Audison Forza AF C8.14 Bit DSP Amplifier Review

[Old_School_Brad]

Well, you will lose voltage on the wire run to the amp. This will affect class D low draw stuff less but still, just the wire run if going to say the trunk is 0.5-1.5volt. Closer runs are less obviously or huge thick wires in play helps. Then if your drawing a lot of power in a high powered system that could easily be 50-100+amps (even more if using old school A/B amps and lots of power, several hundred amps for short bursts if you alternator can do it) For example my old 2007 CRV has only an 105amp rated alternator.

Way back in the day high school guys with bass boomers would have lights dimming in unison with the beat.

4guage wire, 100amps
View attachment 452821
8guage wire, 100amps
View attachment 452822

8guage wire, 30amps
View attachment 452823

 

[ROOSKIE]

View attachment 452830

View attachment 452829

I had one long ago.

Well, that won't help with voltage drop due wiring resistance at all. My chart was just wiring loses alone, there are other loses but the wiring loses are the minimum loses that can not be avoided in any way.
The cap will/might help cover brief moments when there is additional voltage drop & when the alternator actually can't produce enough amperage and will help with the lifespan of the alternator.

 

[totti1965]

Why does car hi-fi perform so much worse than home hi-fi? It doesn't have to be that way, does it?

 

[Old_School_Brad]

I had one long ago.

Well, that won't help with voltage drop due wiring resistance at all. My chart was just wiring loses alone, there are other loses but the wiring loses are the minimum loses that can not be avoided in any way.
The cap will/might help cover brief moments when there is additional voltage drop & when the alternator actually can't produce enough amperage and will help with the lifespan of the alternator.

Place it near the amplifier and it does. It greatly reduces the "voltage drop with every bass hit" light show effect.

 

[AudioJester]

Would separate processor and amp give better perfomance? Like in HT avr pre/amp combos?

 

[johny_2000]

This unit reminds me of the MiniDSP + Class D power amplifier combos in one unit that many car audio installers have used in the past. Performance-wise - it's similar, price-wise - maybe a little cheaper, but requires more interconnections between units. It seems to me that the MiniDSP software is capable of doing all of this, and it also supports USB and TOSLINK inputs.

 

[jannek]

Maybe it would be interesting to also test power with bridged channels (when the amp can do that). This is a common use in car audio and also sheds some light on the power supply of the amp.

 

[ROOSKIE]

Place it near the amplifier and it does. It greatly reduces the "voltage drop with every bass hit" light show effect.

Yes, it will help with dimming headlights but as but it cannot remove the loses due to resistance of any wiring.
If you are losing 1volt due to a power wires inherent resistance it is gone, never coming back. That could be a 10% power drop by itself. Not huge but with low voltage electronics something to factor in.
The cap does help with some other types of loses not related to the measured resistance of the wire.

 

[GXAlan]

Why does car hi-fi perform so much worse than home hi-fi? It doesn't have to be that way, does it?

McIntosh MC 427 Amplifier Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the McIntosh MC 427 (MC427) stereo car audio amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. It has been discontinued but used ones go for about US $500. Not much to distinguish the amplifier from other car amps other than the bright blue logo...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Cost is a big issue. These devices largely are built to a superior reliability standard which eats into the BOM. Think about how hot the interior of your car gets after being parked in a sunny/hot day. As soon as you start your car, your car audio is working flawlessly since you may need the audio and electronics of a rear camera, the audible alerts from your cross traffic radar, etc.

I cannot imagine most home audio components handling repeated thermal cycling and running under those extreme conditions.

Once you do that, it’s naturally pricey.

The McIntosh amp shows that it is possible to have superb measured performance and people have pointed out that the Audiotec Fischer Helix and Brax line have some great published measurements too. However, look at the cost.

You have Purifi Eigentakt car audio, but these are ~$4000

BRAX RX2 PRO

BRAX MATRIX ML28 PRO – 2-channel high-end amplifier | PURIFIs “EIGENTAKT” Class D | 2 x 300 Watts RMS at 4 Ω | 2 x 510 Watts RMS at 2 Ω | Bridged 1 x 930 Watts at 4 Ω

www.audiotec-fischer.de

 

[ROOSKIE]

Why does car hi-fi perform so much worse than home hi-fi? It doesn't have to be that way, does it?

The noise floor in a car is very high along with other types of SQ masking.
You can not hear any of these issues when driving around.
Now roll the windows down or throw the AC on high at 80mph. Yikes.

These 2 small amps recently measured pack 8 channels of amp and robust full featured DSP into an environment where 'room' temps reach 150f parked in the summer sun and -50f in Canada. They are very tiny and fit in very tight quarters, the JBL DSP4086 is just 5.3"x9.6"x2" and the Audison is 5"x8"x1.8".
The JBL can be had for $350 or less and the Audison for $1100.
I'm serious when I ask nicely --- how should it be???

 

[Old_School_Brad]

Yes, it will help with dimming headlights but as but it cannot remove the loses due to resistance of any wiring.
If you are losing 1volt due to a power wires inherent resistance it is gone, never coming back. That could be a 10% power drop by itself. Not huge but with low voltage electronics something to factor in.
The cap does help with some other types of loses not related to the measured resistance of the wire.

Sure -a buffer capacitor can't overcome resistive losses in wiring. If you're dropping 1V across the power cable due to resistance, that energy is dissipated as heat, and there's no way to “reclaim” it at the amplifier. That's a fixed, linear loss governed by the cable gauge, length, and current draw.

Where the capacitor does come in is in addressing transient voltage dips -those momentary drops that happen faster than the alternator or battery can react to. In these cases, a large cap located near the amplifier can effectively "buffer" the supply voltage by delivering current locally, smoothing and keeping the voltage high, as seen by the amp during high dynamic peaks (bass-heavy content). This doesn’t eliminate the steady-state voltage drop in the wiring beyond the duration that the capacitance of the capacitor dictates, but it is effective of maintaining stability under dynamic load.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Hmmm….you said ths amp will push 8 speakers

 

[dorirod]

@amirm thank you for the review! I believe you're missing the word "above" here?

"Going with that, the performance is slightly average for all car audio amplifiers tested"

 

[SuicideSquid]

Why does car hi-fi perform so much worse than home hi-fi? It doesn't have to be that way, does it?

Space, power, and cooling constraints. You could certainly do better than this amp for distortion, but there are constraints on car audio that would prevent it from achieving parity with home audio.

It also doesn't really have to compete with home audio - your level of background noise - road noise, engine noise, environmental sound pollution - is an order of magnitude higher in a car than it is in most homes, so having higher noise or distortion is going to be less noticeable.

 

[M.C. Logan]

Space, power, and cooling constraints. You could certainly do better than this amp for distortion, but there are constraints on car audio that would prevent it from achieving parity with home audio.

It also doesn't really have to compete with home audio - your level of background noise - road noise, engine noise, environmental sound pollution - is an order of magnitude higher in a car than it is in most homes, so having higher noise or distortion is going to be less noticeable.

Pretty sure I could hear distortion in my stock speakers above the in car environmental noise, and still can when driving the new speakers hard with the stock head unit. Non harmonic distortion cuts through anything.

 

[ROOSKIE]

Pretty sure I could hear distortion in my stock speakers above the in car environmental noise, and still can when driving the new speakers hard with the stock head unit. Non harmonic distortion cuts through anything.

Sure, nobody is saying you won't hear any distortion in a car.

These amps as tested have distortion levels magnitudes below a cheap, poorly designed stock speaker being over driven by an amp pushed into hard clipping at 30%-50%thd.
What is being said is that you won't hear or notice this amps flaws much if at all vs a SOTA clean one in a car, that is the idea.

 

[SuicideSquid]

Pretty sure I could hear distortion in my stock speakers above the in car environmental noise, and still can when driving the new speakers hard with the stock head unit. Non harmonic distortion cuts through anything.

I never said you wouldn't be able to hear distortion in a car. I said distortion levels will likely need to be higher in a car than at home before they become noticeable. I have no doubt you can hear distortion if you push stock speakers & head unit at all, even in a noisy car environment.

 

[amarsicola]

Can't refrain to ask to doctor @Sean Olive to give us a hint of what Amir should be looking for as an "in-car target curve"... Maybe measured with a HATS?

 

[TNT]

It says 14 bits on the front but only measured 11,7... fraud ;-)

//

 

[tomtoo]

@amirm
Would be cool to get one of this.

- AUDIO SYSTEM GERMANY dein Car Hifi Spezialist

Car Hifi Produkte für alle, die gute Musik im Auto lieben. Subwoofer, Endstufen, Lautsprecher und Zubehör findet ihr bei Audio System.

www.audio-system.de

Tried the software have high/low pass and PEQ per channel.