Ashly FX125.4 Multichannel Amp Review

[PristineSound]

Seriously? Thanks for letting me know. I was planning to buy one, probably not anymore. 6.5 seconds is totally unreasonable for me.

My Oppo BDP-105D takes over 12s to come out of standby and start accepting USB signal. That is a little annoying but the Neumann is fine for me.

 

[roland{at}GGNTKT]

As mentioned previously, it's a Pascal OEM design that is used by many brands as a white label, including us in our custom Model S line. Depending on the type, it uses the Pascal U-PRO2/S modules. Higher power modules (S-PRO, L-PRO, etc.) are also available in 19"/2U. Pascal is a reliable, proven solution with an attractive form factor. So, in terms of hardware, it's a really nice package. As for the software/GUI, it depends on your needs, but there is typically much room for optimization – same here

 

[Scrivs]

You can see the Pascal’s connection to Icepower in the layout of the boards. In a round about way, I’m reminded (visually) a bit of the wonderful 1200AS2.
This little Ashly is interesting indeed given its compelling mix of features. I’d trust Pascals in a hot, enclosed operating environment over the failure prone (IME) Hypex primadonnas any day.

 

[Scrivs]

Can’t quite make it out from the picture, but does anyone know which AD product they used for the DSP?

 

[roland{at}GGNTKT]

Can’t quite make it out from the picture, but does anyone know which AD product they used for the DSP?

TI/Burr Brown PCM1840

 

[somebodyelse]

TI/Burr Brown PCM1840

That's an ADC not DSP. I can't make out the part number - it looks a bit like ADAU14something and a 72 lead package.

 

[Head_Unit]

How to recognize a real professional product? It doesn't have ’Pro’ in the name...

You can tell because the volume knob goes to "11"

 

[roland{at}GGNTKT]

That's an ADC not DSP. I can't make out the part number - it looks a bit like ADAU14something and a 72 lead package.

My bad, I misinterpreted "AD" as "ADC".
However the DSP is an AD ADAU1452

 

[somebodyelse]

You can tell because the volume knob goes to "11"

But has it got Dobly?

 

[Philberish]

Interesting one, thanks for the testing Amir.

Slight error in the title though, missing the "S" in Ashly.

View attachment 489541

View attachment 489542

No pics on this one, however apparently the Ashly FX125.4 amplifier uses a proprietary Class D module developed in-house by Ashly... can anyone confirm this?


JSmith

I believe it's Pascal on the inside.

P

 

[Jukka]

I wouldn't say that. I own Hypex FA503's, and Hypex plate amps are a real PITA. The Hypex is a great amp, but everything else about it sucks and the Ashly is much better at. I'll explain

The Hypex is a plate amp, but it is so physically tall that it cannot be used in bookshelf speakers. This makes them limited to floorstanding speakers or giant bookshelf speakers.

It gets worse. The Hypex plate amp isn't airtight, so it requires it's own chamber within the loudspeaker. This eats up an enormous amount of space within the speaker.

The Hypex amp run extremely hot for class D amps, especially at idle. To make things worse their maximum temperature is much lower than other pro amps at 95C when most pro amps can handle 125-150C. Runs hot while having low max temp tolerance AND having to be in a tiny enclosed airspace rather than sharing the entire airspace with the speaker is the worst combo of all worlds and a recipe for reliability disasters. And yes, the Hypex plate amps are quite poor in reliability, this is why you never see them used in pro audio even though they're competitively priced.

But Hypex isn't just a reliability mess, it is quite awful at practical usability too.

The amp takes 4 seconds to get out of standby, which is basically an eternity. Every other audio product except one that I've ever used has instant wake from standby, and the one exception took 0.5 seconds. Imagine the first 4 seconds of your audio cut out every time you listen to your speaker...... The amp very audibly clicks when going in and out of standby as well, again never seen that before, and it gets a bit annoying.

The limiter is useless. It adds audible noises 6-7dB before the limiter is supposed to engage. The amplifier also doesn't overload gracefully. It would occasionally pop and mute rather than soft clip.

There are various bugs within the amp. There used to be bugs that would cause the speaker to blast 0dBFS full scale volume in certain circumstances, but thankfully that's been fixed. The auto input selector is not reliable. The slave unit can often lose sync with the master unit when connected in master/slave digital configuration. The Hypex software has numerous frustrating bugs when trying to use it that I won't detail. Thankfully I only have to use it once to set up.

The Ashly is much smaller, much more reliable, much more usable features (Wi-Fi and network control, advanced limiters, more filters like raised cosine). If you value usability, Ashly is much better than Hypex in every way at the expense of pure amplifier performance. This is what drove me to send Amir the Ashly amp. I need another solution for active speakers because the Hypex is just unacceptable from a usability standpoint.

So many wrong assumptions here. Don't use 2x 500 + 100 Watts in a bookshelf speaker, try a smaller model. It's ventilated on purpose (it has a fan), you shouldn't put any heat-generating electronics in closed space. If you want, you can build it into a separate enclosure, that should give you more flexibility with air space and cooling. It has configurable input-sensing power on / power off, for analog and digital signal, which is more than any direct alternative product has that I've seen. This is low power stand by mode that is different from "hardware mute", which can be found on many products. The audible click is the "power on thumb", which is not loud enough to be a problem until you power IEMs with these amps (I got it with a 110 db / W horn, definitely not a problem). You are probably the first person on earth who uses power off between tracks. Most software and firmware bugs were fixed years ago.

I've been using my units with digital inputs and digital daisy chaining for many years without issues. The auto power on/off is one of the best features they have. I've built three pairs of speakers that are using/could use FusionAmps. I haven't found anything that I could use that would be sufficient in performance x usability x price compared to FusionAmps.

 

[Head_Unit]

Don't use 2x 500 + 100 Watts in a bookshelf speaker

Huh? Why the hell not, if you want to play loud? I expect amps on a speaker to have heat sinking externally to deal with the enclosed aspect.

 

[Jukka]

Huh? Why the hell not, if you want to play loud? I expect amps on a speaker to have heat sinking externally to deal with the enclosed aspect.

Because the drivers of a bookshelf-sized speaker will not handle 500 Watts each (fire hazard) and a typical 87 dB/W sensitivity bookshelf speaker will play over 100 dB with about 30 Watts. 100 dB is very loud and will cause permanent hearing damage.

 

[kyuu]

Because the drivers of a bookshelf-sized speaker will not handle 500 Watts each (fire hazard) and a typical 87 dB/W sensitivity bookshelf speaker will play over 100 dB with about 30 Watts. 100 dB is very loud and will cause permanent hearing damage.

You can avoid all that by simply not turning the volume control up. You don't have to avoid high power amps just because you have bookshelf speakers. All that still applies to bigger floorstanding speakers anyway, except that they're often more sensitive and so will actually get louder.

You get high power amps to cover big transients, not to run 500W continuously into anything.

 

[Head_Unit]

100 dB is very loud and will cause permanent hearing damage.

True true, though I am often listening nearly 10m away, so the volume would be quite reduced. Low built-in power does somewhat keep me from putting powered monitors next to a TV in my living room although depth is a bigger barrier.

 

[SC45]

I had similarly low expectations to Amir just looking at this thing, but considering the performance, features, and price... this does look competitive with Hypex Fusion amps if you're doing a DIY multiway speaker. It's not quite as hifi (reampling down to 48khz is not exactly 2025 SOTA stuff) but 4 channels of FIR and competent power for $1K is worth thinking about. Unfortunately I don't know if 120w is going to really work for a true full-range speaker with "built in subs" or whatever, but a pair of very interesting DSP-driven bookshelves is possible here.

They also manufacture many higher wattage units in this same model range. I use their Ashly FX750.2 model for my two subs.

 

[SC45]

Having a programmed, default static IP for initial configuration is extremely common in the IT world and is how I actually prefer it. A device that comes out-of-the-box with DHCP enabled and no default IP is generally more of a pain to deal with in my experience.

Anyway, this is an extremely interesting product. Despite Amir's conjecture that this is using class AB amplification due to the well-behaved THD+N vs. frequency graph, the specs say this is class D and may in fact be a custom designed class D solution? These would be excellent in an AVR...

Yeah it was odd that Amir called it a Class AB amp in his review ("My power sweep relative to frequency seems to imply we have a class AB amplifier here with a switching power supply"), since this is clearly Class D topology.

 

[SC45]

As mentioned previously, it's a Pascal OEM design that is used by many brands as a white label, including us in our custom Model S line. Depending on the type, it uses the Pascal U-PRO2/S modules. Higher power modules (S-PRO, L-PRO, etc.) are also available in 19"/2U. Pascal is a reliable, proven solution with an attractive form factor. So, in terms of hardware, it's a really nice package. As for the software/GUI, it depends on your needs, but there is typically much room for optimization – same here

FYI this is the back side of the Blaze audio version of this unit. Pascal seems to have designed and possibly manufactured them? Then these companies like Ashly and Blaze just put their logo on the front. Takes away some of the mystique of these brands' engineering prowess to know they don't engineer or build what they sell.

 

[jhaider]

Blaze was Pascal until recently. They were spun off.

 

[Scrivs]

My bad, I misinterpreted "AD" as "ADC".
However the DSP is an AD ADAU1452

Thks.
My new FA503s just arrived they have the same DSP.