Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Cool amps

OK, here's a question for y'all. (no, I'm not buying anything anytime soon...) Is it possible to make a cool running amp? Are there any extant today? My H/K 525 (7x75wpc) runs hot just sitting in the cabinet doing nothing. Seems like such a waste of power. I'm guessing the A1400 runs much cooler, but that's a biiiit out of the price range of many (myself included).

Yeah, I was gonna say that I thought digital amps, like the Axiom, run relatively cool. I'm not gonna be much help cuz, off hand, I don't know of any other digital amps. I suspect they exist, I just don't know about 'em.

They exist, but they're reputed to be problematic, from what I know. Or at least from what I know from reading the A1400 reviews...

Wyred 4 Sound supposedly makes a good digital amp as well as Nu Force. All are somewhat pricey, but that is in the eyes of the beholder.

Hi kcarlile,

Class A/B analog solid-state amplifiers are about 50% to 60% efficient, so yes, they do waste lots of power, but at least we can console ourselves that we're not using vacuum tubes! You can warm up dinner on top of most tube amplifiers; in fact, tubes don't even work until the heater element inside heats up (that's what gives off the orange glow so beloved of tubo-philes) and stabilizes so that the electrons will flow.

Anyway, digital amplifiers like the Axiom A1400, which I have, run tepid or warm, but never really hot (like those old H/Ks, which I also have!), because as their output increases, they become more efficient (at near full output, the A1400 reaches about 95% efficiency).

The ICE digital amplifiers developed and licensed by Bang & Olefson (Pioneer uses them in some of their receivers) also do not run hot. Panasonic has made some really cheapo digital AV receivers which should run cooler than analog, but I've never had experience with them.

The real problem is sticking seven amplifiers plus all the preamp circuitry inside of one chassis. In the stereo days, you just had two amplifiers to worry about, and reasonable heat-sinking would keep them from running hot. But now, unless you put either a cycling or constant-running cooling fan into a 7-channel class A/B AV receiver, it's going to cook!

Regards,
Alan

If you don't want to risk the problems that come with most digital amps, you can look into type-H amps. They run much cooler than A/B amps, but usually run more than their A/B counterparts. The Emotiva MPS-7 is a good example of this sort of amp (http://emotiva.com/mps2.shtm), read up on it.

Like I said, they are more than A/B class amps, but not quite as pricey as the A1400... well, at least the Emotiva wasn't! lol

Second that. My GX5 is Class-H and runs very cool on the low rail. But once your want to feel the music, it gets hot via the high current rail. As expected, I don't know what any of that means, but I know it works!

From QSC:

I would not recommend Emo with Axiom m80s.

Yeah, Instead get something like Odyssey Stratos mono's... which will run cool due to their massive heat sink's. There arent even any vents in the chassis.

Ken, the NHT amp I'm using is a 200X5 with B/O Ice Power Modules in it. It runs cool. Heck, I even have the 3808 sitting on it and it still runs cool to the touch.