It's called a
consumer Most of us (no me,you guys
) own things we have little understanding of -
household appliances,automobiles,computers,radios,televisions,etc.,yet we buy the products relying on what information we can gather to try and make an informed choice.
that does not mean we go auto mechanic classes when we are in the market for a car or take a computer science course when we are in the market for a new computer or take an electronics course when we want to purchase a stereo but means we rely on honest manufacturer ad copy,reviews and even how a thing looks to make what we hope is a good decision.
Sadly most manufacturer ad copy in ALL consumer goods is meant to confuse with the more loot you spend for a thing commensurate with the amount of hype involved so no wonder most have no clue !
This is no accident folks,it is a planned way of doing business and is not specific to electronics by any stretch so by no means feel you are missing something obvious.Even an honest spec sheet from an up front manufacturer can be confusing because he/she too
must play the game and match spec for spec with the competition even if that spec has absolutely zero to do with performance and why it gets so damn confusing for some-information overload.
Amplifier power is actually very simple and follows standard rules that govern all electronics.
Rules on power delivered to a load and that can not be broken no matter what the ad copy says as a featured selling point.
Just like with headphones if you want to drive a high impedance you need to have a lot of voltage gain yet lower the impedance by half and you need to increase the current delivered to the load across that same voltage.
A little know or understood secret is when a power amp clips it is usually power supply related and not amplifier circuit related.No matter how beefy the output section it is only as good as the
clean power source that feeds it.Other than a fancy chassis and pretty heat sinks the majority of amplifier cost is in the power supply section (transistors are dirt cheap in quantity but even a bunch need to be fed) so this usually the limiting factor in ultimate power for SS amps and ultimate sonic quality in Valve amps.
Way back in the dark ages when Dynaco introduced one of the very first
Super Amps,a 225 WPC behemoth,it was one of the biggest most powerful amps on the planet but when played with speakers having a low impedance load or eight ohm speakers that dipped down to four ohms at certain frequencies the protection circuits would trigger and the amp would make nasty clicking sounds as it tried to recover.
On the test bench with a signal generator as the input and a BIG ASS power resistor as the amplifier load I have no doubts it was a stellar performer (as the specs would tell you) but in the real world of dynamic music as the source and with loudspeakers having a reactive crossover and a very peaky impedance profile the amp mushed out and had problems.
Frank Van alstine of Audio By Van Alstine looked at the amp.seen it was a good design limited solely by business decisions to keep the cost down,then set out to make the amp what it always should have been.
He offered a mod service where first he took out the big ass heat sinks,drilled holes in the bottom where there was plenty of room left then proceeded to DOUBLE the amount of output power resistors so the amp would have power reserves for a load that dipped low with music playing but this was not enough.
He also had to increase the power supply storage capacity so when these low Z dynamic peaks hit and the increased VA of the power supply tried to respond there was enough current stored in the cap bank to instantly provide the voltage without the amp "sagging" to a lower voltage (when you try to draw more power than there is available something has to give so if the current is too low the voltage reduces in an attempt to provide this current).
There being no more room in the amp chassis for ANYTHING he added a power connector to the back panel that went to an add-on external capacitor bank (later actually offered by dynaco as the C-1000
) which in combination made this amp a fkn KILLER,a killer amp that when bridged was used in many pro installations with a pretty good reliability record and being designed by two guys that know a bit about amplifier design (Erno borbely,Jim Biongiorno) sounded good enough to drive many "large format" monitors in the recording studio.
A direct relationship between the output stage/power supply/power delivery to a real world load and all balanced with final cost of the product as the main limiting factor (unlike now where chassis design holds sway over the guts of the amp many times)
So take for arguing a 100WPC into an 8 ohm load power amp and hitch it to a 4 ohm speaker and what happens ? If the output stage can handle the additional current demands and the power supply has enough reserves to feed this output stage you have an "on paper" doubling of the output power.
that does not mean the amp plays twice as loud just that it can drive the lower impedance load.The problem is loudspeakers are not a linear resistive load unless they use a single driver but a highly reactive impedance varying load so that "nominal" 8 ohm rating many times can go anywhere from 32 at the top end to 2 ohms at the bottom end depending on frequency !
Start out with a four ohm load and you can see impedances as low as 2 ohm (or lower) which is enough to not only stress some amps but has been known to totally destroy others and even more so in this age of "no tone controls,no filters,no protection circuits,music purity at all costs even if shit blows up trying to
play the music ;D
anyway,I'm checking the manual for the AS100 and from what I can tell it is NEITHER of the above !
Not "A-Bridged Mode" or "B-Parallel Mode" but rather
"C"-Parallel Input Mode" which is no more than connecting the right amplifier to the left input jack so both amps can be driven from a common input.
Picture your preamp having a "Y" Adapter on both the left and right outputs with the left "Y" going to the left and right channels of Stereo Amplifier A and the right "Y" going to the left and right channels of Stereo Amplifier B which allows driving
two channels of amplifier from a single signal.
The amp is still a stereo amp but because it is used as two amps in one channel is
called mono
Why ?
Bi-Wiring is why.That is where each element of a multi-driver loudspeaker has a direct input to the crossover for that driver allowing IT to be driven by its own power amp rather than having all connected together at the speaker input terminals for single amplifier driving..
This is
NOT Bi-Amping which requires and electronic crossover
BUT Bi-Wiring which uses the crossovers already in the loudspeaker if it has bi wire capability
hope i didn't confuse you even more dude