"Erik Hovind" wrote in message
news:eeRme.61902$sy6.15413@lakeread04...
Yeah, $1 per watt is definately off. I just picked up a 2400w RMS
Audiobahn
AW2300HCT for less than $300



I wanna see a pic and component count of a $300 2400 watt power amp. Do you
realize that this will draw 200A in a perfect world, more like 250A if it's
class D. I want to shake the hand of the engineer that could design even a
$300 2400 watt switching power supply that has a decent SOA.

Chad

"MZ" wrote in message
news
kinda expensive.

well that all depends on if you want quality or junk

if you buy a product like JL, your going to be getting a TRUE 500
WATTS, not some trumped up max wattage, max distortion, poor quality,
child labor manufactured B.S.,

Yeah, but then it's not really 500 watts, is it? I mean, Boss can put
"500
watts" on their amps but it doesn't make it a 500 watt amp. The dollar
per
watt thing doesn't really apply anyway because it turns out to be pretty
nonlinear. A lot of manufacturers will put out, for example, a 100 watt,
200 watt, and 500 watt version of a certain model - everything but power
being pretty much equal. But the 500 watt amp rarely costs 5x as much as
the 100 watt amp.

In any case, with the advent of class D amplifiers, it's now possible to
get
a good reliable amplifier without the exaggerated ratings for well under
$1
per watt. Part of the reason is that high powered amps are more
commonplace
now - the other part is that they just use less metal than before
(without
any knowledge of the business practices of these companies, I'm guessing
the
heatsinks tend to cost more than the components themselves). Look at
Directed or MTX class D amps, for example, and you're talking closer to
30
cents per watt. And those are beefy reliable amps.

There are of course exceptions. There are several popular amplifiers out
there - McIntosh, Brax, etc - that end up running you close to or over a
dollar per watt. Great amps, no doubt, but the added price is really not
going to buy you anything. I think there's quite clearly a
price/reliability/performance asymptote, and it's well under a dollar per
watt.