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Pyle PT8000CH 8-Channel Amplifier Review

Rate this amplifier:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 21 9.6%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 103 47.2%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 80 36.7%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 14 6.4%

  • Total voters
    218

amirm

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This is a review and detailed measurements of the Pyle PT8000CH 8-channel or 8-zone distribution power amplifier. It was kindly drop shipped by a member and costs US $269. Member purchased it for just $158 on sale!
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo review.jpg


You probably can't tell from the picture but this is a massive box. It weighs over 50 pounds/23 kilograms and is quite deep. Rack mounts are provided and needed for both front and back. A review says the back holes don't align right however. Back panel shows why this amplifier is also tailored for multi-room distribution:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo back panel bus review.jpg
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By selecting "bus mode," a single input is distributed to any number of channels from 1 to 8. In mono or stereo. Trim pots are provided to adjust the gain for each channel although there were kind of too sensitive to set accurately.

The side panels gave me paus until I powered the unit:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo side panel fan review.jpg


I feared that those fans would make huge amount of noise but to my pleasant surprise, they barely move and are essentially silent. They never sped up or got louder during testing. This is far better solution than my pro amps I test with loud and small fans that are not even temperature sensitive.

Back to the front, the power switch is quite bright (blue) and bleeds into the LED bar graphs. But once the unit is on, the LED bar graphs themselves light up and more or less cover that issue. The power switch feels quite solid.

Pyle as a brand is know for cheap (read junk) so my expectations were not high going into the review. The overall construction though, with dual toroidal transformers in front, portrayed a different picture. Let's see how it measures.

Pyle PT8000CH Measurements
I stayed with stereo measurements for this section selecting the channels 7 and 8 that are next to the AC power input. Warm up allowed the amp to improve a bit:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution power warm up measurements.png


Here is our dashboard:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo measurements.png


We have a spray of harmonic distortion that sinks SINAD fairly low:
best multichannel amplifier review.png

Zooming in:
best multichannel amplifier zoom review.png


We see that the company that it keeps is not too bad! SNR falls inline or perhaps a bit better:

PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo SNR measurements.png


Multitone is as we would expect from the dashboard:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo multitone measurements.png


Frequency response is good although I wished for a bit more bandwidth as to get a flatter response to 20 kHz:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo frequency response measurements.png


Crosstalk though was surprisingly poor:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo crosstalk measurements.png


Let's see how much power we have into 2 channels:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo power into 4 ohm measurements.png


Benefit of large power supply comes in when just driving in stereo:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo max and peak power into 4 ohm measureme...png


Here is 8 ohm performance (company spec = 100 watts):
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo power into 8 ohm measurements.png


Finally, here is power vs frequency:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo power vs frequency measurements.png


Here is on/off noise:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo Power on and off pop measurements.png


I hooked up the amplifier to an infinity R253 speaker and I could hear a faint pop on power up. Power off seemed silent although the fan noise may have masked that.

Multichannel Amplifier Testing
My analyzer is only stereo but I drove all channels with the same 8 ohm load. Here is the output power in stereo and 8 channels:

PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo power into 8 ohm 4 channels measurements.png


We are meeting spec here which is good (there is some nonsense about 8000 watts peak which we forgive and ignore).

All the testing so far has been resistive. Let's make the load "reactive" by 30 and 60 degrees angle and also sweep down to 2 ohm and see what happens:
PT8000CH 8 multi-channel amplifier distribution stereo Loadbox measurements.png


This is quite robust! At both 4 and 8 ohms, the amp doesn't care if the load is reactive or not. At 2 ohm though, it starts to complain, dropping its output voltage by nearly half. Testing at 1 ohm resulted in momentary shutdown.

Conclusions
The build quality of this 8-channel amplifier seems quite substantial. Massive power supply courtesy of dual toroidal transformers powers the 8 channels well, allowing the amplifier to meet spec. Distortion and noise are rather high though and rank well below our average. The amplifier protection and ability to handle complex loads is excellent.

You are paying almost nothing for this amplifier (the case alone could cost you this much!) yet you get way above a broken design. The PT8000CH won't be my main choice for a high-performance 2-channel system but for surround duty and certainly multi-room amplification, it seems fine.

I am going to recommend the Pyle PT8000CH. Not because it has great measured performance as far as noise and distortion. But that it delivers way, way above its cost point.

Edit: teardown is now posted: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...8000ch-multichannel-amplifier-teardown.43333/

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
 
Last edited:

ROOSKIE

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Thanks so much.
Great for a 'garage' sustem or as you said secondary 'man cave' theater(maybe even any theater set-up), or driving background music in multiple rooms.
Probably just fine for other use cases.
$158 doesn't seem wasted here though obviously not a deal for everyone.
& Not going to replace my main system though for sure.
50lbs is enough for my GF to bench press. Gotta stay active in the winter.
 

fordiebianco

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This is impressive. Now I wonder how the rest of their stuff measures. And whether I need it.
 

TonyJZX

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ive always loved that name "Pyle" simply because when someone asks you what amp you run you can always say "I run a complete Pyle"...

the 120w at 8 ohms tells me they at least put in a transformer that is overkill for just two channels

for 8 channels? probably well good enough

and the whole amp is well good enough for the average in house setup where you have some indifferent in wall speakers


pyle says 100w at 8 ohm at less than 1% so this isnt untrue

FURTHER look at what you get compared to the other amp this week... the Audioengine N22 OR those Schitt toy desktop amps...

btw. for you guys outside of the US I notice there's always a lot of clean well kept distribution amps for sale at your usual sources

it seems people ripping out commerical systems is common in our economy AND it seems whole house systems arent so popular now given many of us cannot afford to build 6 bedroom mcmansions on your own land so i always seen 4/6/8 and even 12 channel amps very very cheap.... simply because the demand doesnt seem to be there

As long as you can put up with the sometimes commerical connects (70v?) and the fact they dont measure good to our standards.
 

Waxx

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It's Pyle, so it will be relative noisy and cheap. But for the rest a quiet decent amp it seems. And that is the reputation that Pyle here has, not so high soundquality, but still acceptable, but very solid and reliable.

Here this type of amps are often used in small bars to power their fixed setup for background music, mounted in a rack behind the bar and often fed by a automatic mix system or a radio tuner and feeding wall mount speakers.
 

JktHifi

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Every Amplifier Review always ended up with Topping LA90 as the best SINAD. Are there no other manufacturers that can make better SINAD?
 

tomtoo

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23kg amp, 8*100w < 270$?????

Ah,come on you joke. The case alone looks more expensive.
 

Koeitje

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OP
amirm

amirm

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Music1969

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Man, this is cheap enough that you could do some really funky DIY projects with it, just get one of the minidsp 8ch units and you can do a stereo 4-way active setup on the cheap...
I would use something else for tweeters (hiss) but for mids and bass drivers, yep could be good
 
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