have real test outputs at different frequencies,  I think the PPX 900 bridged at 50hz is 180w or something.  Very useful figures when setting up

 

Nail on the head.

So just because it is rated this way or other way it does not making it bad.

In real life it does perform. So who cares?

I find 3000W at 4 ohms not enough for today's bog boys drivers. Doing it one 4 ohm driver per channel also does not seem very cost effective to me.

X4 and X8 are designed to drive multi driver cabinets like line arrays, so in that case even if they are not capable to drive long low notes, they will deliver the power they claim.

I have no experience with the X series yet, but having tested most of their amp modules and having used the k10, i have no reason to start doubting the spec.

testing using single tones into resistive loads seems totally inadequate. testing with real speakers is noisy and inconvenient. my idea is:

sine wave sweep won't show up intermodulation distortion. and if you did a sweep you would have to plot a graph or come up with a power figure for multiple frequencies.