Anyone using Mackie or Corwn amps?

[jbangelfish]

You won't find a more stable amp, able to drive one ohm loads. It is bridgeable but has to be done internally. I would probably have a tech do it but the owner's manual explains how to do it. The amp is very conservatively rated at 155wpc at 8 ohm. My son's tested on the bench to 188wpc, 8 ohm, last year. It is rated at 650w when bridged mono in 8 ohm and would be a very strong 650 as opposed to these newer lightweights. I have seen these amps (DC300A's) in use at rock concerts and many used them for PA and professional work. They seem to be indestructable.
I don't know much about the newer Crown but I'm leery of them unless talking about the Studio Reference series. Most of them are fairly inexpensive professional equipment and are still considered durable but for home stereo use, the old DC300A and a very few of their others would outperform any of their new equipment.
I have never heard of the Samson and that scares me. Carver made some good and some bad amps and I don't know which are which. If it's McIntosh that you are referring to as Mackie, this may have been the only amp to be as good or better than the old Crown in the 70's but it used to cost twice as much. Marantz also made some fine equipment back then. At $150 to $250 for an old Crown DC300A in good working order, I don't know that you could find more bang for the buck in a true quality amplifier.
Bill

[grampi]

What kind of power does the DC300A make bridged into 4 ohms? Is it stable to bridge it into 4 ohms? My Tempest has two 8 ohm voice coils, so if I were to connect a bridged DC300A to the Tempest, the VC's would either have to be paralleled, presenting a 4 ohm load, or seriesed, presenting a 16 ohm load. If it makes 650 watts bridged into 8 ohms, I would guess it makes substantially more brideged into 4 ohms.

Actually the Mackie amp I'm talking about is made by Mackie. The model number is M1400i, and it looks like a very impressive amp. I've seen the spec sheet for this amp and it has very impressive numbers. I'm surprise more people haven't heard of this amp.

[grampi]

Are Altec Lansing amps any good? There's a 9444B/SA listed on ebay with a high bid of less than $100. It say it makes 300W per cahnnel in stereo, 600W bridged.

[grampi]

I'm getting to where I can't stand ebay anymore. You used to be able to get good buys there, but lately it seems like too many people use it and by the time a particular item gets to the end of its time period, the bids on it are so stinkin' high its just not worth bidding on. I've been looking at amps in there and it seems like everyone knows which ones are the amps worth bidding on, so everybody keeps bidding on them until they drive the price through the roof! I guess there's just no place in the home audio world for poor guys like me!

[piece-it pete]

What kind of power does the DC300A make bridged into 4 ohms? Is it stable to bridge it into 4 ohms? My Tempest has two 8 ohm voice coils, so if I were to connect a bridged DC300A to the Tempest, the VC's would either have to be paralleled, presenting a 4 ohm load, or seriesed, presenting a 16 ohm load. If it makes 650 watts bridged into 8 ohms, I would guess it makes substantially more brideged into 4 ohms.

Actually the Mackie amp I'm talking about is made by Mackie. The model number is M1400i, and it looks like a very impressive amp. I've seen the spec sheet for this amp and it has very impressive numbers. I'm surprise more people haven't heard of this amp.

Link to manual:

http://www.crownaudio.com/pdf/amps/dc300aim.pdf

It doesn't say what the 4 ohm rating is but I'll bet it's impressive. I'm sure the last time I checked out this amp it was 300 wpc. Some other things about the specs that impress me:

1) Rated power bandwidth: 1hz to 20 khz. 1hz?! Sounds like a good sub amp to me, particularly considering +/- .1db (!!) freq. response from DC (again, !!) to 20khz, 1 db from DC to 100khz. I'll bet those low-end numbers put a lot of new dedicated sub amps to shame!

2) "Load impedance: Rated for 8 ohms usage, safely drives any load including completely reactive loads." I'm not positive, but doesn't that last bit mean down to zero?

3) >750 damping factor. Low IM distortion. The fact that they don't try to pad the specs with BS parameters (I've seen a LOT of this with the pro equip.).

Well that does it. I'm buying 4!

Though I realize they're getting old. But wow they're cheap. With better numbers than my Marantz 1152DC integrated, and not unattractive, and silver being "in" again. Hmmm.... - I'll take 4 :)!

There is one 5 of 5 review for the Mackie - used as a sub amp - in AR reviews. I also noticed that the Halfer DH-500 (225 wpc into 8 ohms) has a 4.9 of 5 rating with 29 people checking in. It appears that around $300 +frt. will get you one on fleaBay.

So, after your post, you've got a choice of lots instead of two. Round & round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows!

Pete

PS - let us know what you get & how you like it - I'll be picking up an amp for sub use myself this summer!

[jbangelfish]

The manual states that in 4 0hm it has 340wpc but bridged mono, the figure stays at 650w whether 8 ohm or 4 ohm. I don't know why. All I can say is, it's a very strong amp.
I checked a catalog for PA equipment and found the Mackie and Crown amps that you are talking about. I don't pay much attention to PA amps and they probably don't belong in home stereo systems. The reasons that so many used the DC300A for PA and professional use is that it was strong enough to do it and they have been available fairly cheap used for many years. The amp also uses 1/4 inch connections which lends itself to PA and you need adapting patch cords from normal RCA to 1/4 inch which were supplied with them when new. These new amps are designed for PA use, they will have much higher distortion than the old DC300A. Honestly, I would not buy any of them for home stereo. The old amps on ebay are still going for $250 or less and in spite of their age, are a good buy. I wouldn't be surprised if these are still going strong when the new ones have crapped out.
Bill

[grampi]

650W would be plenty as a sub amp, and you're right, none of these newer amps have nearly as good of specs as the DC300 has. I guess I'll just keep an eye out for them on ebay and bid accordingly. I think the only problem I may have with the DC300 is it has a fairly large faceplate and it may present quite a problem trying to find a place to put it. It certainly won't fit in with all my other equipment.

[RGA]

Basiclaly if you want a brute of an amp with bullitproof reliability and bags of power then go Bryston or don't bother. Lots of people think Crown is garbage and the recent McIntosh thread seems to me they don't stand by their stuff. UHF magazine thinks they're mid-fi with poor solid state design. Tubes are another matter.

"CROWN
3. re THD
> > > I have not yet, in over 30 years in this hobby, found any real correlation between measured harmonic distortion, odd or even, and how close a device brings me to the live performance. Sometimes you will find a correlation, and sometimes the lack of same is boggling. My favorite example was the Sony TA-3200F amp, with THD measured, if I recall correctly, 0.0035%. It also sounded dreadful on anything other than Advents, KLHs, and ARs, i.e. speakers requiring high damping for the woofers *and* having no top end to speak of. The Crown amps are another great example: measured great, sounded terrible. On everything. On the tube side, it goes both ways: there are valve amps that measure badly (especially single-ended triodes) but sound good, and others that measure badly and sound lousy. Then there are units like the Dyna Stereo 70 that measure very mediocre and can astonish. Neither tubes nor transistors own this territory; harmonic distortion, and IM distortion, **as we measure it**, is not, by itself, an indicator of musical truth. They are useful as **relative** indicators to the engineer developing a design, and that's about it.” Bill Way AudioAsylum Feb 21 2004.

McIntosh http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/gen...es/314470.html

[kingdaddykeith]

I've got a Mackie 1400i, driving 2 Maelstrom Sonosubs at 2 Ohms per channel (VC's Paralleled) and this thing absolutely rocks, very solid bottom end and very quite noise floor. Also great features and adjustments, and very respectable THD specs as far as Pro Amps go, better than Crown or QSC.

[CARLOS]

Theres a lot of good advice going on through this thread but I have to put a plug in for the idea of checking out the Crown products. Crown is not for everybody but it sounds like grampi is looking for some tight results from his sub system and the right Crown ( you have to check the specs ) should do it. K1's and K2's have a damping factor of >3000 from 10 to 400. I use a Macro Tech 2400 on my subs ( damping factor of >1000 ) in the work studio and a Micro Tech 1200 on the high packs. This is a mistake it seems as I don't get much work done when this system is turned on. It turns into a personal concert with sonic clarity and presence that surpasses all equipment I have owned in the past...and thats going back some 35 years. I say don't limit yourself to 300 bucks for a workhorse when you can buy a bullet proof truck for a few hundred more that will grab you by the ears and keep your attention.
Just my 2 cents
Carlos

[amcfreek]

i lugged a bunch of crown amps with a band that owned a music store , the only thing he would run ten years ago was a crown macrotech line 1200 watts .. i did buy a crown dc300 early version without overload protection with wood cabinette for 15 bucks .. no you cant its all mine ...
the power base series is ok when they work but they are too hard to fixx and thats froma repair center not just second hand info they were the low end of the pro series , you want the rack mount anamals . like anny reputable music store has used crown or mackie amps , crown are the easiest i mean from a pro tech , freinds roadied professionally .. i got good info first hand on what a stack of 1200's can do with eaw cabs and loaded jbls {horns} 3 ppl to lift em 5 ply plywood dunno how think think kisses shoes are thinner ..
but musicians freind has a few crown amps .. i personally would rather have a fan cooled piece , eaven though you may add a fan at a later date .. but my intentions of running a crown amp for my subs in the future are pretty good , after i fix one .. or my denon .. or my carver amps ...mount them in the celler on the justs and duct work em up...
but living in a half a double with a kid that likes his rap music loud and abnoxiouse .. i tried to respec t for a few years as i have , a bunch of jbl 15's laying around pm 1500 i think .. as wella s a few fosgate car subbs ..enough to hurt these ppl bigtime
anny way right now i slapped a fisher amp {150 watt bloated} to a single 12 and the kids and his old man are calming down a bit a lil thump and they chicken out .. btw they know what i have here ive let loose on ocasion weasel across the yard has calmed down as these two joined forces ,, pick on the tortured genous
let me remind you this is my house {half a double} i try and show some respect . i dont screw with ppl to make me look big with lil man syndrome {im 6-0 } bothe idiots are short
i dont mount my speakers to the partitioning walll .. {cant say the same for some one else}
then again he found out the hard way when he moved in with his 280 wpc , with sansui speakers what a peeded off cber/ham nut can do with some old tubes ..
um and i quote"thier was a squeel , then you blew all my tweeters and mids"
umm personal problem shoulda bught fuses .. sucks when that happens ..
2am piece and quiet .. happens frequently around here after the tubes get warmed up enough to transmit ....sianara scumbag :-)
i have had his kid begg .. these are not nice ppl . take with a grain of salt if you want to know we would be off topic and almost need a new thread called neighbors....
but back on topic i would buy the biggest baddest crown amp i could afford ... then say hi to my police dept for shure .... but i would suggest one with my tech experiance .. techincal support from crown is great ive had problems and emailed them witha house part number , they emailed the generic equivelent not only one number but nte. industry standards they too the time to cross reference the numbers im impressed
sony would have had a good laugh with thier morning cofee ...and tugh luck buy this 9 dollar part 75 bucks its a sony {jack asses}

thanx you cant go wrong on anny of the crown stuff most durable cost effeciant amp on the market thats in the words of who owns a music store like 300 bucks buys a lot used ...
thanxz laterz

[kiwijunglist]

Hi

Apparently you can disconnect the fans in the Crown XLS amps. They don't get hot unless you push them like crazy. Most audiophile amps don't even have fans (although they do however have larger heatsinks)

The other option is to put a 100 ohm resister (atleast 4Watt strength) on the little 12/24V cable that powers the fan, that should cut the speed in half.

i just spent 4 hrs reading the crown discussion on www.avsforum.com

I was thinking of getting some kind of m-audio card that has a preamp box outside the computer, then i will swap my NAD C352 for Crown or similar poweramp.

-Mike

Current System
Foobar2000 mp3 software
VIA AC97 Onboard sound chip
NAD C352 Integrated Amp
Mission M34 Floor standers
Monster cables