Get more power from your amplifier without bridging! A no bridge mode wiring trick!
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
- Without bridging the amp, we can use the bridge feature to get more power, while still running in stereo!
Here's a clever trick to get every available watt of power out of your power amplifier.
Great video, thanks. 'To double your loudness requires 10x more power.' Agreed. I sit in front of my speakers with an app to measure dBs and I wonder how many commission-earning salesmen have successfully promoted a 200w RMS amp over a 100w, implying it's "twice as loud."
Check out the effect of the Fletcher Munson curves which are the result of studying how linear human hearing is, and how human hearing changes its frequency sensitivity with sound pressure level. This is well established science for decades.
The 10X figure is an approximation, but human hearing is very nonlinear when it comes to perceived loudness.
Doubling amplifier power gives you 3 dB Increase in SPL, which is just susceptible to the human ear
Great, informative videos. The Crown MA10000 could handle 0.5 ohm loads, though they are rarer than hens teeth, and you can't just plug them into your domestic mains supply. Don't forget to mention mono sum.
Crown MA10000 is a beast. Sounds good, but not much fun to move around.
@@Barry-Watson Hey Barry, Good to speak with you. The MA10000 would have been a massive amp, back in the day. Still, today, if you could find one it would easily outrun a class D 15kw amp, it's in a totally different league. I have to say that I have only ever seen pictures of one. I don't think many of them made it to the UK, as I have never seen one in any nightclub from the very early 80's up to today. Given their weight, I should imagine they were intended for nightclub installs, I can't imagine where else they would want/need a 10kw amp. You only want to move those amps once, as you say, they are not light. For my part, old school amps sound so much better than most of today's contemporaries, with a few exceptions, if cost isn't an issue. Given the choice, I'd have a rack of Crest Pro 10001s. Those, I have seen in the UK, and they sound amazing on the low end.
My pleasure. I used to use crown macrotech amps, the MA 5000 and smaller. I worked at a venue that was powered with a rack of crest ca series amplifiers. Both of these were great, sounded good, reliable, had no problem driving difficult loads. But they were heavy, and they had significant exhaust fans. The noisy fans are the thing that makes me think they're not the best choice for home use.
Thanks for this precious information
11:34 Sussed it Pretty neat, I we’ll try it not for the extra power but lower distortion
This set up loads, the power supply the same as a bridge
I like the way it sounds when i connect my speakers out of phase.. you get this stereo wide surround sound effect. You just have a little less bass and a less center image. But i like it this way better. So i wonder do you ever hear peaple that like to connect speakers this way? Thank you for your videos.
OK, the whole point is to enjoy the results, and if that's what you like I'd call it a success.
You're not going to get a nice stereo image as intended by the producer, and it's not how I would set things up. However I totally encourage experimenting with different setups, even if they're unorthodox, and seeing what works best for you. Thanks for the comment!
@@Barry-Watson Thank you for the replly. I do know whats happening when I connect my speakers this way that the speakers are working against each other rather than together in the front and center image. Thats probobly why I get this sterieo wide surround type of sound instead of the sound being more in the front and center witch i know too the bass response is affected the most witch is ok with me because I dont like to much bass in my music.
That makes sense. This is the kind of effect offered by some stereo enhancer type devices or plugins. The Behringer DEQ2496 for example is a digital EQ that offers stereo enhancement as well as eq and compression and some stuff.
Neat trick! But doesn't this only work if you have separate supplies for +/- as opposed to a single double ended supply?
If your amplifier had two completely independent power supplies, which is a little rare, you probably wouldn't see much gain from this approach.
Most amplifiers have one power supply module, with a positive side and a negative side. Peak demands on the amplifier channels typically have both channels drawing peak energy from one side of the power supply at a time. With this little trick, it allows the channels to draw from both sides of the power supply during peak demands, and can yield a few percent more power. This trick applies to amplifiers that are running in stereo mode, with both channels essentially driving the same material into woofer systems.
Keep in mind, we're not talking massive gains here, and this sort of approach is probably only practical in really high powered systems like concert audio where a few percent gains might matter. It's also just an interesting scientific exercise.
@@Barry-Watson I see, thanks for the detailed response!
I have a qsc rmx5050 amplifer rated at 5000 watts bridged that l was considerring bridging in order to drive two b&c tbx100's 18" woofers hooked in parrallel bringing them into 4 ohms. Is that a bad idea? My main concern is having the headroom needed to avoid burning my speakers by overdriving without sufficient headtoom.
Well, that's plenty of power. Plenty of power to do some damage if you're not careful.
Keep in mind that the concerns about having enough headroom so you never hit clipping distortion, are largely focused on full range systems where the distortion could be damaging to the high frequency drivers.
If you're driving subwoofers in a bi-amped system, where that amplifier is only driving the woofers, if you briefly clip the amplifier and create a little distortion that's probably not going to be much of a problem for your woofer drivers, and you might not even hear it.
Of course if you drive the amp deeply into clipping that will create an ugly power envelope that might burn stuff up. I wouldn't recommend running any amplifier into hard clipping if you can avoid it, speakers don't like that.
Personally, I think that MX5050 has plenty of juice, any way you decide to hook it up. That's a great amplifier, if you don't have to carry it around too often, or you enjoy weightlifting. Also, since this is a pro-sound amp, I believe it has a clip limiter feature which I would enable, that should prevent the amplifier from being driven right into clipping too easily.
So, I really wouldn't expect to have a lot of concerns about headroom with that set up. Good luck!
Makes sense. Ive got this stereo amplifier that tests around 500watts before clipping into 4ohms on one channel loaded down.
With both channels loaded theres some significant voltage drop on the output down to around 350watts per channel :(
The 56v B+ x the 10amp fuse rating is 560watts total? Soo im guess its pulling the b+ just enough for one channel to run at full potential, and this trick would help get the full power combined from the b+ and b-?
Exactly, it allows you to pull energy from both sides of the supply on the peaks. It's an interesting exercise, but in practical terms I don't think you're going to see any truly significant gains in most cases.
@@Barry-Watson yea.. the trick made no difference. Probing the b+/- under some heavy bass transients showed the same drop reguardless of swapping speaker/signal phase on one channel.
It saves wires to be honest
is it possible for my amplifier to provide a quieter sound than my head unit alone? i have an alpine ILX670 pairee with a KTA450 and the sound seems quieter after i installed the 4 channel amp, the gains are barely turned up either. they also cause the speakers to cut out at really high volumes
Sure, it could be a powerful amp with the gain turned down. So, maybe it's capable of louder max output, but will play quieter (than another amp) with a given amount of input drive.
my speakers keep cutting off and amp turns off only turns on when i'm driving fast. what do i need or do
Strange. I'd check ground and power connections, make sure you're getting steady proper voltage with a meter. Could also have a bad speaker connection causing an intermittent short... or an internal problem with the amp.
What about the Ohms? Normaly you brdige the Amp and wire 1+/1- Parallel 1+/flip 1-to 2+ - -8 Ohms become 2X4 Ohms. In your video it seems to be Series-Mode. What about the Ohms?
The load on the amplifier (ohms) doesn't change. We are not bridging in this scenario so each side of the amplifier still only drives it's original load as it would in stereo. You do swap the polarity on one output and one input, but there are no other wiring changes.
Does this destroy your amplifier
No.
Would that configuration cause any problem with your amplifier?
This configuration does not put any undue stress on the amplifier. It also doesn't provide huge power gains, either. Probably most valuable when dealing with really high powered amplifiers, where a few percent difference actually makes a difference in terms of actual power output
@@Barry-Watson thank you Mr Barry your videos are awesome
Awesome, thanks!
Mr Barry hi again, hope you are well, I've tried the configuration, it works and well just a bit concerned about the gains, only ch 1 works ch 2 doesn't
If you swap the input cables and the problem moves to the other channel it's an issue with your input signal. If you swap the cables, and nothing changes, then I would suspect the amplifier.
I'm presuming you're using an amplifier that accepts balanced, three wire, input signals and you're driving it with a balanced signal.
hi barry. do you use both or one speaker on the power amp in this configuration?
i want to try this with my nad c275bee as running my klipsch rp280f.
as preamp i have nad c375bee.
In this case the amp is still stereo. You drive two channels/speakers.
thanks.
in this case you don't switch the amp in bridge?
do you run the same signal into both channels?
Amp is run in stereo, by inverting one side signal (and then swapping one speaker polarity) you're not pulling from the same side of the power supply (+ or - sides) with the audio power peaks. It provides more even loading on the power supply. Depending upon the amp, you might see 5% power gain or more.
This is more applicable to high power pro-sound/PA power amps where a few percent gain can equate to many watts of difference, and where you're using balanced signals so it's easy to invert signal polarity. The gains may not be that great, and it's probably not worth the effort to pursue for home audio/car audio where the power levels are relatively low.
The NAD hi-fi amplifier doesn't offer balanced inputs, so you'd need additional hardware to invert the polarity of one of the input signals.
ok.
what kind of hardware can i use in this case?
I have a single dual 4ohm 8 sub wired to 2 ohm I have a amp that is 2 channel 2ohm stable can I just run one sub off one channel of the channel
If the speaker load is two ohms, and the amplifier output is designed to drive a 2 ohm load, everything should work properly.
For me, I try to avoid driving less than a 4 ohm load, the greater the load the thicker the wire that is required to not lose power in the wiring. Also those extremely low impedances are very demanding of amplifier current and can make amps run hot.
If you wired your speaker coils in series That would be an 8 ohm load, which would be easy to drive, might sound better, but you probably would not be able to achieve the same power levels from the amplifier. Another option would be using two amplifier channels, each channel driving one of the voice coils, so that would be a 4 ohm load on each amplifier side. That may be the nicest solution.
I'd expect any of these options to work ok.
@@Barry-Watson thank u so much I’m going to get a mono amp 2 ohm stable but I have this 2 channel just sitting here 😂 I wanted to no if I can run it for the time being oh yea amp is bridge able 4 ohm load
Cool, sounds like your amp is spec'd to run a low impedance load.
CAN YOU BRIDGE THE 5 CHANNELS ON A 5.1 POWER AMP?
see this video: ua-cam.com/video/TsL9TyHtV28/v-deo.html
and maybe this one: ua-cam.com/video/zXZP2O4rH3M/v-deo.html
Bridging joins two channels into one output, so if the amp has a common ground you may be able to bridge (for example) channels 1+2 and 3+4 into two higher-powered outputs.
In practice, often multi-channel amps don't offer the oversized power supply, output stages and cooling that is needed to offer good performance gains and reliability in bridged operation. So, unless the amp is exceptionally stout, I'd doubt that you'll see the results you're looking for.
@@Barry-Watson ok thank you for the information. The amp I'm talking about is a sunbuck digital karaoke amplifier av298bt it's a 5.1 soround sound amplifier real cheap and narsty
@@Barry-Watson I know it's just my mate and I was wondering if it could be done and I just like being a know it all haha but seriously thank you for you help
My pleasure! Thanks for subscribing.