500 Watts a channel @ 8 Ohm Bridged

[mike c]

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17004&highlight=audio+critic+a500

at 1% THD, the A500 is already capable of producing 440w ... i'm guessing at something like 10% THD, it will easily achieve 500w.

The more pungent question is what this amp really is. Cheap for sure. Reliable? Is it really 500WPC? Measured by what means? Will it have a noisy fan? There are other brands of high power amps that are fairly cheap (not this cheap) meant for PA use and those have noisy fans and dubious sound quality. They often also use phone jacks for speaker connections.

see above quote and link.

no fans on the A500.

no sound quality difference.

 

[TLS Guy]

>>>Why on earth would anyone want 500 watts/ch? I don't care how big your house is, that is way, way more power than you could ever use (unless your goal is to go deaf!)<<<

500 WPC isn't so outrageous. I have had 400 WPC and with fairly inefficient Vandersteen speakers, they could go loud but not outrageously loud. I mainly have plenty of headroom for brief bursts with lots of bottom. 500 watts is only marginally louder. The loudness - watts relation is logarithmic so twice as much power is only 3 db louder so 25% more power is only slightly louder.

The more pungent question is what this amp really is. Cheap for sure. Reliable? Is it really 500WPC? Measured by what means? Will it have a noisy fan? There are other brands of high power amps that are fairly cheap (not this cheap) meant for PA use and those have noisy fans and dubious sound quality. They often also use phone jacks for speaker connections.

Lets be fair. This amp is basically a PA rock musicians amp. Fidelity has never been the strong suit of that breed of equipment. If you give those guys a clean signal, they will deliberately distort it!

I agree about power requirements. here is a good link on the db scale.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/dB.html#absolute

I posted a lot about all this in this thread.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=344493#post344493

I keep reiterating that people just do not internalize the db scale, or other log scales like cooling for that matter, as I point out in the thread. At least for classical music most systems are under powered. While most of the time it is not very loud, you really need to make the big moments without running out of gas.

I remember being at Henry Wood Promenade concert in the Royal Albert Hall some years ago. At the end of Saint-Saens third Symphony, the Organ, the BBC Symphony Orchestra was in full cry, and the organist was leaping off the bench drawing down more and more stops from the huge Father Willis Organ. By the end it was right at the threshold of pain. Now the Albert Hall is a huge auditorium, and nothing was amplified. I thought to myself, it would have to be one hell of speaker system to reproduce that!

 

[mtrycrafts]

I thought to myself, it would have to be one hell of speaker system to reproduce that!

Yes, you would, but is your home that size? After all, Albert hall follows the inverse square law in spl loss but your room doesn't and even if it did, it is a far cry from the hall.

 

[mtrycrafts]

>>>Why on earth would anyone want 500 watts/ch? I don't care how big your house is, that is way, way more power than you could ever use (unless your goal is to go deaf!)<<<

500 WPC isn't so outrageous. I have had 400 WPC and with fairly inefficient Vandersteen speakers, they could go loud but not outrageously loud. I mainly have plenty of headroom for brief bursts with lots of bottom. 500 watts is only marginally louder. The loudness - watts relation is logarithmic so twice as much power is only 3 db louder so 25% more power is only slightly louder.

The more pungent question is what this amp really is. Cheap for sure. Reliable? Is it really 500WPC? Measured by what means? Will it have a noisy fan? There are other brands of high power amps that are fairly cheap (not this cheap) meant for PA use and those have noisy fans and dubious sound quality. They often also use phone jacks for speaker connections.

Someplace along the line that 500 watts bridged mode, a bit exaggerated as it has about 400+ at 1%, became WPC; that is not the case.
It is a great amp, no fan in it, rated at 140 watts, 220 into 4 ohms. 120 watts at .025%. Did very well in what is called the power cubed method into realistic loudspeaker phase differences.

 

[TLS Guy]

Yes, you would, but is your home that size? After all, Albert hall follows the inverse square law in spl loss but your room doesn't and even if it did, it is a far cry from the hall.

Yes but one keeps trying. And I can get a very big depth of field and a very believable acoustic impression.

 

[sparky77]

Has anybody found specs relating to what this amp can drive into an 8ohm load in stereo mode. If I'm not mistaken you could pretty much expect no more than 115w@8ohms, and there are plenty of other amps including avr's that can pull that off. I looked for 20 minutes tonight and not even the behringer website has seems to have the specs, I think somethings missing here. Maybe I'm wrong!?

 

[mike c]

Has anybody found specs relating to what this amp can drive into an 8ohm load in stereo mode. If I'm not mistaken you could pretty much expect no more than 115w@8ohms, and there are plenty of other amps including avr's that can pull that off. I looked for 20 minutes tonight and not even the behringer website has seems to have the specs, I think somethings missing here. Maybe I'm wrong!?

the website has everything from spec sheets to manuals in pdf form. see the right column of the page under "downloads"
http://www.behringer.com/A500/index.cfm?lang=eng

for third party measurements, see here:

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17004&highlight=audio+critic+a500

if you read that thread, you'll see that most people don't care about it's stereo mode ... people like it's bridged mode of at least 360wpc

 

[mtrycrafts]

If I'm not mistaken you could pretty much expect no more than 115w@8ohms, and there are plenty of other amps including avr's that can pull that off. !?

Other amps for $180??? And, be also rated into 4 Ohms at 220 watts at the same time? For 2 channels? No fans noise?

 

[TLS Guy]

Has anybody found specs relating to what this amp can drive into an 8ohm load in stereo mode. If I'm not mistaken you could pretty much expect no more than 115w@8ohms, and there are plenty of other amps including avr's that can pull that off. I looked for 20 minutes tonight and not even the behringer website has seems to have the specs, I think somethings missing here. Maybe I'm wrong!?

It is 260 Watts 4 ohm. 160 Watts 8 ohm. 0.01% THD. On paper it is a good amp and has balanced inputs.

 

[sparky77]

thanks for the spec posts, it is rather impressive for what it can do without fan cooling, but as far as home use I would probably still stick to the avr power, I'm more into the small cozy environment, but to each their own.

As for my "Pro Audio" gear, I currently and am an officianodo of crown, don't really know why, but I am. Although I think this amp would do very well running my horn tweeters for when I rent out the system to live performers, but would likely toast my home speakers.

If my house was bigger, I would probably buy 9 of those little beasts.

 

[fmw]

I couldn't find any meaningful specs on the website. My assumption is that this is around a 100 wpc amp at 8 ohms when measured at inaudible distortion in RMS or continuous mode. The pro audio business is all about peak instantaneous power, high distortion ratings etc. So I would view this as a 100 wpc amp (just a guess) that handles 200 wpc or a bit less at 4 ohms or thereabouts. If you were to bridge it, you would have about 200 wpc at 4 ohms for an 8 ohm nominal load.

In general you will find pretty reasonble power rating methods from QSC. Crown also proivdes reasonable ratings for their line of studio monitoring amps. The sound reinforcement amps, however, are off the charts like these Behringers probably are. They have to do that to be competitive.

It isn't appropriate to compare sound reinforcement pro audio power ratings to the ratings you see in home audio which are defined by law.

Having said that, I would add that this is probably a very rugged and reliable 100 wpc stereo amp that should perform just fine in a home theater application.

 

[jeffsg4mac]

Lets be fair. This amp is basically a PA rock musicians amp. Fidelity has never been the strong suit of that breed of equipment. If you give those guys a clean signal, they will deliberately distort it!

ABSOLUTELY not true of pro amps. The A-500 is just as musical as any amp on the market. There was no discernible difference between my A-500 or my EP-2500 and my Yammie RXV2600 except the pro amps reach volume levels and have dynamics the receiver is not capable of. You apparently did not read the Audio Critics review and testing of the A-500 or you chose not to believe it.

Read here: Audio Critic review of the A-500

 

[TLS Guy]

ABSOLUTELY not true of pro amps. The A-500 is just as musical as any amp on the market. There was no discernible difference between my A-500 or my EP-2500 and my Yammie RXV2600 except the pro amps reach volume levels and have dynamics the receiver is not capable of. You apparently did not read the Audio Critics review and testing of the A-500 or you chose not to believe it.

Read here: Audio Critic review of the A-500

I'm sorry, I gave it guilt by association, before I downloaded the pdf. file. You will see in my later posts that it seems a pretty decant amp.

However over the years, I have been less than impressed by gear for PA in rock concerts.

 

[jeffsg4mac]

I'm sorry, I gave it guilt by association, before I downloaded the pdf. file. You will see in my later posts that it seems a pretty decant amp.

However over the years, I have been less than impressed by gear for PA in rock concerts.

No biggie, Some of the pro amps are an amazing deal for the money. The EP-2500's have enormous amounts of power, balanced inputs and bridgeable and built like a tank to take a pounding. All for around 350 bucks or less on sale. One only needs to slow down the fan or place them behind a door because the fans are loud. The one running my subs is scary sometimes.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

There are two issues I see:
1) aesthetics - none of these DJ amps are very sexy looking to me.
2) RMS vs Peak Power - I think a lot of these amps advertise their output in PEAK power, intead of RMS, but you have to read the fine prints. I think I saw one that was "200 watts @ 8 ohms", but was only 90 Watts RMS.

 

[annunaki]

Why on earth would anyone want 500 watts/ch? I don't care how big your house is, that is way, way more power than you could ever use (unless your goal is to go deaf!)

Dynamics my friend, unclipped dynamic headroom. Once you have it and get used to it it is very hard to go back.

A large room would also require it.

I can give you examples if you pm me.

 

[Bluesmoke]

I'm thinking about getting the Behringer A500 to match my Yamaha 6060. Can you use Banana Plugs on it?

 

[mike c]

I'm thinking about getting the Behringer A500 to match my Yamaha 6060. Can you use Banana Plugs on it?

yes

 

[Bluesmoke]

yes

Oh really! Perfect. Because in that review above it says you can't. My Canara 4S11 wires are all terminated with bananas so that's pretty important. Also, I noticed someone had an all black A500, with black volume knobs. Is there a particular retailer that sells them?

 

[mike c]

Oh really! Perfect. Because in that review above it says you can't. My Canara 4S11 wires are all terminated with bananas so that's pretty important. Also, I noticed someone had an all black A500, with black volume knobs. Is there a particular retailer that sells them?

the blacks knobs were painted, so no, you can't buy it like that.

bananas are the single most important convenience in audio