This is a review and detailed measurements of the Behringer NX3000D Pro DSP power amplifier. It was kindly purchased new and drop shipped to me by a member. It costs US $399.
As pro amplifiers go, the NX3000D is half attractive especially when on with its amber lights and LEDs:
There are variable (analog) gains as you see. I did not play with the DSP or menu system but it lets you do such useful things as setting up a crossover to drive a sub. There is built-in power limiting in there.
The unit is quite light. So light that you think it may fly away given its large and noisy fan:
The fan unfortunately is not temperature sensitive and wails away upon power up! I am sure saving weight is a big deal when you try to squeeze every dollar out of shipping costs. Good news is that as they advertise, this thing runs as cool as it can get. After a bunch of testing, the temperature was the same as the room.
Note that speaker connections are SpeakOn which I like but not common in consumer audio. Inputs are only balanced XLR/1/4 combo. There is extra gain though to use RCA unbalanced with them using an adapter. Where I placed the gain knobs provided 29 dB of gain.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
As usual, we feed the amp 1 kHz and see what else it outputs beside that at 5 watts into 4 ohm test load:
What it outputs is a bunch of distortion in the form of third harmonic at 3 kHz placing the unit well below average:
Note also the disparity in channel output which you can also see in the frequency response measurement:
The gain controls are notched so not easy to select any in-between gains to adjust for this.
Another news is how narrow the bandwidth is. Being a DSP amplifier, it digitizes the input and it seems to use 48 kHz sampling resulting in bandwidth of 24 kHz.
Noise performance is not that great at 5 watts, falling well below 96 dB we like to see for CD/streaming 16-bit content:
Fortunately at full power (right), you do clear that hurdle.
These amps are sold almost exclusively by how much power they produce versus their cost so let's get into that with 4 ohm load:
Seems like the rated power numbers are a fantasy unless they are measured for one channel driven, not two as I do. Still, 400 watts is lots of power in such a cheap package. You get a bit more as well if you allow the distortion to rise to 1% and also measure it as a peak (right):
Switching the load to 8 ohms naturally lowers available power:
Switching/class-D amps can have complex distortion profiles that highly depend on frequency and power level and we see some of that here:
At higher frequencies different distortion mechanisms become dominant causing the curves to go up and down.
While I always see some power loss at 20 Hz, it is disappointing to see it dip so low to just 268 watts for an amplifier rated at "900 watts." Bass is where we need the power.
Finally, we can remove our filter and examine the ultrasonic spectrum to see what the amp is producing there:
Switching frequency seems to be around 410 kHz which is well above the audible band, and is attenuated quite a lot for a switching amplifier (-26 dB). I am not too happy to see so much other junk there though although not audible per se.
Conclusions
Pro amps can often make good alternative to hi-fi amps since they are sold at much lower cost/watt than consumer products. We get that in Behringer NX3000D but we also get the other drawbacks of pro products in the form of high fan noise. And distortion that is pretty high. If you can hide it some place and use it to do drive a subwoofer it should be fine. But otherwise, I think a more quiet amplifier would work better for home hifif than this unit.
Overall, the Behringer NX3000D is not my cup of tea for home use so I can't recommend it.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Just ate a bowl of carrots from our garden that I planted months ago. Tasted great. Alas, it is time to plant more already for fall harvest and I need money for seeds. So please donate what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
As pro amplifiers go, the NX3000D is half attractive especially when on with its amber lights and LEDs:
There are variable (analog) gains as you see. I did not play with the DSP or menu system but it lets you do such useful things as setting up a crossover to drive a sub. There is built-in power limiting in there.
The unit is quite light. So light that you think it may fly away given its large and noisy fan:
The fan unfortunately is not temperature sensitive and wails away upon power up! I am sure saving weight is a big deal when you try to squeeze every dollar out of shipping costs. Good news is that as they advertise, this thing runs as cool as it can get. After a bunch of testing, the temperature was the same as the room.
Note that speaker connections are SpeakOn which I like but not common in consumer audio. Inputs are only balanced XLR/1/4 combo. There is extra gain though to use RCA unbalanced with them using an adapter. Where I placed the gain knobs provided 29 dB of gain.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
As usual, we feed the amp 1 kHz and see what else it outputs beside that at 5 watts into 4 ohm test load:
What it outputs is a bunch of distortion in the form of third harmonic at 3 kHz placing the unit well below average:
Note also the disparity in channel output which you can also see in the frequency response measurement:
The gain controls are notched so not easy to select any in-between gains to adjust for this.
Another news is how narrow the bandwidth is. Being a DSP amplifier, it digitizes the input and it seems to use 48 kHz sampling resulting in bandwidth of 24 kHz.
Noise performance is not that great at 5 watts, falling well below 96 dB we like to see for CD/streaming 16-bit content:
Fortunately at full power (right), you do clear that hurdle.
These amps are sold almost exclusively by how much power they produce versus their cost so let's get into that with 4 ohm load:
Seems like the rated power numbers are a fantasy unless they are measured for one channel driven, not two as I do. Still, 400 watts is lots of power in such a cheap package. You get a bit more as well if you allow the distortion to rise to 1% and also measure it as a peak (right):
Switching the load to 8 ohms naturally lowers available power:
Switching/class-D amps can have complex distortion profiles that highly depend on frequency and power level and we see some of that here:
At higher frequencies different distortion mechanisms become dominant causing the curves to go up and down.
While I always see some power loss at 20 Hz, it is disappointing to see it dip so low to just 268 watts for an amplifier rated at "900 watts." Bass is where we need the power.
Finally, we can remove our filter and examine the ultrasonic spectrum to see what the amp is producing there:
Switching frequency seems to be around 410 kHz which is well above the audible band, and is attenuated quite a lot for a switching amplifier (-26 dB). I am not too happy to see so much other junk there though although not audible per se.
Conclusions
Pro amps can often make good alternative to hi-fi amps since they are sold at much lower cost/watt than consumer products. We get that in Behringer NX3000D but we also get the other drawbacks of pro products in the form of high fan noise. And distortion that is pretty high. If you can hide it some place and use it to do drive a subwoofer it should be fine. But otherwise, I think a more quiet amplifier would work better for home hifif than this unit.
Overall, the Behringer NX3000D is not my cup of tea for home use so I can't recommend it.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Just ate a bowl of carrots from our garden that I planted months ago. Tasted great. Alas, it is time to plant more already for fall harvest and I need money for seeds. So please donate what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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