Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Looking for a budget DAC for your computer?

I remember that A500 review. The A500 does suffer some quality issues though, something about noise in the midrange frequencies on some units.

Are you referring to the distortion as you turned up the gain, thru 70% or so, Fred? not a prob if you use the master volume on your receiver and leave the 500 at max.

Adrian, if you examine the Audio Critic measurements on the PowerCube, you'll note that at 2 ohms the measurement was just under 20 volts, which would be equivalent to almost 200 watts(20[squared]/2).

Also, as has been mentioned if the level control(gain is fixed)was left at max, that wouldn't run into a problem.

Tks, John. The unit is rated to 4 ohms, so what do I surmise from the measurements below that number(1-2 ohms) in the powercube? it'll go below 4 ohms, BUT only for a very short time? the reason I ask is because I may want to use these amps in an active setup at some point, and they may go below 4 ohms(2.7 to 3ohms) on the bass drivers.

That test uses 20 millisecond bursts, which is a fairly realistic number for the brief transient peaks which actually occur in real music. It has nothing to do with possible overheating and shutdown if operation at very low impedances occurred over an extended period(an unlikely situation with nearly all speakers, which are well above their minimum impedance over most of their frequency range).

Not sure. All I remember is there was funny stuff going on at certain frequencies on some units.

If you want stability below 4 ohms, why not go with the Peavey IPR1600. Its class D so nice and efficient and has been bench tested at 2 ohms.

The only downside is that it has a fan.

In an active setup the Behringers would have a major cost advantage if you are trying to keep a budget especially when you have to run multiple/separate amplifiers. The Peavey is a very nice unit though.

The ART Audio SLA1/SLA2 look interesting and won't break the bank either($200-300 USD). Their fairly compact and the SLA2 will safely do 2 ohms according to spec. I believe ART is a division of Yorkville audio, so they've been around for a while.

Do you have any ideas on what you want to use for the active crossover?

These are nice:

http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/CX2310.aspx
http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/CX3400.aspx
http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/DCX2496.aspx

The last one is a bit overkill, but one can never have too much overkill.