I mentioned last month that we were pretty close on the new amplifiers and now it is time to introduce some details for everyone here. There will be three series of amplifiers available in 2 through 8 channels each. We have been calling these amp series the 1000, the 1250, and the 1500 around the lab as that represents the maximum output at the speaker output of each with all channels driven as established by their respective power supplies after all efficiency losses. No doubt you can expect a naming contest on these from Amie shortly.

First and foremost I would like to thank Andrew, our resident master of all things audio. These new amps are his brainchild and represent the culmination of over 2 years of work by Andrew on the designs. I cannot say enough about how impressed I and the whole Axiom team are with the results of his work on these projects. They are spectacular. But it goes far beyond the new amplifiers; Andrew’s on-going work on all the products at Axiom has been amazing and we’re so fortunate to have him with us. Improvements driven by Andrew are having a positive influence on our entire line-up of products. The innovation he is driving has added so much excitement and energy to both our products and the people working on them, and I’d like to thank him very much for his contributions. We are all looking forward to an exciting future with lots of both great new products and great improvements to our existing ones, with Andrew driving forward what we can accomplish.

These amps will be ready for shipping on July 20 though we will have a few available earlier for anyone who has purchased LFR1100s. They all come in the same chassis. It is a really heavy duty chassis made from 2mm steel with a 9mm aluminum face panel. The height is 3U for all of them. All these new amplifiers are Class-D amplification with massive analog power supplies and they are all north of 90% efficient at full power. This efficiency is an important benefit to our amps. A typical Class-AB design is around 50% efficient which means that ½ of the output from the transformer is wasted off in heat which is quite limiting to your overall output with all channels driven (given a single power cord on a regular 15amp circuit). The maximum you can extract from a typical wall plug is 1800 watts. Given a reasonably efficient and absolutely massive power supply you can end up with somewhere around 1650 watts available to the amplifiers. So at north of 90% efficiency you can easily achieve 1500 watts of total output (hence our 1500 series lab name). But at 50% efficiency you are limited to around 825 watts. That is a massive difference in a multi-channel amplifier. Below is a little chart that shows how the output power works for each of our amplifier series:



When considering what power is right for you it is important to keep in mind that in a typical home theatre system the power demands from the surround channels are much less than the front three so you will tend to have more power available where you need in the real world. A 7-channel amp utilized in a home theatre system will tend to act more like the 5-channel for power per channel as shown in the above chart.

As for the inputs available, the 1000 Series is RCA only. Both the 1250 Series and the 1500 Series have both RCA inputs and fully balanced XLR inputs. All the amplifiers can be powered with 100 volts, 120 volts, or 240 volts depending on what is available in your country. This is easily selectable inside the chassis but we will pre-set it at the factory for the country it is being shipped to.

As for the pricing I have created another chart below which shows the price of each model in its respective number of channels. We will also be doing a 2-tiered pre-order deal similar to what we did with the LFR1100.




Ian Colquhoun
President & Chief Engineer